The Networks Come Home

By Richard Zoglin

It was reality-check time in network television last week. After a blizzard of press attention and network hype, ABC finally brought forth Wild Palms, Oliver Stone's dazzling, challenging, future-shocked mini-series. It fizzled in the ratings. After years of twisting and turning in an effort to adapt to a new TV landscape, the networks unveiled their fall schedules. It looked like 1973 again.

What a difference a year makes. Last May change seemed to be in the wind at the Big Three networks. Faced with steadily growing competition from cable and other video choices, the networks were groping for a way to stay relevant and healthy. Critically praised shows like I'll Fly Away and Brooklyn Bridge were renewed despite low ratings. The fall lineup included a batch of hip relationship comedies tailored to the thirtysomething audience (Love and War, Mad About You), as well as a flock of Beverly Hills, 90210, clones aimed at an even younger crowd. The network mantra was demographics; these shows might not draw a huge audience, but they would, it was hoped, draw the right audience.

This year the wind of change has turned into a familiar breeze. The 28 fall shows announced by ABC, CBS and NBC over the past two weeks (Fox is scheduled to weigh in this week) are a conservative, back-to-basics lot. The theme is old-fashioned, mass-audience entertainment, the kinds of shows the whole family can watch. Sitcoms next fall will favor tight-knit family units rather than funny workplaces, acerbic yuppies or angst-ridden teens. No quirky small towns, few hard-edged action shows and, surprisingly, only two new series with blacks in the leading roles (though several from last year's bumper crop are returning). If it all sounds retrogressive and old hat, network programmers might reply by paraphrasing a line from the Clinton campaign: It's television, stupid.

Nowhere is the about-face more evident than at third-ranked NBC. Last year the network did a radical spring cleaning, junking aging hits like Matlock and In the Heat of the Night (both were later picked up by other networks and are doing just fine, thank you) and adding a slew of youth-oriented sitcoms. The tactic didn't work, and this time around NBC programmers are touting two strategies for the fall: big stars and "broad-based family entertainment." Among their offerings: Valerie Bertinelli as a divorce living in Paris (Cafe Americain); a high-school coach and his family in Texas (Against the Grain); and a rotating series of mystery movies starring such TV veterans as Kenny Rogers, Larry Hagman and (reprising their early 1980s series Hart to Hart) Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers.

Young demographics are more important at ABC, which was No. 1 in the important 18-to-49 age group this season, but the family orientation will be ( stronger than ever. Among the configurations that will be explored in ABC sitcoms next fall: a widow trying to raise four kids (Thea), an unemployed electrician turned househusband (Joe's Life); a divorced mother of three (Grace Under Fire); and a retired boxer -- played by former heavyweight champion George Foreman -- with a wife, two kids and a job counseling troubled junior-high students (George).

With violence coming under fresh scrutiny -- most lately in a Senate hearing held last Friday in Washington -- heavy-duty action shows will be scarce. Off the schedule, at least for now, is Barry Levinson's street-tough police drama Homicide, as well as several crime-oriented reality shows (Top Cops, Secret Service). The new action shows fall mostly into the fun-for-the-whole-family category: ABC's Lois & Clark, which reunites the Superman pair; NBC's seaQuest DSV, an undersea adventure from Steven Spielberg, and CBS's Walker, Texas Ranger, the latest in the newly resurgent Western genre. One of the rare exceptions is Steven Bochco's NYPD Blue, an ABC police drama that reputedly will test TV boundaries in language and sexual explicitness. But coming from Bochco, TV's peripatetic innovator (Cop Rock, Capitol Critters), a straightforward police drama seems almost a retrenchment.

Why is family entertainment making a comeback? Searching for their role in the expanding TV universe, the networks seem to be coalescing around their original game plan. Rather than aiming for narrow segments of the audience, as many of the cable networks do, the Big Three think they have a better chance of standing out by stressing their traditional mass-market appeal. Says Betsy Frank, a senior vice president of Saatchi & Saatchi advertising: "There's been an acknowledgment that with network television you can't reinvent the wheel."

Then too, the old inventions seem to be working quite well. The season's surprise series hit was a sentimental frontier drama, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. NBC's telecast of Fried Green Tomatoes drew higher ratings than any other network movie in four years. And more than 93 million people tuned in for the grand finale of Cheers. Is it any wonder the networks are suddenly very nostalgic?

With reporting by William Tynan/New York