by Jonathan Storm

The Philadelphia Inquirer

2 November 2006

”No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” said pundit H. L. Mencken. But TV people are licking their wounds this fall for overestimating it.

Studios spent lavishly to achieve feature-film production values. Creators fashioned complex characters and plots. But a month into the new season, only one-fourth of the 16 new dramas have found solid ratings success. All tell simple stories.

So why aren’t people watching some of the best new shows to debut in years?

Many viewers can’t fit any more on their dance card, overloaded by a TV schedule that was crammed with good drama before the season began. Some are clearly confused by the complex, serialized plotting of shows like ABC’s “The Nine.” Others can’t sit still for all the characters in the overstuffed enchilada of NBC’s “Friday Night Lights.”

“Give us the simple life,” they cry. ABC’s “Ugly Betty” is the top-rated new one-hour series. “She’s ugly, but she’s plucky, and she’s gonna make it after all. We get that.”

CBS’s “Shark” is the No. 2 success. James Woods screams real loud. He’s ruthless, like a shark, prosecuting different bad guys every week. Nothing fishy about that.

NBC’s “Heroes,” about super-hero mutants, and CBS’s “Jericho,” where a small town is cut off by an apparent nuclear attack, are the only other winners. While both serials seemingly present a scary future, they tell rudimentary stories that are easy to follow.

Comedies? Nobody’s laughing.

Not one of nine big-network sitcoms has shown signs of life, even though five were filmed like little movies with no laugh tracks to appeal to a more sophisticated audience.

No one’s crying too loudly that there’s no breakout hit. There rarely is, though “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy” may have raised programmers’ hopes in recent years.

But there’s plenty of consternation that complicated shows with big-money pilots, including ABC’s “The Nine” and “Six Degrees” and NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” and “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” have failed to catch fire. It took only three episodes for CBS to cancel “Smith,” a journey into the underworld whose first installment reportedly cost $7 million, nearly three times the price of a normal episode.

“Smith” was not doing much worse, ratings-wise, than those other shows, but CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler was concerned that future scripts presented murky stories. “Confusion kills,” she told the New York Times.

Is the corollary “simplicity rules”? It would seem so. NBC bought 10 new episodes of “1 vs. 100” after one showing. Nearly 13 million viewers squirmed to the edge of their seats in excitement over such puzzlers as “Which judge sits in the middle on ‘American Idol’?”

Airing on Friday, the second least-watched TV night, “1 vs. 100” sits higher in the overall Nielsen ratings than all but four new scripted series. They all play on nights when TV viewership is much higher.

The networks have picked up “Betty,” “Heroes,” “Shark” and “Jericho” for the entire season. All place second in the ratings in their time periods, and that’s good enough in any year.

ABC also has ordered a full season of the family saga “Brothers & Sisters,” despite lackluster performance in what should be a strong Sunday night slot, and NBC is putting its toe in the water on “Friday Night Lights.”

Nine new scripts have been ordered, which will complete a season’s worth of writing on the series, but there’s no call for producing those shows just yet. The network wants to see how the multigenerational chronicle of life in a football-mad Texas town fares against something other than the feel-good juggernaut of “Dancing With the Stars.”

Fox, too, has ordered more scripts for two of its three dramas, “Standoff” and “Justice,” but their fates are by no means secure. Fox’s third new drama with a cool, single-word title, “Vanished,” seems particularly well-named.

Networks generally buy 13 episodes of a new drama, purchasing “the back nine,” and what is considered a full season of 22 installments, if the show finds ratings success. There’s plenty of time for these series to get a pickup, but so far “Friday Night Lights,” “Six Degrees,” “The Nine,” “Studio 60” and ABC’s “Men in Trees” are waiting for the good news.

Besides “Smith,” “Runaway” on the CW has been canceled, and NBC has shipped “Kidnapped” to Saturday and announced its pending demise after 13 episodes.

No comedy is thriving, and some appear to be dying on the vine. ABC, overcome with promotion demands for its ambitious schedule, has postponed the premieres of three scheduled sitcoms.

If you’re watching any of the six new ones that have actually made it to the airwaves on the big networks—CBS’s “The Class,” NBC’s “30 Rock” and “20 Good Years,” Fox’s “Happy Hour” and “‘Til Death” and ABC’s “Help Me Help You,” you may not be watching much longer. A few new scripts have been commissioned for “The Class” and “‘Til Death,” and NBC next month will tuck “30 Rock” into a more comfy slot Thursdays between the returning “Scrubs” and “ER.”

And that’s all the confidence the big networks have shown in comedy. The CW, however, has ordered a full season of the behind-the-scenes football yucks of “The Game” for its Monday night African-American sitcom block.

Reading ratings is a little like reading tea leaves. ABC’s “Six Degrees” lands in the Top 40 on the raw Nielsen season list, not so bad among more than 100 broadcast series. But the show it follows, “Grey’s Anatomy,” is No. 1, and “Six Degrees” drops nearly 14 million “Anatomy” viewers.

Another problem, and one that sits high on the list of ratings concerns: Like most of the complex new dramas, “Six Degrees” loses viewers in its second half-hour. People watch for a while, go “Ehh,” and change channels or head off to bed.

On the other hand, like most of the complex new dramas, it draws a higher percentage of the younger viewers, whom advertisers love, than does its more traditional competition. On Oct. 19, the day with the most current available data, “Shark” bested “Six Degrees” by more than 5 million viewers, but “Six Degrees” had 10 percent more viewers ages 18-34.

And series survival hinges not only on ratings. Touchstone Television, sister company to ABC under the Disney umbrella, produces “Six Degrees.” With action, romance and lots of shots of New York City, it has been sold successfully in many foreign markets. So the money’s still flowing in, even if it’s from a different river.

Nonetheless, it’s hard to give “Six Degrees” more than a 50 percent shot of surviving to the end of the season. Ditto “The Nine.” With 2.5 million fewer viewers than either of them, ABC’s “Men in Trees,” the Anne Heche starrer, has a better chance because it lures its audience on the aforementioned dead Friday night.

NBC, reeling in the ratings in recent years, may be patient with ratings-challenged “Friday Night Lights” and “Studio 60.” Both shows are critical darlings, and NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly has said he feels a deja vu with 1982-83.

That season, NBC was one step up from invisible despite the introduction of “Family Ties,” “St. Elsewhere” and “Cheers,” which wound up last among all shows in the ratings. But the network stuck with those well-reviewed series, and the next year, they started to find some popular success.

Things, apparently, weren’t a whole lot different in the audience than they are today. Two new series premiered in 1983 and ‘84 that drew droves of viewers to NBC and became the Peacock’s top-rated shows. Some folks stayed to sample the quality fare.

The two chartbusters: Mr. T’s cartoon-like explode-a-thon, “The A-Team,” and TV’s “Bloopers & Practical Jokes.”

© 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer.