Bartlet4America News Archive

Keeping quality shows on air a job for us all

by Mike Drew
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

While most Americans are pondering/dreading filing their taxes, the people who run network TV are contemplating which series should live into another season.

Merit and sentiment have nothing to do with it. Ratings will decide how viewers will spend prime time next winter - and determine which TV "stars" will continue getting great restaurant tables and which will return to waiting on them.

This week marked the end of the extremely long-for-TV run of "NYPD Blue." No series ever started with more commotion.

ABC kept it off the air for a year while its lawyers and flacks brooded over potential boycotts over semi-nudity and non-genteel language.

When it finally premiered on Sept. 21, 1993, 57 of 225 ABC affiliates aired something else, but not Milwaukee's Channel 12.

The show got complaints about raunch but pulled a whopping 32% audience share. Commenting on network "suits," one cynic observed, "When you pass a 25 (percent) share, sex and violence becomes love and action."

Before long, ratings had trumped principle and the gun-shy 57 affiliates were back. For a change, a worthy, trailblazing show was saved.

Inevitably, several years ago, producer Steven Bochco ran out of new things to say. But a core audience kept tuning in, and ABC kept it alive until Bochco cranked up a successor. His "Blind Justice" enters the Tuesday breach next week.

A vote for 'West Wing'
Meanwhile, if enough of us don't rally round the tube this spring, another TV era could end, this one half as long. That would be the run of NBC's equally meritorious, if recently troubled, "The West Wing."

With its Wednesday night audiences sometimes dipping below 10 million, TV's all-time political champ lingers on cancellation's cusp.

Part of its problem is endemic with senior series - escalating costs.

Also, fans suffered through a distressing drop in quality in 2003-'04 after creator-writer-producer Aaron Sorkin self-destructed, micromanaging every word while battling drug addiction.

At long last, however, there's good news for disenchanted former fans: It's safe to come back.

Under producer John Wells, an invigorated writing staff is relishing a new challenge. It's mounting a lively presidential campaign for candidates played by Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda.

Enlivening the refurbished "Wing" is a story arc with material straight from last year's presidential campaign, such as dirty tricks, attack ads, media manipulation - all of politics' fun things. Hours go by without much policy wonk palaver from the dying Bartlett administration.

Now if Wells and company would only make the show's trademark talking-while-walking repartee more comprehensible, with less inside-the-Beltway jargon. Sorkin's chatter was smarter, sharper and less often swallowed.

Teenager in trouble
The moment of truth also has arrived for another first-class drama, "Joan of Arcadia." If there's a better family hour than what CBS is offering at 7 p.m. Fridays, please alert me.

However, according to a very reliable source - my 14-year-old granddaughter - the show's time slot doesn't help. She reports that the teenage girls who are "Joan's" natural target have more important things to do on Friday evenings than huddle tubeside.

I suspect that the show's principal plot conceit - Joan (Amber Tamblyn) has brief conversations with God in various guises - has scared away people who would enjoy it. "Joan," most definitely, is not another "Touched by an Angel."

Clever plotting and dialogue crafted by producer Barbara Hall and company capture teen patois and angst, without alienating older viewers. Somehow, the show achieves this - including Joan petulantly bristling at the Almighty's suggestions - without sounding sacrilegious.

In Hall's deft hands, "Joan" visits most of the issues facing families with teens - there are three in this one, one in a wheelchair. Tune in and help this funny, feisty and often moving hour survive.

With sitcoms and TV movies suffering what seems like their worst slump ever, one bad "reality" show replacing another and newsmagazines also troubled, series drama remains network prime time's last vestige of quality.

A longtime "Law & Order" fan, I've been saddened that producer Dick Wolf keeps grinding out inferior copies. How about that other prime-time drama franchise, "CSI"? Its magic escapes me, although I enjoyed producer Jerry Bruckheimer's other prime-time hit "Without a Trace" before it discovered that sex sells.

Quality can, too, as "NYPD Blue," "The West Wing" and "Joan of Arcadia" have proved. But enough people who appreciate that elusive goal must be able to find it.