IS ANYONE WATCHING?

By JAMES COLLINS

A single dad. An odd couple--she's the daughter of aging hippies, he's the son of rich conservatives. A wacky alien. An incorruptible prosecutor. Another single dad. A precinct full of hotheaded urban cops. As the new shows suggest, the broadcast networks are not exactly venturing into unexplored territory this season; in fact, they aren't even leaving the hotel. That's neither surprising nor necessarily bad. Lots of successful shows have followed the conventions of the sitcom or the police drama. If a series about a divorced father and his wiseacre kids is truly funny, does anyone care that it's been done a dozen times before?

More and more, the answer seems to be yes. The new shows this fall aren't particularly terrible, and some are reasonably good, but despite an extravagant effort to promote them, they are not bringing in the viewers. During the first week of the 1993-94 season, 75% of all TV sets in use were tuned to one of the Big Four networks--NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox. By last fall, that figure was down to 65%. During last month's premiere week, the network share took another startling drop--to 61% of the viewing audience. The measure of success has fallen accordingly: Dharma & Greg is considered a "hit" this season with a rating of 10.5 last week; 10 years ago it would have been 57th out of 68 shows and a target for quick cancellation.

The reason is no mystery: the networks have far more competition than they once had. Not only has Fox muscled in on the traditional Big Three, but two smaller networks, UPN and the WB, are also vying for viewers. So are dozens of increasingly potent cable channels. Cable made more inroads this summer, when the networks slipped into their usual rerun torpor. The cable industry delights in pointing out that for the first time ever, in the 2 1/2-month period from July through mid-September, the prime-time audience for all basic-cable networks combined exactly matched that of the Big Three.

Broadcast executives insist that their plight has been overplayed, that it's too early to tell which of the 38 shows debuting on the six networks this fall will be hits. Ad sales for this season, after all, are at record levels. And yet there's a sense among many in the industry that the networks are not facing up to the fact that times have changed for good. "They are operating in a way that is old-fashioned, outdated and self-destructive," says Peter Roth, president of Fox Entertainment Group. "The networks have to change the way they do business."

Of course, the best way to win viewers is to discover shows they want to watch. And each network has some bright spots to point to this fall. ABC's Dharma & Greg, the flower-child-marries-lawyer sitcom, has justified its favorable preseason press and is winning its time period. Veronica's Closet, starring Kirstie Alley, has a fail-safe time slot on NBC between Seinfeld and ER, and it has kept more of Seinfeld's audience than many other shows similarly blessed. Ally McBeal, Fox's Monday-night comedy-drama, looks like another success.

Yet many more shows, even those with big stars and critical acclaim, have been disappointments. The Gregory Hines Show, a perfectly appealing family sitcom on CBS starring the talented song-and-dance man, is struggling. So is Jenny, the NBC vehicle for Jenny McCarthy, babe of all media. Nothing Sacred and Cracker, ABC's Thursday-night duo, though winning good reviews, are among the lowest-rated shows on TV. A USA Today study published last week shows that of the 26 new shows that debuted in the first two weeks of the season, 15 failed to attract the audience guaranteed to advertisers, which means the networks will have to give them free "make-good" time.

With a glut of 61 sitcoms on the air and no assurance that viewers will even sample many of them, the networks are adapting their strategy to the tough new times. They are scheduling shows in blocs, in the hope that this will keep viewers' hands off the remote. They are trying to create "brand identity" in an effort to bind viewers to the networks. And more and more, they are aiming shows directly at the demographic groups that advertisers most want to reach.

Some critics argue that with cable and other channels eroding viewership, the networks ought to be banding together rather than scrapping over who is No. 1; cannibalizing one another's audiences hurts everyone. CBS has moved in on ABC's Friday bloc aimed at children and teens, and NBC has scheduled four female-oriented sitcoms on Monday night, going head-to-head against CBS's almost identical fare. NBC's Monday comedies are probably more similar than any four shows that have ever appeared in succession in the history of television. Suddenly Susan, Fired Up, Caroline in the City and The Naked Truth all feature urban, single women who work in the media: magazine writer, marketing executive, cartoonist and tabloid-newspaper reporter. So far, the outcome of the Monday-night battle is still in doubt.

"In the old days, if a network had Monday nights, other networks stayed away," says Gary David Goldberg, creator of Family Ties and Spin City. "The network mind-set now is scorched earth." Don Ohlmeyer, West Coast president of NBC, wouldn't disagree. "We would like to have seven Thursday nights," he says. Indeed, the NBC slogan, "Must See TV," once reserved for its top-rated Thursday lineup, has expanded to "It's Must See on NBC" for the whole prime-time schedule. "The 4% drop in [network audience] share isn't anything we care about," claims Ohlmeyer. "What we care about is our share." Though still No. 1 in the ratings this season, it should be noted, NBC has seen its share drop from 20% to 18%.

Just as NBC is slapping "Must See TV" everywhere, so are the other networks trying to establish themselves as brands. CBS has revived the motto "Welcome Home," used over and over in its promotional spots. What does it mean? That CBS is "a good place to be, a fun place to be," says the network's head of marketing, George Schweitzer. "There are a lot of people you like on CBS, people who are like you, that it's a place where you find great entertainment and information." They've got the branding down; now maybe they should work on the identity.

If "Welcome Home" seems vague, then ABC's "TV Is Good" campaign has been positively obscure. The ads have tried to use the traditional warnings against television in an ironic fashion. "Don't worry, you've got billions of brain cells," reads one. The campaign has drawn widespread criticism, and competitors say their research shows it has left viewers alienated and confused. But ABC executives defend it as a success. "Subliminally it reminded people that we are here," says the network's entertainment president, Jamie Tarses.

Tarses has endured well-chronicled troubles in her year as ABC's chief programmer (another executive, Stuart Bloomberg, has been brought in above her), and her fate is generally thought to depend on the success or failure of this fall's schedule. ABC made more changes than any other network, and so far the results have been disappointing: ratings for the first two weeks of the season are off 7% from last year. "We anticipated that we would have more new shows than any other network," says Tarses, "and that this year would be a struggle. Our goal is to get one or two new shows to work."

Significantly, the only one of the networks to increase its audience share this fall is the one that has made the fewest changes: Fox. Entertainment chief Roth says it was a calculated strategy to aim for stability. All of Fox's returning shows are in the same time slots as last season, and only five new series have been introduced. All, says Roth, are "target specific." One of them, Ally McBeal, provides an excellent illustration of the way demographics drive the creative work in TV. To follow Melrose Place on Monday night, Roth wanted a show with a strong female lead that would appeal to women between 18 and 34. He approached David Kelley (Picket Fences, Chicago Hope), who created a show about a Harvard Law School graduate looking for love.

Network executives insist that with all the competition, it is amazing that the networks are doing as well as they are. Without doubt, they remain a powerful force. They are still making money, and they are still the best way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Nevertheless, the figures for the opening weeks of the season are hardly encouraging: the market share of the Big Four has dropped almost 20% in just four years. There's no end to the decline in sight, and it won't be arrested by Dharma & Greg.

--Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and William Tynan/New York

With reporting by JEANNE MCDOWELL/LOS ANGELES AND WILLIAM TYNAN/NEW YORK