The Youth Brigade

By JAMES COLLINS

Ask broadcasting executives or Wall Street analysts and advertising consultants to explain why the WB has been so successful--actually increasing the size of its audience while all the other networks are losing viewers--and they will talk about market niches, brand loyalty, cable affiliates and so on. All of which is very interesting and valid but misses the point. The key to the WB's success is this: babes, male and female. With the glossy yet smoldering Sarah Michelle Gellar of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the coltish Katie Holmes of Dawson's Creek, the Phoebus-like Barry Watson of 7th Heaven and all the rest, the WB has the best-looking stars on TV. Is this business really so very complicated?

It certainly must seem that way to the WB's rivals. For the 1997-98 season, the ratings for all of them fell, except for CBS, which was just even. In contrast, the WB's ratings rose 19%. So far this fall the trend has continued. For more than a decade the ratings of the networks have dropped relentlessly, so the performance of the WB is remarkable, even if its audience of 4.5 million viewers is still much smaller than those of the major networks. How has it achieved these results? By finding throbworthy stars, of course, but also by targeting a specific audience--teenagers and young adults--and then developing ingenious programming to attract them.

In the summer of 1993 Jamie Kellner was sitting around his house in Santa Barbara, Calif., bored out of his mind. For eight years he had served as president of the Fox network, which he had helped create. Exhausted, he had retired. "But after six months," he says, "I was very unhappy." He noticed that some of his former colleagues were leaving Fox, and he knew that Fox was trying to broaden its audience, no longer concentrating on young people. So Kellner had a realization: he ought to get his old team back together and start Fox all over again.

He shopped his idea to various parties and was soon in business with Warner Bros. (which, like TIME, is owned by Time Warner). Recent changes in FCC regulations had allowed networks to own the programs they broadcast, and studios like Warner Bros., which supply shows to the networks, were worried that the broadcasters would begin to favor shows produced internally. By starting a network, Warner Bros. could guarantee an outlet for its programming. Time Warner shares ownership of the network with Tribune Broadcasting, Kellner and other officers.

Kellner says the first year was "a disaster" as the WB battled for affiliates with the other start-up network, UPN. Traditionally, networks pay affiliates to carry their programming, but the WB offered no payments and went even further, asking the stations to remit a portion of their profits once they reached a certain level. Kellner's selling points were his team and the involvement of Warner Bros. and Tribune, but he was able to persuade only 54 stations to sign up. UPN, offering the traditional terms, started with nearly twice that many. Since then, though, the number of WB affiliates has grown to 187.

The WB began broadcasting one night a week in January 1995. With shows like The Wayans Bros., starring black comics Shawn and Marlon Wayans, and Muscle, a sitcom set in a health club, it followed the Fox strategy: establish the network in a niche with programs that have ethnic and youth appeal. "When I went to Fox, my first instinct was, if we just make good shows, we'll succeed," says Garth Ancier, who was Fox's first programming chief and is now president of programming at the WB. "It was wrong. A new network has to draw viewers away from other networks. You have to be different."

At first the WB struggled for ratings, and it encountered an internal enemy in Ted Turner, chairman of Turner Broadcasting System Inc., who became vice chairman of Time Warner after a merger in 1996. He believed the WB was redundant once Time Warner acquired his various cable networks, and he objected to the WB's losses, although he has acknowledged the critical success of Dawson's Creek. "He was not an advocate for the network," says Kellner, who used to throw darts at Turner's picture. "It was very damaging to our efforts. It wasn't fair." Turner was unavailable for comment.

As the WB added nights to its schedule, it began to produce hits like 7th Heaven, a family drama, and Buffy, the gothic-comic high school fantasy. Then Dawson's Creek arrived last January and instantly became a teen phenomenon. This season the network has added Felicity and Charmed, starring Beverly Hills, 90210 alumna Shannen Doherty. The shows have low overall ratings, but for teens and young adults, they are among TV's most popular.

Gellar offers this explanation of Buffy's appeal: "It's smart, and it's real. We're constantly changing. It's funny. It's sad. It's scary. It's touching. This show raises the intelligence level." Saying that a show about vampires is intelligent may seem curious, but Buffy is very clever, and the writing on most of the WB shows is relatively sophisticated. Indeed, one reason the stars are so attractive is that they don't just look like walking head shots but seem to have brains and hearts.

To be sure, sex ultimately drives the WB, as it does everything else in entertainment, but the network often takes a more interesting approach to the subject than is typical. "What the WB has done is embrace the oddness of Buffy," says Joss Whedon, the show's creator. Whedon comes from the movies, as do a number of other writers and producers for the WB. Susanne Daniels, a programming executive for the network, says it has purposely sought out talented people who are not established in TV. "We were thinking," she says, "that maybe the people who knew how to run a show aren't the people who are going to give us fresh material." Sometimes, though, the policy of seeking unorthodox talent can backfire, as in the case of Riley Weston, a writer for Felicity who was revealed last week to be 32 years old, not 19 as she had claimed.

The WB has yet to make a profit and is projected to lose $93 million this year, but it says it will make money in 2000 or 2001. Wall Street analysts agree. The youth market is highly attractive to advertisers because young people spend a lot of money, are impressionable and are forming habits that may last a lifetime. Kellner insists that unlike Fox, the network will maintain its identity and will not seek viewers older than 35. He may be distressed, then, by the news that the WB's ratings are growing fast among 25- to 54-year-olds. There are adolescents, and then there are the adolescent-at-heart, a demographic group whose members the WB also serves brilliantly, although they might not want to admit it.

--Reported by James Willwerth/Los Angeles

With reporting by James Willwerth/Los Angeles