By Lisa de Moraes
Friday, May 27, 2005
Ahumdinger TV season wrapped Wednesday night, with Fox claiming its first-ever No. 1 finish among the 18- to 49-year-olds advertisers covet, CBS clocking the biggest win in 16 years among viewers of all ages, and ABC rising like a phoenix on the success of three freshman series -- and scripted ones at that.
Only the peacock network had nothing to crow about, having plunged from first place to fourth in the key age bracket that is the basis for sales of all its ad time.
And all that talk about scripted series getting trampled to death in the stampede to find the next reality series hit?
Never mind.
The 2004-05 TV season went out with a bang when the two-hour season finales of Fox's "American Idol" and ABC's "Lost" drew a collective average of 51 million viewers to broadcast television.
The fourth-season "Idol" conclusion, in which Carrie Underwood was named winner of the singing competition, averaged more than 30 million viewers -- up about 1.5 million viewers over last spring's finale.
In the same 8-to-10 p.m. time period, the season's last "Lost" episode logged nearly 21 million viewers. That nearly matched the new hit drama's best number of the season, which it scored for an episode that aired before "Idol" returned to Wednesday nights.
Interestingly, the two highly hyped finales did not cannibalize each other, as some industry navel-gazers had feared. Among all the broadcast networks, viewer levels were up 5 percent Wednesday night week to week.
"We're at the point in the business where on any given night about half of the audience isn't watching [broadcast] network television," Fox's scheduling chief Preston Beckman told The TV Column. "It's not about fighting each other, it's about bringing back that audience with great programming."
Beckman's network slogged through the first half of the TV season in fourth place in the demographic it targets with a slew of failed reality series, including "The Rebel Billionaire," "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss" and "The Next Great Champ." But it rebounded when "American Idol" came back for its fourth season and "24," which had become a hit following "American Idol" on Tuesdays, returned on Monday night for an all-original run.
In addition to the audience increase for "24" compared with the previous season, thanks in some measure to the non-rerun policy, Fox resuscitated its new drama "House" and turned it into a bona fide hit with a post-"Idol" time slot. "The O.C.," which also enjoyed a post-"Idol" run last season on Wednesday nights, this season moved out to establish a toehold for Fox on Thursday -- "a night where we typically got slammed," said the network's new entertainment chief, Peter Liguori.
And, thanks to a post-"Idol" run, "Stacked," starring Pamela Anderson as a bookstore salesclerk whose clothes have all shrunk, is the No. 1 new sitcom of the season among young adults, bumping NBC's "Joey."
"The Number 1 finish [among 18- to 49-year-olds] was bred from a number of shows doing incredibly well," Liguori said.
CBS, the geezer network that was, also had a great season attracting those younger viewers. It finished first in the demographic group in regular programming for the first time in three decades, fueled by two editions of "Survivor," its Jerry Bruckheimer crime dramas and outgoing "Everybody Loves Raymond."
Among viewers of all ages, CBS was the most watched network for the fourth time in the past five seasons, winning by a margin of nearly 3 million viewers over second-place ABC -- the widest margin for any network in 16 years.
But perhaps the most talked-about story of the season -- other than NBC diving from first place to fourth with the collapse of its Thursday night empire -- is the return of ABC.
ABC has been so out of business for so long that it verged on irrelevant. But this season it's climbed from fourth place to second among viewers of all ages, and fourth to a solid third in that key 18-49 group, causing the Hollywood Reporter to write that "even in a town that thrives on schadenfreude, industry insiders are cheering the network's revival as a good thing for the business."
ABC revived and blossomed on the strength of three new shows: "Desperate Housewives," "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost."
Last season, there were no freshman scripted series among the 15 most watched TV shows. This year, there are three: "Desperate Housewives," "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost."
Last season, there was just one freshman scripted series among the 15 programs most watched by 18- to 49-year-olds: NBC's "Coupling" (which was canceled after just four episodes because its drop-off from its Must-See-TV lead-in was too great).
This season, there are three: "Desperate Housewives," "Grey's Anatomy," and "Lost."
Push those lists out to include the top 25 series and you add two more freshman scripted series: NBC's "Medium" and Fox's "House."
And, not a procedural crime drama in the bunch.
"We certainly felt like we had to take chances," ABC Entertainment division chief Steve McPherson says of his network's three freshman hits.
"What was appealing to us when we saw those shows was that they were different, and from a marketing standpoint that allowed us to craft campaigns that set them apart.
"I also think there was a departure from the kind of sameness that was on the air," McPherson said. "Shows as different as . . . 'Lost,' 'Desperate Housewives,' 'House,' 'Medium' -- they were all very different shows than what was represented on the air with all the crime dramas. The audience responded."
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) has shot off a letter to NBC Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker complaining about a line in "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" in which a detective suggests sarcastically that in searching for someone who killed two judges "maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt."
"This manipulation of my name and trivializing of the sensitive issue of judicial security represents a reckless disregard for the suffering initiated by recent tragedies and a great disservice to public discourse," he wrote.
In the episode, which aired Wednesday, a judge who is overseeing a case against a group of men described as "ultra-conservatives" who are charged with stockpiling military-grade weapons is shot dead in her home. Soon thereafter, an appellate judge is shot in public.
Detective Alex Eames (played by Kathryn Erbe): Looks like the same shooters. CSU found the slug in a post, matched it to the one that killed Judge Barton. Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt.
In his letter, DeLay wrote, "I can only assume last night's slur was in response to comments I have made in the past about the need for Congress to closely monitor the federal judiciary, as prescribed in our constitutional system of checks and balances."
Last month, DeLay said he planned to ask the Judiciary Committee to examine the "failure" of the state and federal courts to protect Terri Schiavo, who died 13 days after a court ordered removal of her feeding tube, and issued a statement saying "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." In front of TV cameras he said he wanted to "look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president."
Some perceived the comments as threatening, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said that "at a time when emotions are running high, Mr. DeLay needs to make clear that he is not advocating violence against anyone."
The congressman said in his letter to Zucker that he has "explained all such comments -- even those inartfully made and taken out of context" and that when "a responsible journalist like [Fox News Channel's] Brit Hume made an inquiry into such comments, he quickly understood them to be limited to Congress's oversight responsibilities and nothing more."
He accuses "Law & Order" of equating "legitimate constitutional inquiry into the role of our courts with a threat of violence against our judges" and says that "is to equate the First Amendment with terrorism."
Series creator Dick Wolf responded in a statement:
"Up until today, it was my impression that all of our viewers understood that these shows are works of fiction, as is stated in each episode. But I do congratulate Congressman DeLay for switching the spotlight from his own problems to an episode of a TV show."
(Wolf is, no doubt, referring to the fact that DeLay has been under the gun for alleged ethics issues involving overseas travel, his dealings with lobbyists and fundraising.)
NBC also weighed in, but it was Entertainment chief Kevin Reilly, not Zucker:
"The script line involved an exasperated detective, bedeviled by a lack of clues, making a sarcastic comment about the futility of looking for a suspect when no specific description existed," Reilly said in a statement.
"This isolated piece of gritty cop talk was neither a political comment, nor an accusation," he continued, adding that it is not unusual for one of the "Law & Order" shows to mention real names.