GO AWAY! And Take Your Money with You by Gretchen Schoonmaker Ellis
The Unwanted One Third of the Population:
They have struggled through the salad years, those times of scrimping and saving. They didn't max out their credit cards, so they have lots of credit and even savings. Yes - they have MONEY in the bank. They have been tried and tempered in the fires of responsibilities and on the anvils of life, educated their children and paid their mortgages. Now, They are buying new cars, vacation homes, clothes, luggage, boats - you name it. They can do it because They know what it's all about. They know where They're going and They're willing to pay top dollar to assure a comfortable trip.
And television doesn't want them.
No indeedy, no way. Quit hanging around. Beat it! Out, out, out. You see, They're ADULTS! Yes, O Lowered, Grown Ups - right here in Viddie Kiddie Ciddy; Grown Ups with a capital G and that rhymes with DTV and that stands for Discriminating Taste in Viewing. Those Grownups love series like The Practice, Once and Again, Law and Order and West Wing. They actually view with interest such programs as Nova, Nightline with Ted Koppel, and Masterpiece Theater. They are bored by teen themes, sex 'n' pecs, cute groups, hot shots and anything involving pratfalls and jokes about zits, boobs, boodies, bed-hopping and bathroom "humor." Many of them trade cars every two years, buy luxury models and pay the difference in cash. Cash!! They even watch commercials.
And network and cable programmers don't want them.
Why Doesn't TV Want Those People, You Ask (I Hope):
Because TV programmers are YOUNG. They are MOVERS and also SHAKERS. They have their fingers on the pulses of other YOUNG PEOPLE: the viewers (new age bracket - 18 through 45) that SPONSORS are convinced form the spendingest group of vidiots who ever pulled a cold beer up to a hot TV set and assumed potato position on the couch. Oh yes! And also Oh no! Sponsors don't want mature audiences. Sponsors: Those foaming-at-the-mouth pursuers of money who rule what we will get to watch do not want mature viewers. And sponsors' clinging dependence on rating numbers actually form the basis for the content, the life and - yes - the death - of television series, specials and even news and commentary.
How do those sponsors and programmers know what the Viewers want? They use Ratings Services. And how do the rating services know what viewers 16 through 45 want? Here's the system, right from Nielsen's own Nielsen-Explains-It-All-to-You website:
"The way that Nielsen Media Research finds out about who is watching is to measure what a sample of television viewers are watching. For our national ratings estimates, we use a sample of more than 5,000 households, containing over 13,000 people who have agreed to participate. Since there are over 99 million households with TVs in the U.S., it might seem that a sample of 5,000 is just not big enough to represent the nation."
After this perfectly simple, yet apparently feckless statement, Nielsen then uses the famous Bowl of Vegetable Soup Analogy. You see, if you thoroughly stir a bowl of vegetable soup and lift out a spoonful, you will have an almost perfect representation of what's in the bowl (it says here.) If there are ten bits of carrot and two chunks of potato, you can then expand that to the logical conclusion that carrots predominate five to one in that bowl of soup. Can't you? It's simple, isn't it? Don't make me get into the green beans and tomatoes, please!
How Right Are Those Ratings?
So, we see that ratings services provide perfectly accurate ratings of the numbers of viewers of various television shows. By discovering what the 5,000 households (out of 100 million or so in the U.S.) are watching, they know what we are ALL watching! (If you believe this, I have an old bottle with a cute genie inside that I'll sell you for a paltry million bucks.)
Unfortunately, the leading TV pollsters aren't always right. Sometimes their numbers clash. (Worse, two Congressional Inquiries into ratings systems turned up some fishy fiddling with numbers. But that was a three decades or so back down the road.) Thus we have the - oh, let's call it the Cagney and Lacy Syndrome - in which a summer substitute series couldn't draw flies according to the ratings and was axed - until viewers wrote letters and sent telegrams. So the network picked up the series for a short run - and ratings went through the roof. Cagney and Lacy ran for five years. Jag is another - more recent - object lesson. There are legions of these shows, supposedly not drawing flies, yet they change to another time slot or even to another network and they are hits.
Luckily for the above-named shows, their viewers were mostly under 40, evidently.
To Reach the Unreachable Star:
And now we come to Once and Again. This show found a niche in a large and articulate audience. But not large enough, the networks said. The truth? O & A's audience has been discovered to be - pardon me but I've got to use this word - Old. They're adults. They are also money-spenders, but it seems they don't spend for the products the sponsors want to sell - or so sponsors believe. This audience doesn't buy acne remedies, that's for sure.
But the fans of Once and Again aren't going to let the series go quietly into that good night. Fan Fight-Back Groups have formed, most prominent being Save Our Show. These people believe that there should be a place on the Tube for a show that is real, with rounded, human characters, great acting, good dialogue, real plots and artistic touches that are unique and interesting.
ABC (Disney) is dumping the show, though, pointing to poor ratings. The fact that they have jumped the series around, thrown it up against heavy-hitters and generally run the viewers through the wringer may be one reason why O & A isn't drawing higher numbers. Some critics who like the show have tried to explain why such a fine piece of entertainment can't get a huge audience. One problem they cite is that the show is a serial. It takes a while to get into a serial that's also a prime-time, hour-long series. ABC needs a good show like this desperately, and should huddle and really think this thing over. Right now, The Practice is the only top-twenty series they've got on the air.
Another One Bites the Dust:
O & A isn't the only quality show to feel the axe due to their audience's maturity. PBS, that bastion of good taste and public-interest programming, has fired Louis Rukeyser. Why? They want a younger audience and intend to hire a younger - we suppose - financial genius. Nevermind that Rukeyser is widely admired - even beloved - and is arguably the investment world's finest commentator on Wall Street's behavior. And nevermind that very few people under 45 invest in any market except the food market. More puzzling, why PBS should care about the age or numbers of their viewers; they aren't selling sponsored time, are they?
Rumbling right along with their portable guillotine, ABC has also offered to trade Ted Koppel for Dave Letterman and two draft picks. This ploy became infamous. Both Koppel and Letterman declined the honor.
Is It Really Too Late?
If you can find Once and Again on the schedule - and you may not be able to do so - why not watch it? Disney has played Three-Card-Monte with O & A's schedule, dropping it without warning, then resuming with the same cavalier attitude, so you may have trouble locating it. Right now, O & A is on Monday nights at 9 Central Time. But that's this week. If you like what you see, why not write to ABC and tell them to re-up the show. ABC doesn't have the track record that would qualify them to attempt intelligent programming decisions: They are at the bottom of the ratings heap among networks. You can sign an online petition for keeping Once and Again at
http://www.petitiononline.com/OandA/petition.html
Rule 1: Try! Rule 2: Keep Trying!
Over 8,500 (and counting) people have signed this online petition. Of course, this may be moot; ABC announced verrrry quietly that they have indeed canceled the show. The sponsors must have gotten a good look at those eight thousand peoples' drivers licenses' and found them "over age." But it might work if people keep trying - and trying - and trying.
Network executioners renewed, under pressure, shows they had already "canceled": series such as Star Trek (at least for one more year and only after the Astronauts wrote letters,) Cagney & Lacey, Lou Grant, Frank's Place, (but only for three more episodes and after the series had won the Humanitas Award,) and fans kept McGyver on the air for at least an additional two years after the network said it was absolutely, positively canceled. There are many others: Party of Five, Roswell, Nichols (one of Jim Garner's very best, but lower-rated series,) and a legion of entertaining series that didn't have enough recognition time or a good spot in the lineup.
So Never Give Up! Smallville and Scrubs - among others - have been lower on the Nielsen charts than O & A, and those shows have been renewed. ABC is sucking swamp water right now, so they may "decide" (be pressured by fans) to pick up Once and Again for the fall lineup. They need viewers!
But please remember, look young. If the programmers/pollsters/sponsors find out you're over 45 they won't care about you OR your money. __ TV-now.com (April 3, 2002)
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