Save these shows: Is there hope when good TV series face the ax?

By MIKE McDANIEL

IN less than two months, broadcasters will reveal their new lineups for fall. That doesn't leave much time for ratings-challenged shows to stage a fourth-quarter rally.

Without more viewers, it's not likely that ABC's Once and Again and Fox's Undeclared will be renewed for another season, no matter how devoted their few fans are and no matter how good the critics say they are.

But this critic is going to champion them anyway as network executives decide their fates. There's nothing stopping you from getting involved too. Viewers have been highly creative in their zeal to save a favorite show.

The most common way to get the attention of network executives is to write them. Letter campaigns work, but not often. In 1995, a mail blitz rescued Fox's Party of Five and CBS' Touched by an Angel from cancellation. Other recent letter campaigns prolonged UPN's The Sentinel and CBS' The Magnificent Seven. In the early '80s, letters saved CBS' Cagney & Lacey. In the '70s, the mail extended NBC's Star Trek for a third and final season.

Two years ago, the WB sci-fi series Roswell was at death's door until fans mailed hundreds of tiny bottles of Tabasco to network executives. The execs got the message -- Tabasco was a favorite condiment of one of the show's characters -- and the series was extended.

The Tabasco gimmick has sparked other imaginative efforts. Attempting to save USA Network's female-spy drama La Femme Nikita, fans sent the network letters accompanied by old televisions. "We won't be needing these anymore," was the gist of the campaign. Their enthusiasm had everything to do with USA's decision to extend La Femme Nikita for eight more episodes.

In today's world of e-mails and instant messages, online bulletin boards have become a great place to crow and vent. Unfortunately, there's no evidence network honchos ever read them.

They do read industry trade papers, however. Die-hard fans of Once and Again and Roswell (again on the endangered list) recently placed ads extolling the virtues of their favorite shows while challenging network executives to "take the high road."

The high road is the one less traveled -- and the one that we, too, implore the suits to take as we examine the virtues of five "on-the-bubble" network series: ABC's Once and Again and The Job, Fox's 24 and Undeclared and the WB's Jamie Kennedy Experiment.

Once and Again

One can hear ABC executives gripe: If this show is as good as critics say, why aren't more people watching?

Since Once and Again's debut, the show has bounced all over ABC's schedule. This year alone it has moved from 9 p.m. Fridays to 8 p.m. Fridays to 9 p.m. Mondays (on Channel 13). That's when it wasn't on hiatus. Schedule shifting is a big reason the show is averaging only 6.3 million viewers, placing it in a tie for 102nd place out of 185 shows that have aired this season.

ABC has a problem nurturing hourlong dramas because it has so few choice 9 p.m. time slots in which to serve them up. ABC's 9 p.m. hour is taken by football and newsmagazines on four of seven nights. The congestion is such that NYPD Blue, a 9 p.m. staple since its 1993 launch, was moved to 8 p.m. this season to accommodate a new hour of drama, Philly. (Steven Bochco, the maker of both NYPD Blue and Philly, did not complain.)

Beyond the time-slot problem, ABC has had difficulty developing domestic dramas. The last one to connect with the public in a big way was Dynasty (1981-89).

Dynasty was a story about the misbehavior of rich people. Once and Again is about the complexity of everyday lives, focusing on a blended family.

As in NBC's Providence, a seemingly inordinate number of crises befalls Once and Again's principal characters. In March alone, we've seen one character barely survive an auto accident, another come dangerously close to giving up on life, a third fall hard for one of her teachers and a fourth explore budding same-sex feelings.

But amazingly, executive producers Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick see to it that their show does not slip into melodrama. They do it by keeping things "small."

Once and Again is a show about what's going on in characters' heads. For some of that, the show uses a gimmick -- characters appear individually in black and white to express their thoughts, much as they would to a psychologist.

The trick adds uncommon lushness to the characterizations, heightening the drama and our affection. Each member of the cast is exceptional.

The show might have more viewers if it were not a serial; it's easy to abandon a serial after you've missed a couple of episodes.

ABC is in danger of finishing fourth in this year's ratings race. The network has so many holes to fill that it doesn't make sense to give up on a show this good. But television is a business. A network's decisions must be justified economically as well as creatively. Unless many more viewers suddenly show up, it's highly possible this season will be Once and Again's once and nevermore.__ Houston Chronicle (March 17, 2002)

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