A Fall of Drama and Youth

Drama, not comedy. Big-name producers as opposed to well-known stars. More sex than violence. White, with only a few small minority neighborhoods. And young, as in not even remotely approaching middle age.

These are defining characteristics of the coming television season, at least based on prime-time schedules announced this week by the six broadcast networks--a process that initiates negotiations to determine where advertisers will bet more than $6 billion of media buys beginning in September.

The new season will witness a marked shift from a few years ago, when those same networks served up a staggering 64 situation comedies. Last year, 53 sitcoms opened the season, compared to 42 dramas.

That ratio will change come September. Of this year’s three dozen new programs (excluding a UPN wrestling show), 22 are dramas. For the first time in years, the split between dramatic series and half-hour comedies will be virtually even.

This may not be good news for comedy writers, formerly beneficiaries of huge demand brought about by the sitcom glut. While some are comparing this comedy funk to the early 1980s--before a ratings dynamo named “The Cosby Show” invigorated the genre--others insist it’s just part of TV’s circle of life, with the dramatic influx restoring balance to prime time.

Such balance won’t be found in regard to age, however, as the networks have clearly decided youth must be served. Network schedules are so rife with teen-oriented and young-adult shows such programs frequently bump into each other.

Fox’s “Get Real,” for example, which views a family through the eyes of teenage siblings, airs opposite the WB’s “Roswell,” focusing on teens (human and alien) in Roswell, N.M. Even the cop genre gets this treatment in Fox’s “Ryan Caulfield,” dealing with the travails of a 19-year-old cop--a sort of “Doogie Howser, P.D.”

Moreover, a lot of these shows sound alike, such as NBC’s “Freaks and Geeks” (social misfits in high school) and WB’s “Popular” (the most and least popular kids in school). A few concepts do skip generations, from a teenage boy surrounded by a family of women in ABC’s comedy “Odd Man Out” to an adult facing a similar predicament in CBS’ “Ladies Man.”

Because the youth-oriented shows by and large feature unknown actors, this year’s lineup is relatively spare in terms of marketable stars making a series debut or slinking back to TV after a less-than-stellar movie career.

Instead, producers have taken center stage, with an inordinate number of series under the auspices of people whose typewriters fuel existing hits. David E. Kelley leads this parade, responsible for “Ally McBeal,” “The Practice,” “Chicago Hope,” the new ABC drama “Snoops” and an edited half-hour version of “Ally.”

John Wells (“ER”) will be similarly overworked, shepherding along the new NBC series “Third Watch” and “The West Wing,” the latter a White House-set drama written by “Sports Night” (and “The American President”) scribe Aaron Sorkin. The team of Kevin Bright, David Crane and Marta Kauffman produces NBC’s “Friends,” “Veronica’s Closet” and “Jesse.” Dick Wolf not only spins off a second “Law & Order” but helms “D.C.,” a Washington-based midseason series for the WB.

New shows come from the producers of “The X-Files,” “7th Heaven,” “Dawson’s Creek” and “Just Shoot Me” as well. Only time will tell whether this spreads show runners too thin, but Wolf maintains, given the creative pedigrees, “It can’t be bad news for the viewer.”

Seizing upon recognizable commodities, the networks will also spin off several established series. In addition to the “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” there is the “Angel,” begat by “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”; “Time of Your Life,” a series starring Jennifer Love Hewitt spawned by “Party of Five”; and “Mo’Nique,” derived from UPN’s “Moesha.”

With media violence the subject of public debate, those scanning the major networks won’t find much in the latest crop of series. Fox’s sci-fi drama “Harsh Realm” would appear to be an exception, while UPN will attempt to body-slam its way out of ratings doldrums with “WWF Smackdown!,” inspired by wrestling’s ratings success on cable channels USA and TNT.

Yet cultural concerns extend beyond violence, and those who contend TV has coarsened society in terms of sexuality and language should have more ammunition. In what may be a broadcasting first, Fox’s new comedy “Action”--about a Joel Silver-like producer of blockbuster movies, produced by none other than Joel Silver--will bleep out the central character’s cursing, as is done on the animated cable series “South Park.”

Programs built around minorities remain in very short supply, outside of Monday and Friday comedy blocks that feature mostly African American casts on UPN and WB, respectively. Even many new dramas look less integrated than series like “Homicide” and “NYPD Blue,” though the latter’s producer, Steven Bochco, is planning a series set in an inner-city hospital slated to arrive in January.

The networks have also largely expunged reality programs from their lineups--a maneuver some see essentially as a shell game, since most advertisers prefer buying time within comedies and dramas. The reality shows “World’s Most Amazing Videos,” “World’s Wildest Police Videos,” “Candid Camera” and “Guinness World Records: Primetime” will thus wait in reserve, to be called upon when more conventional fare inevitably fails.

Most networks have paid lip-service to the importance of stability to avoid confusing the audience. Fox, by contrast, is throwing caution to the wind, bringing back only a half-dozen current shows in the same time period.

A perception lingers that NBC’s dominant “Must See TV” Thursday franchise has grown more vulnerable minus “Seinfeld,” inspiring both ABC and Fox to try an hour of comedy that night--seeking to siphon away enough viewers to turn themselves into a “Might See” alternative.

From a business standpoint, the networks continue to exhibit a preference for programs they produce, wanting to cash in selling reruns if a series blossoms into the next “ER” or “The Simpsons.” CBS holds a financial stake in all six of its new entries, but surprisingly ABC scheduled just two series from its corporate parent, Disney.

In perhaps the strangest maneuver unveiled this week, one of those new Disney-supplied shows, “Once and Again,” begins playing on ABC without a regular time slot; rather, the series--a drama from the creators of “thirtysomething,” about two divorced parents starting a relationship--will borrow “NYPD Blue’s” berth until that show returns to the beat in October.

If the trial run wins an audience, ABC officials surmise, finding the show its own home would be a nice problem to have. If not, it will simply be like the 11 dramas they have introduced, and canceled, during the past two seasons.