Quotes of the Day

The WB

I recently bought a squeeze bottle of ketchup from a major purveyor of condiments who, legal discretion advises, should probably remain nameless. It promised that its newly-designed cap would "stop the watery stuff" — the little squirt of tomato water that is apparently the bane of ketchup fans everywhere. It is not why I bought the bottle; I just liked this brand of ketchup. But I was curious to see the new design work its stuff. I opened the bottle, upended it over my plate — and promptly shot out a squirt of thin tomato water.

Here I was, a previously happy consumer who had never given a thought to watery stuff, who would never before have been especially annoyed by it, and now I was ticked off. This was a product failure on three levels, a new bottle that: (1) alerted me to a dissatisfaction with the product that I never knew I even had, (2) conspicuously failed to solve that problem (possibly even worse than the old bottle did, although that may just be because I was never paying attention before and therefore (3) made me suddenly start considering other brands of ketchup when I otherwise would have gladly taken my favorite brand to the grave with me.

The WB could learn something from the Parable of the Ketchup Bottle. Every year at upfronts The WB announces that this is the year it will fix its sitcom problem. Every year, with the exception of a few very modest successes like "Reba," it fails. And every year, apparently, it ignores a central fact about its audience: nobody watches The WB to see a damn sitcom. The youth-oriented network, which gave us Buffy, Felicity, the ladies Gilmore and the young Clark Kent, does dramas about witches, superheroes and sensitive youth. It does them well. And if the network didn't insist on drawing attention to its dearth of hit sitcoms, no one would know or care, save perhaps the bean counters who'd like more successful half-hours to sell into syndication. The WB could be — for all practical purposes, is — the first post-sitcom network. Instead, every year it intentionally creates the headline: "The WB — We Can't Make Sitcoms for Squat!"

So the network debuted four sitcoms: "Family Affair," a remake of the '60s family comedy with Tim Curry ("The Rocky Horror Picture Show") as Mr. French; "Do Over," a sitcom about a 34-year-old man who goes back in time to relive his high school days (not to be confused with "That Was Then," ABC's new series with exactly the same premise); "That's What I like About You," featuring the return of Jennie Garth ("Beverly Hills 90210") as a 20something single who takes in her teenage sister; and "Greetings from Tucson," an amiable-looking comedy about a Latino family. (This seems to be the year the networks finally wake up and smell the census figures about the growing Hispanic population.)

The previews ranged from lame ("What I Like") to innocuous ("Tucson"). "Family Affair" is the most buzzed-about of the set; most interestingly, it seems to be an entirely irony-free enterprise, with a stright-outta-the-'60s feel very much like the original, right down to the innocently cute kids and whimsical music, neither of which seem to have been updated for the "Osbournes" era. Curry in particular seems to be a good choice as the grumpy, supercilious butler who becomes a reluctant nanny. The show airs on Thursday opposite "Friends" — all but guaranteed to be next year's #1 program — but, WB programming president Jordan Levin said eloquently, "'Family Affair' should show bimodal appeal and bookend Friends' core audience."

Oh.

Actually, the funniest things at the presentation were the clumsily scripted introductions by Curry and "Reba" star Reba McEntire, both of whom said they'd watched the new sitcoms last night, and — guess what? — loved them! And the best sitcom trailer the network screened turned out to be for a midseason replacement series, "The O'Keefes," about a family of homeschooled kids who get a crash-course in pop culture when they go to public school. The bad news: we'll have to wait for one of the other four sitcoms to be canceled before we see it. The good news: we probably won't have to wait long.

There were only two new hour dramas, the first of which, "Everwood," provided the day's first Sept. 11 Moment. Stephen Collins ("Seventh Heaven") introduced the show, about a famous doctor who moves with his kids to a small town in Colorado after his wife dies. "In the wake of Sept. 11," he said, "the idea of sacrificing status for a particular place in life has greater relevance." Maybe, but it's still just as cornball (and a concept that "Providence," "Ed" and "The Ellen Show," among others, exhausted long ago). The trailer looked to be the most sugary pour of visual Mrs. Butterworth's since Laura Ingalls left the prairie. ("You say it's crazy," says star Treat Williams at one point. "I say it may be the sanest thing I've ever done.") WB executives, however, swear to be more excited about this pilot than any other. Let's hope they know something we don't.

Wait a minute, you're saying. This is The WB we're talking about, and yet you haven't mentioned anything about hot young babes in tight outfits fighting evil! Well, wait no more: "Birds of Prey," the last new offering, is an extension of the Batman franchise featuring three superheroines (one of them Batman's daughter) in a slick, grim-looking New Gotham where it is apparently always night. (Maybe it's near one of the poles?) Plus, it looks like "Dark Angel" just might be canceled by Fox. And all those horny teenage boys are going to need somewhere to go.

ABC

ABC isn't going to kid you. ABC knows it has problems. ABC knows it ran "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (now canceled) into the ground, that its old comedies like "Dharma and Greg" and "Spin City" (also canceled) were running on fumes, that, in retrospect, Jason Alexander's KFC commercials were better conceived than "Bob Patterson." ABC knows it has gone from owning the top ten to getting beaten by "Trading Spaces" on TLC.

But it has a plan. New entertainment president Susan Lyne, in announcing the beleaguered network's new schedules, said the Alphabet had "strayed from the program mix that made it a powerhouse in the past — smart family comedies that reflect our viewers' lives, adult comedies with heart and a mix of dramas ranging from escapist to provocative." But ABC would reclaim the mantle of being "the broadest of the broadcasters."

In other words, here's their detailed plan for success: ABC will become a television network that televises television shows. By these criteria, ABC's is the one new schedule unveiled this week we can call, from the get-go, an unqualified success. It contains new television shows. Lots of them. Three new comedies and four new dramas — plus two more dramas to be introduced after "Monday Night Football" ends. And that's not counting midseason replacements.

Actually, if you decode the network-speak, there is a strategy, sort of, behind ABC's complete schedule overhaul. By "broad," it means middle-of-the-road, safe programming, designed to stop the Nielsen bleeding. By "family," it means "inoffensive to as many people as possible." By "smart," of course, it means not too smart. Adventurous shows like "The Job" (now officially canceled) need no longer apply.

Instead, we're getting John Ritter as an overprotective dad in "Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter." We're getting Bonnie Hunt as a harried mom and talk-show host on "Life with Bonnie." ("Bonnie Hunt is a star, pure and simple," Lyne said. Right. Bonnie Hunt is a delightful comic actress — but she's also the woman they cast in "Project Greenlight" because they couldn't get Marg Helgenberger.) We're getting "Less Than Perfect," an office comedy about — oh, I don't know, an office. We're getting more bland comedy from Damon Wayans, George Lopez and Jim Belushi. We're getting a series version of the miniseries "Dinotopia," an effects-driven treat for the kids and possibly the worst-written miniseries since the invention of language. Every weeknight, from 8 to 9 Eastern, will be "ABC Happy Hour," a time when — and executives used this image over and over again — you can come home from a hard day's work, plop on the couch and veg out in front of some pleasant TV.

In other words, it's back to the TV-as-anesthetic model at ABC this season. It's good news if you've lamented the lack of wholesome family-hour TV, as long as you don't mind being bored. This is not TV that swings for the fences. It's TV that hopes to get Nielsen families to fall asleep on the couch at 8:30 and with any luck stay snoozing there until 11. It's scared TV. It's three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust TV. ABC is not looking to impress the critics or start watercooler sensations. It just wants to finish in a respectable third place.

How safe is ABC's schedule this fall? The network signed up "Law and Order" producer Dick Wolf to create a new version of "Dragnet." The deal was just struck, so all ABC had to show was an interview with Wolf, who noted that "the DNA of 'Dragnet' is woven into the DNA of 'Law and Order.'" Exactly. So if Wolf's already essentially been remaking "Dragnet" for 13 years already, what's the point in doing it again here? I mean, we really such unadventurous sheep that we want to watch two "Law and Orders" every week? After all... what? There are? Three? Really? Oh. Never mind.

There were likewise no new clips of "Dinotopia"; instead the network promised to pick up where the $85 million special left off, with its digitally-animated sauropods who talk, read and play ping-pong. Will the series, which presumably can't afford to spend $14 million an hour, be able to match up in effects? Or will it matter? If there's one thing that "Baby Bob" taught us, it's this: writing, shmiting — make something talk that's not supposed to talk, and the world will dump money on your front lawn.

It was up to the non-scripted shows to deliver the biggest spark at the upfront. "The Bachelor" returns next fall, and Alex and Amanda were on hand to show the crowd of advertisers that they were still deeply in like (at least as long as they have an audience). And ABC announced that Jimmy Kimmel, of Comedy Central's "The Man Show" would get a talk show following "Nightline," thus canceling "Politically Incorrect." To his credit, Kimmel came out and did a routine, the upshot of which was that he had no idea why the hell ABC hired him either. "This is the plan to resurrect the network?," he laughed. "'Dragnet' and me?"

The rest of the drama lineup had at least some interest. "Miracles," in which Skeet Ulrich investigates paranormal occurrences, had a spooky, "Sixth Sense"-y feel to it, but you have to wonder if anyone at ABC saw the same concept bomb as "Mysterious Ways" on NBC. "Meds," conceived as "M*A*S*H" at an HMO hospital, seems to have a snarky edge — but isn't "Scrubs" already doing the same thing? "That Was Then," in which a 30-year-old travels back in time to high school to fix his screwed-up life, has the same premise — lock, stock and high-concept — as The WB's above-mentioned "Do Over."

Lastly, "Push, Nevada," an "interactive mystery" from Ben Affleck's production company, is the wild card. The concept was tough to explain, even to a room of media professionals, but it amounts to this: an accountant gets wrapped up in a mystery in a small Nevada town, and the course of the series reveals clues to a puzzle. Solve it, and you win a cash prize. The clips were intriguing: it could either be "Twin Peaks" or a bad B-movie. But, hey, look at it this way. Any of the other shows I've described so far could stink as well. But nobody's going to pay you to watch them.

Tomorrow: CBS

• James Poniewozik
• The WB, home of earnest dramas and superheroes, wants to make you chuckle. Woe-begone ABC just wants to stop losing to 'Trading Spaces.'