(3 of 4)
It's classic populism--we're making TV for the people, not for the pointy-heads--and as The Sopranos demonstrates, it is a load of crap. The show's highest-rated episode drew an audience of more than 11 million (not counting viewers of its repeat episodes), though only a third of American TVs (about 38 million) even have HBO. Not only will ordinary folks watch a show that demands constant attention, resists easy closure, relies on subtext and is rich with metaphor--they will pay near usurious subscription fees for it. In one new episode, Tony sees squirrels eating the feed he left out for ducks in his backyard. The scene harks back to the 1999 pilot, in which a family of ducks landed in the Soprano pool, leading to Tony's first panic attack (they triggered anxieties about his family). Broadcast networks increasingly believe it's highfalutin to air dramas like 24 that require viewers to remember what happened the week before.
Broadcast executives say that because they need huge audiences to draw advertising dollars, and are restricted by Federal Communications Commission content standards, they have to play more to the middle. "We cancel shows left and right that get audiences that are the size of cable hits," says NBC entertainment president Jeff Zucker. "I'm a huge admirer of HBO," says CBS president Les Moonves, "[but] there is a word that describes us: it's broadcaster, with broad being the operative word."
HBO, perhaps managing expectations for the season's highly hyped debut, also downplays the showdown. "We're in a different business," demurs HBO chairman-ceo Chris Albrecht. Says Chase: "I never really have paid attention to ratings." But somebody at HBO does: a memo tacked on Chase's bulletin board listed ratings for episodes from last year. And, business-model differences or no, a Sopranos viewer is still two fewer eyeballs for those new-car ads. "[The networks] are afraid to endorse controversial and innovative programming because they're afraid they'll lose the mainstream, but they're losing much of it anyway," says David Milch, who co-created NYPD Blue for ABC and is now developing a western for HBO. "The truth is, the public--the mainstream--will respond to that programming."
The Sopranos' debut date also launches the show into the publicity wake of the bout of national scab-ripping that is the Sept. 11 anniversary. Ironically, Chase has told the story of how, when he shopped around The Sopranos to the networks in the '90s, executives would ask if Tony could do an occasional good deed--like, one suggested, help the FBI catch a terrorist. And after Sept. 11, the question arose whether the terrorists might have done in Tony Soprano--whether Americans were now less willing to accept dark dramas about morally suspect characters.
"I'm a worrier by nature," Chase says, "so I did begin to think that. But then I began to read articles about 'the death of irony' and how [the new climate] is going to require more family films, people are going to want less complexity, people are going to want more simpleminded, escapist fare. Like that's any different than before Sept. 11!" Says Gandolfini: "9/11, I hope it's changed us. If we haven't learned something from it, that's the real f______ tragedy. But I can only do my job. If [the show] is not relevant, it's not relevant."