Networks Plot to Restore Summer's Sizzle

In rolling out their summer hopefuls starting next month, broadcast networks face the daunting task of dreaming up concepts that can re­ignite viewer interest in a season that was, for a short period, a TV hit-making machine.

It has been a half dozen years since the blockbuster premiere of ABC's Who Wants To Be a Millionaire rocked the networks out of their traditional summer- rerun doldrums. In the following years, summertime became a hotbed for unscripted tryouts, but the trend that produced such breakouts as CBS' Survivor and Fox's American Idol has begun to cool. Last summer was notable primarily for the sudden emergence of CBS' The Amazing Race as a bona fide hit after a few years of moderate success.

Broadcasters seeking to recapture the summer magic have enlisted a bevy of big names to work in front of the cameras or behind the scenes, from rocker Tommy Lee and former TLC members T-Boz and Chilli, to comedian Steve Martin and producer David E. Kelley. Though heavily weighted toward reality shows, the summer fare will include some scripted programming—most significantly, ABC's Empire miniseries set in ancient Rome.

Regardless of how these new shows perform, the onslaught of programming for the summer season underscores how far television has moved from the low-energy approach that ruled the medium for decades. The upheaval began in August 1999, with the premiere of Millionaire, which looked like a promising solution for broadcast networks that had been getting hammered during the warm months by Sex and the City and other originals on cable. But ABC—and its competitors—were hardly prepared for Millionaire's revelation that a huge potential audience for network programming had been lying untapped every summer.

The upward arc for unscripted summer series that began with Millionaire was the catalyst for the networks' move to more original year-round programming in the battle to stem viewer erosion. But one consequence of the year-round approach may have been to diminish the very novelty that made new summer programming seem so fresh to many viewers. Then again, audiences also may have become inured to what Arthur Gruen, president of media research firm Wilkofsky Gruen Research, calls the “can you top this” nature of the reality programming launched during the summer months.

There will be plenty of familiar titles on the summer schedule—notably CBS' Big Brother, which the network has seen grow every summer since its July 2000 premiere and which CBS has no inclination to throw into the regular season against more-robust competition.

“It's perfect summer programming—not heavy lifting,” says CBS and UPN scheduling czar, Senior Executive VP Kelly Kahl.

The networks are also sending into action some moderately successful shows (such as NBC's Average Joe 4: The Joes Strike Back and The Biggest Loser and ABC's Wife Swap), in the hope that an Amazing Race-like summer lightning will strike.

But the bulk of promotion and attention will focus on new projects attached to notable names, including:

• Steve Martin is among a long list of executive producers for ABC's The Scholar, a competition series that will send “one of America's best and brightest” high school students to a top university, all expenses paid.
• Ashton Kutcher, who cut his producing teeth on MTV's Punk'd, is behind The WB's Beauty and the Geek—described as part competition, part social experiment, but not a dating show.
• T-Boz and Chilli, the two remaining members of the female group TLC (following the death of Lisa Lopes in a car wreck in 2002), seek a third performer to join them in an upcoming concert and record with them in the studio on UPN's R U the Girl with T-Boz & Chilli.
• Kathy Hilton, who brought Paris and Nikki Hilton into the world, will pick one of “14 eccentric young contestants” vying for the “glamorous caviar-and-champagne lifestyle” on NBC's I Want To Be a Hilton.
• David E. Kelley, prodigious producer of scripted legal drama (Boston Legal, The Practice, etc.), goes unscripted with NBC's The Law Firm. Kelley is executive-producing a show in which lawyers compete in front of judges and juries.
• Motley Crue's Tommy Lee, who along with ex-wife Pamela Anderson already had one notorious bout with unscripted programming, will return to college on NBC.

The overwhelming majority of this summer's shows are unscripted. Not only are they cheaper to produce than drama—beginners cost about half the average $1.5 million-$2 million per hour of scripted shows—but the odds for success are better.

Fox's The O.C., which made its debut in August 2003, has been the only network drama to have really broken out of the warm months during the same six-year period that unscripted shows have prospered. That's not to say this summer will be entirely devoid of scripted shows. Fox, which struck out last year with its highly publicized move toward year-round programming, could still devote as much as half its summer schedule to scripted programs as it seeks to get some stability leading into the Major League Baseball post-season in the fall.

ABC has chosen to go with a mix of new product, including the Empire miniseries, says Jeff Bader, executive VP of the entertainment division and head of scheduling. A number of shows going onto ABC's schedule this summer—such as Dancing With the Stars and Brat Camp, which are fairly self-explanatory—actually were ready to go for March and April, “but because of our success, we did not need them,” Bader explains.

But it's not as if, in the post-Millionaire era, summer reruns are history. CBS has done well with its recycled product. That was particularly the case last summer with NCIS and Without a Trace, both of which picked up new viewers who then bolstered the shows during the regular season.

Says CBS' Kohl, “I think we certainly feel the need to have some original content on during the summer, but I don't see the need not to run scripted.”

Gruen acknowledges CBS' gains with its summer-rerun strategy but says the networks cannot be complacent in the face of increasing competition from cable networks, which have found success in the summers with originals like FX's The Shield, Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me.

Says Gruen, “Relying on reruns as a regular diet is over.”