Strange bedfellows at ABC Family
- From: "Ubiquitous" <weberm@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 09:15:58 -0400
The binge drinking and racy behavior of 'Greek' cohabit with Pat Robertson's
'700 Club.'
SCOTT COLLINS
THE racy antics on the new series "Greek" won't be surprising to anyone
who's attended college, heard about what sometimes transpires after hours at
the nation's institutions of higher learning or even just kicked back to
watch "Animal House." Does "Greek" have binge drinking? Check. Lots of crude
insults? Sure. Sex? Oh, absolutely, and often too. These are college kids.
What's a tad unusual is that "Greek" will, starting July 9, air on ABC
Family. You know, the cable network owned by the Walt Disney Co. The channel
that still runs Pat Robertson's crusading chat show, "The 700 Club," twice a
day. So viewers searching for a truly surreal TV experience will be able to
watch "Greek" partyers do body shots and then hang around to hear Robertson
and his devout friends jawbone about how television has too much sex - as
they did last week, when comic Tim Conway showed up on "700 Club" and spoke
about his work with the Parents Television Council, a favorite group of
conservative cultural critics.
ABC Family has had a bizarre history: It started out as an arm of
Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (ABC Family is still legally
obligated to run his "700 Club") and had a short, unhappy life in Rupert
Murdoch's News Corp. kingdom. So ABC Family has more trouble being
thematically consistent than most networks. But at least executives over
there are finally getting people to watch. Thanks to the teen dramas "Kyle
XY" and "Wildfire," the network is posting some of its best ratings ever,
with the second season of "Kyle," which started last month, averaging a
respectable 2.2 million total viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Under its British-born president, Paul Lee - who formerly ran BBC America -
the channel is trying a noble experiment in cat herding, targeting finicky
teens and twentysomethings who will on occasion glom on to something that
interests them, such as "Gilmore Girls" or "Smallville" (ABC Family airs
both in syndication).
"It helped us that the WB stumbled and collapsed," Lee told me last week.
OK, he's overstating the point; last year, the WB in fact merged with its
archrival UPN to form the CW. But that did leave one less network jostling
at the media trough for a limited supply of teens and young adults.
Marketers refer to them as "millennials," a not-so-euphonious bit of
corporate-speak that makes humans sound like space aliens. The ABC Family
business plan came from surveying the preferences of 50,000 or so young
people with the help of the research firms Frank Magid Associates and
Yankelovich Inc.
The key, Lee said, is to be able to depict the real-life stuff high
schoolers and college-age people care about - including, yup, the sex and
drinking - but to do it in an "optimistic" way.
"We want to be a life-affirming network," he said.
That's a lot of pressure to put on a series like "Greek," which is an
entertaining, often funny ramble through college life, even if it's not
nearly as barbed or knowing as Judd Apatow's similarly themed "Undeclared,"
which ran during Fox's 2001-02 season.
The appealing cast includes former "As the World Turns" star Spencer Grammer
(the daughter of "Frasier's" Kelsey Grammer) as Casey, whose sex life and
moral conflicts are complicating her pursuit of the presidency of a snooty
sorority, and newcomer Jacob Zachar as her brother, Rusty, a dorky
engineering student who ignores his sister's advice and rushes at exclusive
fraternities (in the pilot, he's the one who attempts to down a body shot,
with unfortunate results for his partner). Jessica Rose, who shot to fame as
Bree in the online series "lonelygirl15," will have a recurring role as a
sorority girl.
Executive producer Shawn Piller said the inspiration for Patrick Sean
Smith's script came from the upbeat college-movie hits of the 1980s, such as
John Hughes' "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Pretty in Pink."
"Those films had such a kind of spark to them," Piller said. "It wasn't just
a college exploitation show about sex." (Disclosure: My wife works on
another Piller series, USA's "The Dead Zone.")
Piller understands, though, that "family" and "college comedy" are two
concepts that don't often go together. "People have expectations based on
the brand," he said. "You just try to tell the most realistic types of
stories. If it's authentic, people will believe it."
Piller, who's in his 30s, added, "Kids are so sophisticated now. They don't
view TV or networks the way we grew up watching it. They hear there's a
great show, they just want to find it. They don't care if it's ABC or ABC
Family." That may be true, but parents can be excused if they're a little
confused by all this. Despite the network's name, are viewers in search of
kid-safe programming better off sticking with, say, ABC Family's corporate
sibling, the Disney Channel, home of tween hits like "Hannah Montana" and
"High School Musical"?
The larger point for ABC Family, skeptics say, is that the TV dial is
already oversaturated with networks chasing teens and young adults. Brad
Adgate, an analyst at the ad firm Horizon Media, pointed to "Slacker Cats,"
a hip cartoon that ABC Family will launch next month.
"It sounds like Disney's answer to Adult Swim," said Adgate, who worked
during the 1990s at the Family Channel, a predecessor to ABC Family. "It's a
crowded landscape. They're going after a group of people who don't watch a
lot of TV."
But Lee said he isn't worried, especially now that Nielsen has started
measuring TV viewing on college campuses, for years a black hole in the
ratings. "We got a serious bump for that."
What about Robertson, though? Isn't it a bit awkward for a network that
hopes to capture college kids in all their libertine glory to host a kingpin
of the religious right?
"It's really not an issue," Lee said. "Advertisers are not focused on it,
viewers aren't focused on it.. I haven't been asked that question in a long
time."
--
"Wouldn't it be weird if French President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy turns out to
be more pro-American than all the Democrats running for U.S.
president?"--Jim Seay of Henrico, Va., quoted in the Richmond Times
Dispatch's "Your Two Cents" feature
.
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