Is a Show a Hit Just Because They Say It Is?

Revisiting the adage that there are lies, damn lies and statistics, today’s class will explore a seemingly simple yet rather confounding question--namely, when does a television program truly qualify as a hit?

As with most issues pertaining to the entertainment industry, the answer is obscured by a smoke screen composed of self-interest, public relations spin and hype. It also doesn’t help that those of us who write about TV too often inhale this foul mixture--a lazy alternative to hauling out a big fan and trying to blow some of it away.

Admittedly, deciphering what constitutes a hit has been rendered more confusing by the industry’s reliance on flooding reporters’ desks with demographic information--the numbers that most directly translate to advertising dollars--and an influx of new cable channels with lower standards, since they lack the ubiquitous distribution of the four major networks.

All of this has led to regular pronouncements of some show or genre’s fabulous success that need to be taken with a grain if not a whole shaker full of salt.

Consider, to begin with, “Son of the Beach,” the new “Baywatch” spoof from Howard Stern’s production company, which made its debut March 14 on the FX network. Most publications accurately reported what FX enthusiastically told them: that “Son of the Beach’s” premiere ranked as the highest-rated episode of an original show in the cable channel’s six-year history.

A slightly closer analysis of Nielsen Media Research data, however, reveals the total audience for that first “Son of the Beach” (a rather puerile “Baywatch” spoof deriving much of its humor from the lead character’s name, Notch Johnson) amounted to less than 1.5 million viewers--about 100,000 fewer than tuned in the same half-hour for a 30-year-old rerun of “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?” on the Cartoon Network.

Moreover, “Beach” experienced notable erosion last Tuesday, slipping to 1.1 million viewers, meaning more than a fourth of those who saw the first episode weren’t inspired to give Notch and his unit a second look. That left the show not only behind Scooby and Shaggy but movin’ on down behind “The Jeffersons” on Nickelodeon.

To be fair, FX is available in a little more than 44 million of the nearly 101 million U.S. homes with TV sets, compared to just under 60 million for Cartoon Network. Still, you didn’t have Stern going on his radio show and incessantly plugging “Scooby-Doo” to millions of listeners--to the point where even a dedicated fan might be tempted to either change channels or throw up--as he did with “Son of the Beach.”

Yet Stern’s program would hardly be the first cable series hailed as a powerhouse when its raw numbers, presented in a broader context, could be mistaken for the sort of 98-pound weakling who gets sand kicked in his face.

“South Park” suffers from the same sort of distribution handicap as “Son of the Beach” but still landed on the cover of Newsweek by setting viewership records for cable’s Comedy Central.

The show’s audience peaked two years ago at around 6 million viewers--which would currently rank 112th, right between “Family Guy” and “World’s Funniest!,” among the roster of network prime-time series--but after that ratings fell sharply, a victim of the novelty wearing thin or a sporadic scheduling pattern.

Whatever the cause, despite last summer’s “Bigger, Longer & Uncut” feature film version, there seems to be little sense of budding anticipation in regard to the animated show’s new season, which begins in April.

The “South Park” experience underscores another inadequacy in the discussion of “hits”--namely, once something gets labeled a hit or a trend or the next big thing, it takes a while for people to catch up with the fact that trend may be dying or fading or at least slowing down.

The popularity of court shows, for example, has been widely noted. Inspired by “Judge Judy,” syndicators are rushing their own stern insult-wielding jurists onto the air, with as many as a half-dozen newcomers to arrive this fall.

All well and good, except the court genre is largely a one-hit wonder: “Judge Judy” and the seven dwarfs. In fact, results from the recent February rating sweeps indicate even viewing of “Judge Judy” dipped slightly year-to-year for the first time, with “Judge Joe Brown” posting a gain while “The People’s Court” and “Judge Mills Lane” both diminished.

In other words, all these lawyers destined to begin clogging the daytime airwaves come September could arrive long after the ambulance, if you’ll pardon the expression, has vacated the scene.

So what qualifies as the real deal in hit terms, barring obvious network standouts such as “ER” and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”? A strong case can be made for made for “The Sopranos,” HBO’s Mafia drama, though even that requires weighing intangible factors along with the actual ratings.

Two weeks ago, “Sopranos” averaged 7.6 million viewers, making it the week’s most-watched cable program. While that still would have ranked only 75th among prime-time fare on the broadcast networks (just ahead of “WWF Smackdown!”), it’s quite impressive given that HBO is available in only about a quarter of U.S. homes.

“Sopranos” also provides a host of immeasurable benefits to HBO in terms of prestige--making Hollywood types feel better about working for the channel, those who subscribe feel better about the expenditure and no doubt inspiring some who don’t currently receive HBO to consider whether they should.

Finally, in one of those vagaries of Nielsen’s measurement system, the reported “Sopranos” audience (as well as that for HBO’s “Sex and the City”) doesn’t reflect those cheapskates who don’t subscribe to the pay channel but eagerly await tapes from those who do--a widespread and persistent group, if the freeloaders toiling within this very building are any indication.

So to review, as they used to say in school: A hit isn’t always a hit just because someone says it’s a hit, although a show can be a hit within its own universe even if it’s not really a hit by general standards. Or, to use terms befitting a town as fraught with nepotism as Hollywood, everything’s relative.

You know, if this were “Judge Judy,” she’d probably snap and yell, “Shut up, sir!” right about now.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].