Dial File —Steve Bornfield: In defense of … the networks?

Friday, Aug. 13, 1999 | 9:24 a.m.

Steve Bornfeld is the Sun features editor. His television column appears Fridays. Reach himat 259-4081 or steveb@vegas.com

"We got a runaway train, boy!" -- Al Pacino as a gleeful Satan observing over-stimulated, anything-goes America at the millennium in "The Devil's Advocate."

Ol' Scratch nailed it.

But who's really steering that train -- besides our Beelzebuddy -- as it threatens to jump the tracks?

Well, aboard the Pop Culture Express, the heroes aren't quite as heroic and the villains not quite as villainous as they once seemed -- at least to this critic, who has done some reevaluating.

Yes, all's fair in TV criticism, which, given the strangely quixotic bond between critics and networks, triggers excessive displays of both love (critics' idealism fulfilled, and let the gushy adjectives flow) and war (critics' idealism unfulfilled -- duck and cover!).

When the latter erupts, critics are either fair, as in "anything goes"; or fair, as in, well, "fair." As critics, we've been fair. But have we been fair?

At the just-concluded TV critics meeting in California -- a 20-day round robin of press conferences and parties with TV types that one critic dubbed "a death march with cocktails" -- critics reportedly crucified network nabobs over the content of the new sex-soaked season. And take it from a veteran of these contentious confabs: Critics are second only to Romans when it comes to crucifixions.

(As for the vexing question of TV violence, a hot-hot-hot button issue sure to be re-raised because of yet another shooting, this one at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles -- and the gunman's surrender here in Vegas -- cut the networks some slack: Fall is relatively light on carnage -- repeat, relatively -- and while that hardly dismisses the networks from the debate, it is to their credit.)

But face it, folks: TV is horny, lewd and profane. Upcoming network examples -- from the teenage leerathon "Manchester Prep" to the adult bleepathon "Action" -- have been exhaustively examined in this column and other media outlets all summer, anticipating the friskiest fall season so far.

And while this column still speaks up for taste, civility and standards -- and has done so repeatedly -- an admission must be made: We may be sacrificing the networks at the Altar of the Double Standard, anointing cable as saintly for the very acts we condemn as sin among broadcasters.

Is material slammed as "juvenile," "puerile" and "gross" on the networks magically reborn in the hearts (or what passes for them) of critics as "edgy," "risky" and "challenging" on cable? Would the much-attacked "Action" merit hurrahs instead of harrumphs if its sleaze was slung at us over HBO instead of Fox? Would Emmy darling-of-the-moment "The Sopranos" sew hatred instead of huzzahs if it broke bones and bared breasts on ABC instead of HBO?

And if networks are guilty of spewing snickering sexcoms (and they are) that reek of adolescent immaturity as compared to the adult sexuality of cable, is that by choice -- or by the dictates of a hypocritical standard that effectively bars networks from doing anything more than ... snickering?

Recently this column questioned the imbalance of the Emmy competition -- creatively free cable vs. creatively shackled networks. The networks are struggling to even the cable-friendly odds by nibbling away at -- OK, chewing, ripping and chomping away at -- the edges of sex/violence restrictions. (And just about assuring its once-powerful censors of future employment built around the phrase, "You want fries with that?")

Yes, the Pop Culture Express hurtles on and to hell with the brakes.

Don't glance back or you'll get whiplash: Of course "Petticoat Junction"-style sweetness is as dead as Uncle Joe, despite its ghost still haunting our remember-whens. But flash forward three decades and even the sheer veneer of modesty that draped the sardonic "Seinfeld" when it was Master Of Its Domain just a scant few seasons ago has been stripped away. M-A-S-T-U-R-B-A-T-I-O-N: Go on, Jerry, you can say it now!

Like It or Don't Like It. But Don't Bother To Deny It.

And given that reality, let's get real: What do we expect besieged broadcasters, desperate to duel with "Real Sex" and "Sex in the City" on HBO, not to mention every hi-what's your name?-great apartment-can I get that bra strap for you? flick on Cinemax, to do?

Let's recount the realities:

1) When oral sex and whether or not it truly is sex (depending, of course, on what the meaning of the word is is) demands analysis on "Today," network TV has irrevocably shifted. (And if you're into assigning blame, assign that to the news-makers, not the news-givers.) The lid on that Pandora's box wasn't merely opened; it was Crazy Glued to the ceiling.

2) Business developments have rendered the once-cherished notion of the "family hour" -- along with similar efforts to match family fare with early hours and adult content with later hours -- moot.

Once network hits rack up enough episodes to qualify for the lucrative syndication market, they are recycled into eternity at ALL hours, regardless of content. Yesterday, it was the sedate "I Love Lucy." Today, the suggestive "Friends" -- a series that already rankles parent groups by airing at 8 p.m. on the network -- can now theoretically air anywhere from mid-morning to early evening, syndication's version of prime-time. (In Vegas, Channel 5 double-dips "Friends" reruns weeknights at 6:30 and 7:30.)

Then consider "NYPD Blue," whose undraped derrieres and writhing sensuality spurred noisy boycotts and even blackouts among some ABC affiliates when it debuted in the early '90s -- at 10 p.m. Cable's FX now airs uncut reruns -- with "viewer advisories," of course -- at 8 p.m. Heard a peep from any placard-toting protesters in front of FX headquarters lately?

What was once confined to a certain late-night slice of prime-time has, via cable and syndication, started to permeate the 24-hour schedule and insinuate itself into viewer habits, altering -- some might say liberating -- the landscape in which the networks toil.

3) The age-old argument in defense of the difference between cable's freedom and network responsibility -- that cable is invited into viewers' homes while the networks are, essentially, part of the furniture and therefore unavoidable, making them beholden to more stringent standards of behavior -- is losing statistical credibility. July figures from the National Cable Television Association peg cable penetration at 68 percent of American homes.

Well, when nearly 7 out of 10 households invite and consume raunchier cable fare, systematically siphoning off viewers from networks (which are businesses, after all) still tethered to an outdated definition of appropriateness, that sends an unmistakable signal: At least 7 out of 10 potential viewers might respond to broadcast raunch and return to the networks. To complain about network naughtiness while we simultaneously court cable kinkiness turns us into flirtatious teases sending out mixed vibes: Come closer, sexy ... Hey, back off, slimeball!

4) Advertisers crave young viewers, most of whom were born on the downside of the nets' dominant decades and oblivious to their pioneering histories -- i.e., no big whoop. CBS? NBC? ABC? Random pit stops on the superhighway, no better or worse than HBO or A&E or MTV or Showtime. For them, it all pours out of the same box, and the distinctions between cable and broadcast TV that were important to their elders are invisible to them. Viewed from their vantage point -- and in the sexually frank culture in which they were raised -- any attempts at modesty seem so ... yesterday.

(However, select advertisers, dismayed over the hormonally-charged new network season, are actually bankrolling the production of family programming -- see story at left. A story on the spiritual Pax network is on page 18E.)

5) If it's not tough enough already for networks to pace cable's adult offerings, note that competition for carnal imagery cranks up considerably when you toss in the Internet -- which is swimming in sex sites -- and the High Priest of Pop Culture Sex: Movies.

Flesh is flourishing. While Viagra reinvigorates America's bedrooms, its spirit re-energizes network boardrooms. Without it, expect the nets to go flaccid fast.

Critics can't continue to chide networks on losing viewers to cable while punishing them for mimicking the very programming they're losing them to -- a charge to which I plead guilty. It may have been fair. But it wasn't fair.

Of course, there's still the separate, larger issue. Scanning the over-stimulating, anything-goes sites aboard the onrushing Pop Culture Express, one observation is as obvious as hell:

We got a runaway train, boy!

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