This season’s TV is crude, and producers like it that way

Rob Owen

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 1999 | 9:43 a.m.

Once upon a time, way back when, TV networks attempted to avoid accusations that they aired rude, crude, socially unacceptable shows.

Now they embrace crude content, seemingly the ruder the better.

This fall, viewers can tune to UPN for WWF wrestling, which UPN Entertainment President Tom Nunan considers "an incredibly mild form of entertainment." Fox returns to its crude ways, and ABC's newest T.G.I.F. show wrings laughs from teen sex.

June Cleaver would be appalled.

But producers and network executives say the competitive environment makes it necessary to continue pushing the boundaries.

John Strauss, co-writer of the gross-out hit movie "There's Something About Mary," said that competition drives the business. Strauss is executive producer of "Odd Man Out," ABC's new T.G.I.F. show that features its lead character, a 15-year-old boy, trying to lose his virginity in an early episode.

"In the marketplace today there are 500-plus cable channels and a shrinking audience for network television," Strauss said. "It's important to keep a show entertaining to people who have an increasingly short attention span. To make sure the show survives, we try to give it a bit of a voice and try to do something a little different." Strauss rightly pointed out in July that critics had only seen one episode. He thinks "Odd Man Out" will appeal to parents and children.

"It will not be a sex-story-of-the-week show," Strauss said. "Edgy is not the only way we're going to. It's our taste, so that's one way." Strauss acknowledged the perception that liberal Hollywood producers force risque content on the viewing public, but he disagrees that it's an effort to alter anyone's perception of what's right or wrong.

"There are very conservative families and very liberal families, and I hope in some way we can speak to all of them," Strauss said. "Our job is just to entertain and hopefully do it in a somewhat responsible fashion. We're not trying to preach either way."

Sometimes, it's not just the program's content that's questionable but also the time slot. NBC's "Friends" is a critically acclaimed show but airing it at 8 p.m. is uncomfortably early for some parents.

ABC has shifted the funny but frequently coarse "Norm" to 8:30 p.m. this season, a move ABC Entertainment Group co-chairman Stu Bloomberg defended.

"It's an adult night," Bloomberg said. "If an audience coming in knows it's an adult night, then it's OK. If this were following 'Home Improvement,' that would be wrong." Fox, the network that built its reputation on the questionable humor of "Married ... With Children," took on a more dignified mantle with quality programs such as "Party of Five" and "The X-Files."

That era is over as crude but innovative shows rejoin the ranks. Fox Entertainment President Doug Herzog offers no apologies.

"Not everybody is going to like what we do," Herzog said. "Networks are generally out of the business of trying to please everybody at the same time."

Part of Fox's retreat to the gutter has to do with a top-down decision to refocus on the network's core 18-49 audience.

"When they brought in football they thought they needed to be a big, broad network, and it didn't work," Herzog said. "They blinked. We're here to refocus it. The demo is all that matters."

Some critics took offense to Fox's "Malcolm in the Middle," which depicts Malcolm's mom shaving his dad's back while dad stands naked in the kitchen, a newspaper covering his body. Later in the pilot, Malcolm screams at a counselor about having red paint on his bottom, but he uses a three-letter word for derriere that's become common in prime time. In another scene, the harried mom runs around the house without a bra, laundry strategically covering her breasts.

That's child's play compared to "Action," an envelope-pushing comedy about an obnoxious Hollywood producer played by Jay Mohr. Premiering Thursday with two back-to-back episodes, "Action's" lead character frequently spouts profanity, including the F-word, which gets bleeped. But it's obvious which curse words he's saying.

"When it comes to comedy and trying to do different things and push the envelope, you're going to offend some people," Herzog said. "It's a very subjective thing."

Critics are pretty unanimous in their praise of "Action's" sly take on Hollywood, but some question whether it should air on broadcast television, thinking it would be more suitable for a pay cable channel like, say, HBO. Herzog says critics can't have it both ways.

"The thing that frustrates me is if the show was on HBO, you guys would like it and say, 'Why aren't the networks doing this?' " Herzog said. "When the networks do it, all we hear about is the vulgarity and sex. It all comes through the same pipe. On some cable systems Fox might be next to HBO (in the channel lineup), and I have to compete with that. That's the bottom line."

NBC Entertainment President Garth Ancier disagreed, saying "over-the-air television is justifiably scrutinized more." A few years ago, he was shocked by an episode of the cable series "La Femme Nikita" in which he said four people were shot dead at point blank range during the show's first scene.

"I can't justify this, even on The WB," Ancier, who used to head up that network, said. "The body count is too high and it's gratuitous. You have be very careful that violence is for a purpose and is not just there to titillate the audience."

The "Action" pilot contains no violence, but its extreme bleeped profanity is likely to get viewers' attention. "Action" executive producer Chris Thompson defended the swear words as realistically depicting life in Hollywood.

Thompson acknowledged that the line for what's appropriate on TV and what's inappropriate is constantly moving and has been since he first entered the business working on "Laverne & Shirley."

"There's a big difference between wanting to entertain people and being an advocate of something," Thompson said. "I'm not an advocate of the coarsening of the culture. I'm not an advocate of any of the behavior that's displayed in this show. I am an observer of it, a chronicler of it."

Producer Steven Bochco, who has pushed the boundaries of language and nudity on "NYPD Blue," trusts his instincts on what's appropriate and what isn't.

"My responsibility, as an artist, first and foremost is to my own vision," Bochco said. "I trust my taste, I trust my sense of context. I think I know who my audience is and my primary responsibility is to be proactive artistically, and when you do that well, you are responsible."

Bochco said people may disagree with his taste, just as he may disagree with theirs. He finds wrestling offensive and can understand people taking offense to the 6 p.m. news or professional sports, which he said is the most violent programming on TV.