The Safe House - Expositions

Monday is the beginning of "upfront" week, when the commercial TV networks show their new fall lineups to the advertising community to lock in dollar commitments well in advance of the season premieres. It's a bizarre ritual in which advertising buyers guess at the appeal of dozens of series, new and old, and throw money at them on behalf of their clients in a spending frenzy that gives the networks some sort of benchmark to judge their developmental prowess by.

Traditionally, the networks lock in 75 to 80 percent of their prime- time advertising allotment at these glitzy upfronts, with the advertisers basing their buys on perhaps one pilot episode or sometimes nothing more than the promise of a big-name star or a high- profile producer.

This is why a new show you fall in love with in September often disappears by November. Though you and millions of others may consider it the greatest thing since microwaveable macaroni and cheese, a network will cancel a quality show in a heartbeat if it isn't living up to the advertisers' expectations. For example, suppose NBC announces Show X will go into the 8:30 p.m. slot on Thursdays after "Friends." Advertisers must pony up big time to place their ads on Show X because viewership for the final season of "Friends" is expected to be high and, by logical extension, the show that follows it should have pretty good ratings, too. The network, in fact, will guarantee to deliver a certain number of viewers in exchange for a big-bucks commitment. If that viewership fails to materialize, the network has to issue free space to the advertisers to make good on its guarantee.

Networks hate doing that more than they hate making it easy for viewers to contact them. Thus, a show that lets them down is considered an ungrateful pariah and is quickly replaced in the schedule by something more loyal -- usually reruns of a known winner.

In the interest of avoiding such early flameouts in the future, we humbly suggest that all programming targeted for the 2002-03 season possess one or more of the following attributes:

- The smartness of "Gilmore Girls." The only other network drama that regularly assumes its viewers aren't complete morons is "The West Wing." But where "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin and his cohort like to get up on a soapbox now and then, "Gilmore Girls" creator Amy Sherman-Palladino is just happy to have fun with creative wordplay and witty cracks about pop culture.

- The excitement of "24." Fox hasn't even said if this show will return in the fall, despite being voted the best series on television in a trade-magazine poll of TV critics. We'll know for sure Thursday, when Fox conducts its upfront, but even if "24" is inexplicably left off next season's schedule, a network would be wise to copy its ability to bring viewers to the edge of the sofa week in and week out.

- The charm of "Alias." Much of what goes on in this spy drama is incomprehensible by design. If you don't say, "Huh?" at least once an episode, you're not paying attention. Fans of "La Femme Nikita" have called it a high-gloss rip-off, and they have a good point. But TV, not Xerox, perfected the art of copying, and "Alias" certainly isn't the first to take a pretty woman and make her an action/adventure star. It is the first since "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to do it so well.

- The consistency of "The Simpsons." The series will air episode 300 sometime next season -- its 14th -- and I'm getting to the point where I can't imagine a TV schedule without Bart and Homer, syndicated reruns notwithstanding. For most shows, three or four good seasons is usually the limit. But "The Simpsons" is the "Gunsmoke" of comedy, and I'm grateful for every fall-on-the-floor moment of satire penned by some of the best writers in television.

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