TV's new families: nostalgia, but with an edge

"The evening TV family hour in America has been destroyed," says Scott Collins, LA television editor for the Hollywood Reporter. "I don't think there is anyone who programs with that in mind."

Advertisers also have had a hand in putting families back onscreen. The recently formed Family Friendly Programming Forum, a consortium of over 40 top national corporations, funds TV shows that G-rated advertisers can feel comfortable supporting. "Gilmore Girls" – the first show to emerge from that initiative – was a sleeper hit, now in its third season.

And, as everyone in Hollywood knows, nothing breeds imitation like success. The WB itself, home to "Gilmore," is launching two more family shows: "Everwood," about a New York surgeon who moves to Colorado with his children, and "Family Affair," a remake of the 1960s warm-and-fuzzy Brian Keith show.

There are other forces pushing families back onscreen – such as HBO's "The Sopranos" and MTV's "The Osbournes." The onslaught of hipper, sexier shows on cable – where producers are not constrained by FCC rules – is driving the broadcast networks to find a different niche.

"Regular broadcasters are partly saying if we can't be as daring and risqué as HBO and MTV, let's move in the other direction, go softer and more cuddly and try to get a bigger audience," says Collins.

Indeed, beleaguered ABC, trying to rebuild after finishing behind CBS, NBC and Fox, has taken the middle road as a rallying cry.

"Something that is groundbreaking or provocative, is not necessarily what a network audience is looking for when they come home after a long day," says Susan Lyne, president of ABC Entertainment. "What we have been focusing on at this network is, how do we give people what they really want? ... We will leave groundbreaking to somebody else."

Then there's the cyclical nature of popular culture, reworking successful old formulas. "We tend to go nostalgic in 20- to 30-year cycles," says Thompson. Three of NBC's five new shows are family oriented, but network president of entertainment Jeff Zucker told television critics in July that NBC brought back the family because critics complained it had gone away.

Of course, NBC owes its current financial health to shows about single life, such as "Friends" and "Seinfeld." But Mr. Zucker says there's no real departure from that in its new series "Hidden Hills," the story of a two-career suburban family.

"I don't think it really does move away from what we've done," he says. "I think what we've done has been smart adult comedy."

As to what the push for TV families says about the nation, or the TV world, critics and social commentators alike warn against drawing causal relationships in either direction. Television shows reflect the culture, they say, but with a conservative distortion as well as a temporal delay.

"American society itself pushes the envelope," says Thompson. "TV merely licks the seal."

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