SITCOMS: PART 2
Nevertheless, the producers of "Home Improvement" have decided to all
but pull out of the medium that made them wealthy, a rarity in the
business. Indeed, the show's finale was conspicuously elegiac for the
team that created and oversaw "Home Improvement," Williams, Carmen
Finestra and David McFadzean, who make up the Wind Dancer
Production Group.
"Home Improvement" was one of the great successes of the early 1990s
and it may earn $1 billion by the time its years of reruns run out, say
television executives. The Wind Dancer partners are estimated to have
earned tens of millions of dollars each on the program.
But the trio has failed to produce another hit show, striking out with
attempts like "Soul Man," "Buddies" and "Costello." And now, with the
proliferation of cable channels and the eager effort by advertisers to
attract young slices of the audience, there seems to be less demand for
the sort of program Wind Dancer excels at.
"I just think that, because of the competition from cable, the networks are
not looking for a show that appeals to all age levels, the traditional family
shows," said Finestra. "I feel like I can do more of what I want to be
doing in a movie. We're sort of old-fashioned in the kinds of shows we
like to do and this world has changed so much in just a few years."
ABC Entertainment chairman Stu Bloomberg said traditional family
sitcoms may still get on the air, but less frequently, and certainly not
without an unusual point of view.
"Yes, it is harder to put a domestic comedy on," Bloomberg said. "There
were more domestic comedies in the days of single television households
and before cable."
Although it is still trying to develop a small number of series ideas, Wind
Dancer is now focusing on a big slate of movies and plays. In fact, the
company has commissioned plays from more than a dozen writers --
including Rick Dresser, Daisy Foote, Heather McDonald and Eduardo
Machado -- and it is producing "The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her
Chameleon Skin," at Playwrights Horizon in New York.
"We're not going aggressively back into half-hour television," said
McFadzean. "Now we're producing movies, and I'm really interested in
the plays we're involved with."
To some degree Wind Dancer's problems are typical, since few
successful creators of sitcoms have second acts as vibrant as the first.
(As it happens, Castle Rock, the company that produced "Seinfeld," has
also failed to create a follow-up success.) And even the elements that
made "Home Improvement" a hit were somewhat unique and therefore
tough to duplicate.
First and foremost, the show had Tim Allen, a popular stand-up
comedian whose visibility was growing when "Home Improvement" went
on the air in 1991.
In addition, Allen's character, Tim Taylor, related to a powerful thread
running through popular culture at that time. Taylor was the host of a
small cable show called "Tool Time," about, of course, home
improvement. He was depicted as a somewhat coarse man's man who
loved power tools and grunting and had a hard time understanding the
woman in his life, his wife. His personality tied in perfectly with the Iron
John movement for men, which was popular when the show went on the
air. (It didn't hurt either that, for the first few seasons, Pamela Anderson,
wearing a tight T-shirt, played the "Tool Time Girl" on the fictional home
improvement show.)
But times have changed, taking a toll. "Home Improvement" was the No.
1 rated show in the 1993-1994 season. But in the most recent week for
which there are figures, April 26 to May 2, "Home Improvement" ranked
33rd, with 11.02 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The No. 1 rated sitcom, "Frasier," had 21.4 million viewers.
Until two years ago, Wind Dancer had a staff of about 30 people in its
offices on the Walt Disney studio lot in Burbank, most of them involved
in developing more than a dozen television show ideas on which the
company was banking.
The company got four new shows on the air after "Home Improvement."
That is a good track record. But none of the shows lasted.
So more recently, Wind Dancer slashed its staff in half, to about 15
people, and reduced the number of television projects it was working on
to three or so, two of them dramas rather than sitcoms.
Meanwhile it has commissioned plays from more than a dozen writers
and it has more than a dozen movie projects in the works.
"It's sad, but mostly liberating," said Finestra, who is the co-author of a
movie script titled "Harv the Barbarian." "It's just such a different world
than the one we grew up in."
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