Can Anybody Fill Seinfeld's Shoes?

By JAMES COLLINS

Imagine that Coke Classic told Coca-Cola it wanted to finish its run on top and was quitting, or that Windows announced to Microsoft that after looking deep into its heart, it had decided to move on, and you will get some idea of how Jerry Seinfeld's decision to end his show will affect NBC. Quite simply, the network is a company that is being forced to discontinue one of its most profitable products. NBC made an estimated $500 million last year, and Seinfeld contributed some 40% to that total. The comment of Seinfeld that the show is "about nothing" has often been quoted. Now it really will be about nothing where NBC is concerned, as the accountants replace $200 million with zero. Of course the show will run in syndication for years to come, but the network has no share in those revenues.

The loss of that direct profit is only part of the damage NBC will suffer as a result of Seinfeld's departure. Starting in the early 1980s, the network has dominated Thursday nights with programs like Family Ties, Cheers, The Cosby Show, Hill Street Blues and LA Law. For the past five years, Seinfeld has been the keystone of the network's Thursday lineup, which now includes Friends and ER, two other huge hits. The habit viewers have of watching NBC on Thursdays is one of the network's greatest assets, but with no Seinfeld to watch, the audience may fall into a different routine.

"The whole schedule on Thursday is much more open to attack by other networks," says Harold Vogel, an entertainment-industry analyst for Cowen & Co. All this is bad enough, but NBC also faces the possibility that ER will soon defect to another network. Now that Seinfeld is going, that would be truly calamitous for NBC, so the pressure to keep ER has become exponentially greater.

What's the best show to replace Seinfeld in the 9 p.m. slot on Thursday? Frasier is the most likely candidate. Along with Friends and Mad About You, it is one of NBC's strongest comedies, and it appeals to male viewers, as does Seinfeld. The Cheers spin-off followed Seinfeld when it made its debut in the fall of 1993 and actually attracted more viewers. Right now, it may not be reaching as big an audience as it could, since it goes up against ABC's Home Improvement on Tuesdays.

But a network's schedule is a complicated skein, and pulling one strand may unravel the whole thing. While Frasier has not beaten Home Improvement, it has helped NBC lift its ratings on Tuesdays, a night that has long been dominated by ABC. Moving Frasier would jeopardize that progress. Another possibility would be to put 3rd Rock from the Sun into the Seinfeld time period. This season, NBC moved 3rd Rock from Sunday nights, where it became a hit, to Wednesdays, where it has struggled going head-to-head with ABC's Drew Carey Show. There's still another scenario: moving Friends from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday and filling its old slot with 3rd Rock or Mad About You.

NBC executives knew, of course, that Seinfeld would not last forever, but they were hoping to have another year to nurture a successor hit. The network made an extraordinarily generous deal with Bright/Kauffmann/Crane, the creators of Friends and Veronica's Closet, to develop a comedy about a single mother. With the schedule in flux, that show will have a tougher time finding an audience. Fortunately for NBC, it still has the rest of the season to experiment. It could build up Frasier or 3rd Rock by putting them after Seinfeld. Meanwhile, Just Shoot Me, a modest success starring Laura San Giacomo as an editor who works for a women's magazine owned by her father, is being given a Thursday tryout, as is NewsRadio, a clever show that in three seasons has never lived up to its ratings potential.

Compared with figuring out all these permutations, keeping ER may look easy--just pay whatever it takes. If NBC loses ER on top of Seinfeld, says an industry source, "They will be dust. They will lose the demographics and the households. It would be a disaster." NBC has a window from Feb. 1 to March 1 to negotiate a renewal deal with Warner Bros., the studio that produces the show. If the two sides fail to agree, then Warner Bros. can negotiate with the other networks. Leslie Moonves, the president of CBS, developed ER when he was a Warner executive and is particularly eager to land it. Reportedly the studio will ask for $10 million an episode, a huge increase over the nearly $2 million NBC now pays. Of course, Seinfeld's demise only makes Warner Bros.' bargaining position stronger. (Castle Rock, which produces Seinfeld, is also part of Time Warner.)

The connection between Seinfeld and the ER negotiations, however, does not end there. As part of a deal, Warner Bros. is likely to demand that NBC replace Seinfeld with another one of its shows. To further complicate matters, Paramount, which produces Frasier, may insist that if that show is moved to Thursday, it must be followed by a new comedy the studio is developing around Nathan Lane, who is currently starring in the film Mouse Hunt. In formulating its post-Seinfeld strategy, NBC will have to take into account all these demands, as well as the other scheduling dilemmas caused by shuffling its shows and whatever tricks its competitors have in store.

That may sound daunting, but Don Ohlmeyer, the head of NBC's West Coast operations, will tell you the network has gone through all this before. "At the time Cheers announced it was going out of production," Ohlmeyer says, "there was the same kind of jabberwocky about NBC's vulnerability. Unfortunately we're in a business in which opinions are like TV sets--everyone's got one." There's a difference, though, between five years ago and now. Back then, the show waiting in the wings to take Cheers' place was Seinfeld.

--Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles