One sure sign of a TV show’s success is the flood of copy-cat shows that get on the air the following season.
So, where are all the “NYPD Blue” clones?
Though ABC’s trend-setting police drama was the most talked about new show of the 1993-94 TV season and broke a record for Emmy nominations in its freshman year, nobody is copying it.
Only two new fall shows even get into the same subject area-an “insider’s” look at an urban police precinct: Fox’s “New York Undercover” and CBS’ “Under Suspicion.” But the Fox show is a sort of “hip hop cops” hour with the gritty trademark look of its producers, who also make NBC’s “Law & Order.” And the CBS show is obviously an attempt to clone something else: the British hit “Prime Suspect,” with its female boss in a mostly male precinct.
As for the trend-setting elements of “NYPD Blue”-its use of nudity and profanity-it may be too early to register any real impact.
Our early conclusion: “NYPD Blue” ultimately may separate the men from the boys, but so far only the timid are stepping forward.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why that’s so: ABC has produced a genuinely popular show that both the critics and the public love, but it has paid a price for it that still seems too high for the other networks to bear.
One year after its controversial premiere, “NYPD Blue” has slowly regained many of the ABC stations that refused to carry it last season but is still not commanding top dollar from the advertisers who decided to stick with the show.
To keep sponsors, the network has had to keep ad rates down near the bargain level it set last season. ABC President Robert Iger says that’s solely due to “the controversial nature of the program.”
The ad rate problem isn’t expected to improve. Only consistently high ratings and diminishing controversy will make that happen-probably in 1995, at the earliest.
But, for all the furor, “NYPD Blue” no longer seems to upset so many people. Harbert said, “Halfway through the season, the outpouring of mail that came to my office reduced to a trickle and was replaced by (letters) of support from viewers.”
Filming on the second season began earlier this month and nobody is talking about making any changes in tone or candor to make the show more acceptable to holdout stations and advertisers.
(There will be a significant casting change. Jimmy Smits, best known for his Emmy-winning role as Victor Sifuentes on “L.A. Law,” joins the show in November as a new character designed to fill the gap left by the departure of David Caruso, who will leave in the fourth episode.)
Steady viewers already know that the final eight shows of last season were less contentious than the first 13 in both nudity and language.
This could mean a dilemma for both ABC and the producers of “NYPD Blue.” Should they “front load” the new season with more envelope-pushing episodes to reassure fans they haven’t backed down in the face of intimidation? Or should they continue to stress the strong character development that really is the heart of “NYPD Blue”?
Executive Producer Steven Bochco, who created “NYPD Blue” with co-executive producer David Milch, always has insisted the nudity and profanity were in the scripts to make the show more realistic, more adult and more reflective of standards commonly found in feature films.
But the furor over those elements made millions of viewers curious and obviously led them to sample a show they might not have tried otherwise. Does the show need to keep jolting viewers to keep them interested or are they so hooked on the characters that nude scenes and rough language seem superfluous?
One thing is certain, though: ABC has decided to delay the premiere of Season 2 until October to give the producers more time to build up a backlog of episodes. This will help avoid the rash of reruns that bothered fans so much in the second half of last season. In the meantime, it’s probably fair to say that, for a trend-setting show, “NYPD Blue” seems to be setting very few trends.
