Abc Adding Friday Series To Woo Back Teens, Kids
For those who think ABC is going to sit back while ratings for its Friday-night kid comedies flounder, the network has two words for you: As if!
This fall, ABC is adding a TV version of the hit film “Clueless” and a series based on the comic-book “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” to its “TGIF” lineup.
“The number of kids and teens watching TGIF has gone down, down, down, down,” network entertainment chairman Ted Harbert said in an interview this week during the semiannual gathering of TV critics outside Los Angeles. “They didn’t go to ‘The X-Files.’ They didn’t go to any other network. They just went away, and we need to get them to come back.”
The strategy: Move away from the nuclear-family-in-the-living-room style of comedy that has defined TGIF since it began in the late ‘80s and toward more sophistication.
The idea is to draw not only teenagers and their younger brothers and sisters, but parents as well. After all, they’re the viewers whom advertisers are most eager to reach.
“Clueless” concerns the adventures of a shopaholic rich girl who manages to find time in her busy schedule to solve her schoolmates’ problems. In the pilot, her biggest obstacle is that her father has put her on a budget.
Amy Heckerling, who directed the movie version, is the show’s executive producer and plans to use the same pastel-drenched graphics that gave the film an appealing visual look.
Alicia Silverstone is too hot for TV right now, so the lead role went to Rachel Blanchard, best known as one of the stars of the Nickelodeon series “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”
Another Nickelodeon actress, Melissa Joan Hart of “Clarissa Explains It All,” plays the title character in “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,” who gains superpowers after her 16th birthday. “Sabrina” was made into a movie for Showtime last season.
She is overseen by two aunts (stand-up comic Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick of “The Five Mrs. Buchanans”); her dad, played by Robby Benson; and a witches’ council that includes Penn Jillette of the Penn and Teller magic act and rock singer Deborah Harry. Special effects will also play a large role.
“All of these elements are very different from what we have now, from wardrobe to use of language to types of stories,” Harbert says. “The ‘Clueless’ language is certainly different than what you hear on ‘Step by Step,’ the attitudes of the characters. There’s more irreverence.”
But not too much. “Clueless” will lose the movie’s references to pot smoking, and the protagonists will not be sexually active. And “Sabrina” will steer clear of devil references and pentagrams.
“As much fun as we have with this kind of frothy world, we’re still very attentive to underlying values,” says “Clueless” co-executive producer and head writer Pamela Pettler. “You can get the edginess without being about drugs. You can get the edginess by having it be an attitude. You can be sexy without being sexually active.”
“Clueless” and “Sabrina” will occupy the middle of the Friday prime-time schedule, 8:30 and 9, with “Family Matters” continuing to lead off the night at 8. “Boy Meets World” will move to 9:30.