1996 Was Watershed Year for Television

Let’s not be too hard on 1996. After all, 1997 could turn out to be worse. Really, it could--at least in terms of television, though right now that seems hard to imagine.

There were two watershed developments during the year, however. Early in 1996, the networks announced that, considering the federal government was holding a gun to their heads, they would indeed come up with a “voluntary” program-rating system similar to the one used by the motion picture industry. By year’s end, they’d kept the promise, and the system will soon be operating.

As for the other big event, that was saved for the waning days of ‘96, when the Federal Communications Commission finally announced an industrywide technical standard for digital television, a breakthrough that will eventually mean radically improved picture quality on American TV screens.

At first, it’ll be a novelty like color was in its early days. The first family on the block to have one could well be the wealthiest family on the block, since sets will cost more, and the first TV stations to convert to digital will be those in the major markets, like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. But citizens of the not-so-distant future will see brighter, sharper, clearer and wider TV pictures than are common now.

Will that simply mean they’ll get a bigger, sharper, wider look at the latest lousy Tori Spelling movie? It could be. Technical improvements in TV do not automatically bring about improvements in what’s on. Certainly 1996 saw no great strides in programming--nor even significant itty-bitty baby steps. And yet, here and there, one could find signs of intelligent life in the TV universe.

Public TV, despite escalating competition from cable channels after its audience, had a fairly good year: Two new “Prime Suspect” movies with Helen Mirren back as Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison; “The Final Cut,” last chapter in the “House of Cards” trilogy; “TR, The Story of Theodore Roosevelt” and “Clash of the Titans: Orson Welles vs. William Randolph Hearst,” both part of the “American Experience” series; and “Caesar’s Writers,” a madcap gabfest among the great wits (Neil Simon, Mel Brooks) who wrote for Sid Caesar’s TV shows in the ‘50s.

On cable, HBO led the way with “The Celluloid Closet,” a no-nonsense eye-opener about the depiction of homosexuals in movies; “The Late Shift,” a from-the-trenches look at the war between Jay Leno and David Letterman; and “If These Walls Could Talk,” a collection of three tales about women wrestling with the issue of abortion. “Walls” became the highest-rated movie in HBO’s history.

Showtime offered one of the year’s most shocking films, “Bastard Out of Carolina,” directed by Anjelica Huston. The film was made for and then rejected by Ted Turner’s TNT network for being too graphic. But TNT did show the powerful miniseries “Andersonville,” directed by John Frankenheimer, about an infamous Confederate Civil War prison camp.

The broadcast networks barely competed with cable and pay-cable when it came to making movies, but CBS did score movingly with “The Boys Next Door,” an unlikely tragicomedy about four mentally impaired men living in the same house. ABC offered “Dead Man’s Walk,” a worthy and watchable “prequel” to “Lonesome Dove.” And Fox gave us the most exhilarating TV movie of the year, “Once a Thief,” dazzlingly directed by Hong Kong action king John Woo.

Not a single new network series introduced in 1996 had the innovative impact of an “ER,” a “Seinfeld,” an “NYPD Blue” or even a “Friends.” Most of what came and went was junk.

Unfortunately, many of the more malodorous mediocrities have remained on the air, including “Men Behaving Badly” and “Mr. Rhodes,” new lows even for NBC, and “Ink,” that rank clinker on CBS. Hollywood and the networks have a long, long way to go if they’re going to produce programs we all yearn to see sharper, brighter, clearer and wider.