ShareThisBy ROB OWEN
How did that get on TV?
It's a question viewers routinely ask while watching new programs at this time every year. But there's rarely a single answer.
However, there are a few key reasons TV shows make it through the arduous development process and onto the set in your living room:
_ Schedule needs: Compatibility can be a priority. "Sometimes you have something on your schedule and need something to go with it," said CW Entertainment President Dawn Ostroff.
_ Deals: "A significant number of shows get on the air because of the commitment to creative people," said David Poltrack, executive vice president of research and planning for CBS Television. "That's the reality of the business. You don't get big names to do a show contingent upon a pilot being successful."
_ Nothing better: "Sometimes you don't have enough choices and you wind up putting something on because you didn't have something else that you really loved," Ostroff confessed.
_ Instinct: "At the end of the day, you have to make a gut call," said ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson. "'Desperate Housewives' didn't test that well, but my gut said it was a great show and you have to give it a shot."
And then there is the most controversial tool in the programmer's toolbox: testing.
Throughout the industry, testing is the most debated element in the decision-making process.
To test a TV show, viewers are recruited to give their feedback on pilot episodes, responding in questionnaires or talking in focus groups.
"I haaaaate it," said Rob Thomas, executive producer of The CW's "Veronica Mars." "Pilots that test well are pilots that have a clearly defined good guy who catches the clearly defined bad guy in the fourth act. Pilots with shades of gray don't test very well."
Other testing truisms: Comedies almost always test higher than dramas. Dogs and babies inflate a test score, particularly among women. Violence and bikinis improve test scores among male viewers but hurt scores among female viewers.
"If you're (an executive) who puts on a low-testing show and it tanks, you're the fool," said Jeff Greenstein, a longtime executive producer on "Will & Grace." "If you put on a high-testing show and it tanks, you go, 'How could we have known?' "
Network executives concede that testing has its limits.
"Testing is never the swing vote," ABC's McPherson said.
"Seinfeld," for example, tested notoriously poorly.
"Some of the funniest things in life make us slightly uncomfortable at first, which is why 'Seinfeld' tested low," said NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly. "People didn't know what to make of it."
Shows are tested in various ways:
_ ABC buys time on unused cable channels, gets guinea-pig viewers to tune in and then has them answer questions by phone later.
_ CBS and NBC have testing facilities in Las Vegas. The thinking is that people visit there from all over America and can offer a better cross-section of the public than ASI, the granddaddy of testing facilities in North Hollywood.
Audience Studies Inc. has been testing TV show pilots since the 1960s. ASI President David Castler and his staff recruit viewers to fill the 48 seats in one of two small screening rooms, where about 150 TV shows are tested every year.
Participants, who are paid $75 for the two-hour session that includes the screening and filling out a questionnaire and/or participating in a focus group afterward, are recruited by random telephoning from a 50-mile radius. Castler said ASI attempts to screen out people who are in the business, but not everyone believes ASI is successful.
Test audiences at ASI watch a pilot on a regular, analog TV screen. Each is given a controller with a dial they can turn to register their reaction within a range that goes from double negative to double positive. A red button can be pushed when the viewer decides he's had enough and would stop watching if at home.
Even Castler is quick to add that testing is no guarantee of a show's success.
"Look for insight, look for direction, look for information. But don't look for something quantifiable," Castler said. "We're here to tell you where the weakness is, what we see as the problems."
Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development for NBC Universal Research, said false positives are common in testing. But, he said, false negatives are not.
"When a program tests below a certain level and goes on the air, I've never seen it work," Wurtzel said.
CBS's Poltrack, widely considered one of the best research gurus in the business, said testing is best used when limiting results to a guide to making a show better.
"We always say, when we deliver the messages, 'This is not our position. We're just passing to you the reaction of the people you have to get to watch your show or you will not have a successful show,' " Poltrack said.
Testing is particularly useful for getting feedback on actors.
Marc Cherry, creator of "Desperate Housewives," said he learned a valuable lesson on casting with the "Housewives" pilot. The actor originally cast to play Gabrielle's gardener, John, was not the hunky Jesse Metcalfe, who ultimately appeared in the show. It was Kyle Searles, who has a recurring role as Mac on "7th Heaven."
"He was actually 17 and he looked it," Cherry said. "The women who tested the show did not understand why (Gabrielle) would have an affair with this boy and risk her marriage because he looked like a boy. So we went and found Jesse Metcalfe with all his muscles and the women said, 'Yes, I would risk my marriage for that.' ... That's what testing is supposed to do, reveal something you didn't figure out for yourself."
(Rob Owen can be reached at rowen(at)post-gazette.com)
