TV Milking Most Popular Shows

NEW YORK (AP) - Driving to work one day a few weeks ago, Fox entertainment president Doug Herzog took a call from ``Ally McBeal'' producer David E. Kelley, who had an idea for a 30-minute version of the comedy.

A half-hour? Of Fox's most popular hour-long show?

``I literally almost had a heart attack and drove off the road,'' Herzog recalled, envisioning his most important program cut in half.

Instead, Kelley's idea marked the birth of a new age of TV spinoffs.

Fox this fall will air a condensed version of ``Ally McBeal'' on Tuesday nights that will be fashioned from outtakes and episodes from the show's first two seasons. New hour-long shows will continue on Mondays.

Cash-strapped broadcast networks are finding new ways to maximize their standout shows at a time of declining viewership and a landscape cluttered with lookalike programming.

NBC has its own idea, scheduling what amounts to a second version of its popular ``Law & Order'' drama. ``Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'' will focus on particularly heinous crimes.

``I expect to see all of the regulars doing significant work in both series,'' said producer Dick Wolf.

Spinoffs with a character from one show launching another have a long history in television: ``All in the Family'' begat ``Maude,'' ``The Mary Tyler Moore Show'' gave birth to ``Rhoda,'' ``Cheers'' gave way to ``Frasier.''

That old tradition is alive and well. Fox is giving ``Party of Five'' actress Jennifer Love Hewitt her own show in the fall. The WB is spinning off actor David Boreanaz's character from ``Buffy, the Vampire Slayer'' into his own series, and UPN is doing something similar with ``Moesha.''

With the batting average for new shows low and getting lower, the idea is to entice viewers with a taste of the familiar.

``It's designed to get viewers to tune in once,'' said Steve Sternberg, a senior partner at the ad buying firm TN Media. ``Once it gets viewers to tune in once, the show can live on its own.''

The buzzword behind the new spinoffs is ``repurposing,'' or looking for new ways to make money off a valuable asset.

Few properties mean more to a network than a successful series. Yet for years, broadcasters have aired expensive shows once, maybe twice, and never used them again.

``I'm amazed that more of this didn't happen a long time ago,'' said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

Cable networks get more use of their successful properties, partly because they have fewer. Comedy Central, where Herzog used to work, airs ``South Park'' several times a week. HBO does the same with its series, and helped viewers discover hits like ``The Larry Sanders Show'' through marathon showings of different episodes.

Sternberg said he's surprised that networks haven't tried to order more episodes of their successful series. Why not two ``ER'' episodes a week focusing on different characters?

The new spinoffs simultaneously allow networks to fill schedules with proven performers and avoid the costly pilot process, where new series are written, cast and produced with no guarantee they will even get on the air, much less become hits.

``At the end of the day I can talk about the great creative things we're doing here, but we've got to make some money,'' Herzog said.

A subtler kind of spinoff is the way networks use their favorite creative minds. ``ER'' creator John Wells produced a new series for NBC last year, ``Trinity,'' that quickly tanked. But this year he's back on the schedule with two new series.

One of them, a drama about paramedics and firefighters called ``Third Watch,'' is suspiciously similar in pace and style to ``ER'' and even uses some of the same actors.

The prolific Kelley has a new drama, ``Snoops,'' on ABC, which has scheduled it for Sunday nights just before another Kelley show, ``The Practice.'' Fox, which airs the dark, action-packed drama ``The X-Files'' from Chris Carter, has scheduled Carter's new dark, action-packed drama ``Harsh Realm.''

The WB network has ordered a new family drama from producers of its top-rated ``7th Heaven'' and paired the two on its schedule. Even the new show's title is a welcoming message to viewers: ``Safe Harbor.''

Repurposing's risk is that viewers will tire of their favorites. Traditionally, a show's ratings slip when people can regularly see older episodes in syndication. Herzog said he will judge the new ``Ally'' not necessarily by its own ratings, but by how it affects the Monday night show.

If the new spinoffs work, though, get used to them.