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A new kind of prime time

MyNetworkTV, a sibling of News Corp.'s Fox, is taking over local station Ch. 38, bringing just two campy soap operas to fill the 8 to 10 p.m. slot six nights a week.

By JAY CRIDLIN
Published September 2, 2006

TAMPA - Every year about this time, the sales staff at WTTA-Ch. 38, the local WB network affiliate, holds an informal office contest to see who can guess which new fall show will be the first to get canceled.

Nothing like a bit of gallows humor to spice up life in the TV industry.

"It's very fun," said WTTA general manager Julie Nelson. "We do it for all networks, certainly not just our own. And we're right about as much as everybody else is."

This fall, though, it's anyone's bet what will happen at WTTA.

The station lost its identity in January when the WB announced plans to team with UPN, creating the new CW network. Gilmore Girls, Smallville and 7th Heaven, among other WB shows, all moved to WTOG-Ch. 44, the new local CW affiliate.

Now say hello to MyNetworkTV, a kid sister to Fox, whose prime time hopes are pinned to a pair of campy, Americanized versions of Spanish-language soap operas airing six nights a week starting Tuesday.

At 8 p.m. is Desire, a saucy serial set in a high-class L.A. restaurant. At 9 p.m. is Fashion House, which trades chefs and waiters for models and designers, and stars where-have-they been actors Bo Derek and Morgan Fairchild. Both shows will air five fresh episodes a week, followed by weekly recaps on Saturday night.

And that's it. That's MyNetworkTV's entire fall prime time schedule.

Clearly, even with the backing of media titan News Corp., which also owns Fox, MyNetworkTV has work to do to lose its status as new kid on the network block.

"We didn't start the year thinking we would launch a new network midyear," Nelson said. "Once you got past the shock, you started thinking, this could only be good. The industry has progressed to the point where people think differently now. Very differently."

What does that mean for MyNetworkTV and WTTA, now known as MyTV Tampa Bay? Let's break down some of the factors that will shape the new network this fall:

THE TELENOVELA FORMAT: One trend this fall TV season is the development of English-language telenovelas, the limited-run melodramas that are so popular on Spanish-language stations like Univision and Telemundo.

ABC's Ugly Betty was adapted from a popular telenovela. So are Desire and Fashion House, which will air 65-episode story arcs over 13 weeks. For both series, Spanish-language scripts were translated and adapted for the U.S. audience. Filming has already wrapped on both Desire and Fashion House.

Paul Buccieri, head of programming for Twentieth Television, which is producing the MyNetworkTV shows, said his studio had been exploring the telenovela concept for more than a year. Twentieth has already purchased enough telenovela scripts to last through the first three years of MyNetworkTV.

The network is hoping that the new series' appeal will cross gender, age and cultural lines.

"If you take what these shows have done in other countries and you extrapolate it over to America, the thing is they tend to cross a lot of demographic barriers," Buccieri said. "It's a genre that many second-generation and third-generation Latinos have grown up on."

Not coincidentally, several MyNetworkTV shows on the air or in development, including Fashion House, star Hispanic actors. Maria Conchita Alonso Desperate Housewives and former Miss Universe Dayanara Torres of Puerto Rico are in series set to debut in December.

Will viewers pass on shows like House, Lost, CSI, Grey's Anatomy and Two and a Half Men, not to mention 24 and American Idol in January, in favor of a campy soap opera?

Nelson says no. She expects fans to tune in two or three times a week, as they do with her station's nightly Seinfeld reruns.

"I don't know too many people who sit down and watch five nights of prime time in a row - not necessarily the same show, any show," she said. "That's just not the way we live anymore."

Buccieri admits it's a "huge commitment" to ask viewers to watch each night. Both series, he said, will make good use of flashbacks and recap shows to catch fans up on everything they've missed.

THE SHOWS: Forget the format. Are Desire and Fashion House any good?

They certainly try to be sexy, with enough love triangles, quadrangles and octagons to give a geometry major heart palpitations. For the most part, they're much more cinematic than daytime soaps - Desire, especially, makes good use of several slick CSI-style visual effects - though the production values still seem a little low-rent. Sort of like, say, 7th Heaven.

Based on early episodes, Desire is the more enjoyable - and potentially more addictive - of the two. The plot: When a young restaurateur (Nate Haden) sleeps with the daughter of a vengeful New Jersey mob boss, he and his chef brother (Zack Silva) hightail it to L.A. to work in a restaurant managed by a man who might be their father. There, they both become infatuated with the owner's daughter (Michelle Belegrin).

If you dig the idea of campy soap opera mindlessness, you may just laugh out loud at Desire's slow-mo sex scenes and dramatic spins toward the camera. You may roll your eyes at the story line, but that's part of the appeal.

Fashion House centers on an aspiring designer (Natalie Martinez) trapped in a loveless relationship. This one has bigger names - Bo Derek stars as an icy fashion maven, and Morgan Fairchild will appear as her rival - but even Buccieri isn't taking it too seriously.

The fun of Fashion House comes from the "over-the-top nature of that show," he says. "We're in on the joke. . . . It's a guilty pleasure."

Guilty, yes. A pleasure? Let's not go crazy.

THE MYSPACE CONNECTION: If you think the name "MyNetworkTV" sounds a lot like "MySpace," you're right.

News Corp. purchased the company behind MySpace.com, the wildly popular online networking site, for a cool $580-million in July 2005. Since then, the "My" brand has seeped throughout News Corp. The Web site for WTVT-Ch. 13 is now MyFoxTampaBay.com. MySpace pages promoting Fox's 24 and FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia are loaded with multimedia content.

Curiously, though, MyNetworkTV hasn't developed a MySpace page to promote either Fashion House or Desire.

It's debatable just how receptive a younger MySpace crowd might be toward a show starring Bo Derek and Morgan Fairchild. Still, why spend $580-million on the greatest word-of-mouth marketing machine on the Internet, then ignore it when the time comes to launch a new network?

"We're definitely thinking about that," Buccieri said. For now, he said, the network is content to promote its wares on its own Web site, MyNetworkTV.com.

THE "NEW KID" FACTOR: The biggest obstacle MyNetworkTV faces is simply that it's the least-evolved network on the air.

For Nelson, of MyTV Tampa Bay, this isn't entirely new territory. Twenty years ago, she helped launch another News Corp. venture - a little network called Fox - while selling ads for a station in Oklahoma City.

"I would make calls back then, and buyers would sort of pat me on the shoulder and say, 'Good luck to you.' They just thought that would go nowhere," she said. "And here we are 20 years later, and arguably, based on the entire News Corp., it's one of the biggest forces of media in the world."

Station executives believe the break from the WB is a good thing. "They've struggled with new programming before," said creative services director Kent Welch, referring to ratings-challenged shows like Gilmore Girls and Smallville. "When was the last time you heard someone say, 'Wow, remember that hit show on the WB?' "

Nelson said that ad sales have gone well so far. She also promised that her station, which is owned by Maryland's Sinclair Broadcast Group, will develop some local programming within the next year. Another local news broadcast, which would be a popular draw for advertisers, is likely.

Today, there's still a big "WB 38" logo in front of the station's Town 'N Country office. The blue paint and MyNetworkTV logo in the building's front hallway still look a little rough. New business cards have yet to be printed.

But the station is already looking toward December, when two more MyNetworkTV telenovelas will replace Desire and Fashion House.

"We're in it for the long haul, and so are they. Everything doesn't hinge on the first 13 weeks," she said. "You watch. Something good's going to happen here."

Jay Cridlin can be reached at (727) 893-8336 or cridlin@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 1, 2006, 09:07:02]