Young Viewers

The premiere of Over There, cable channel FX's drama about the war in Iraq, was seen by 4.1 million viewers Wednesday night, making it one of the 10 highest-rated debuts in the history of basic cable and the highest rated series of the night on cable TV. The series from Steven Bochco and Chris Gerolmo, the first prime-time drama to depict an ongoing war, scored with young viewers drawing an audience of 2.4 million viewers 18 to 49 years of age. ...

A few years ago, the History Channel was best known to some as a punch line on HBO's “The Sopranos.” Remember mobster Tony Soprano sitting alone late at night in his New Jersey McMansion eating ice cream and watching World War II documentaries about Adolph Hitler and Winston Churchill? These days, no one is laughing at the History Channel - not with audiences like the 13.1 million viewers who tuned in last Sunday for the first two hours of “The Bible,” a 10-hour miniseries that runs through Easter Sunday.

A few years ago, the History Channel was best known to some as a punch line on HBO's “The Sopranos.” Remember mobster Tony Soprano sitting alone late at night in his New Jersey McMansion eating ice cream and watching World War II documentaries about Adolph Hitler and Winston Churchill? These days, no one is laughing at the History Channel - not with audiences like the 13.1 million viewers who tuned in last Sunday for the first two hours of “The Bible,” a 10-hour miniseries that runs through Easter Sunday.

As president of the new CW network, Dawn Ostroff has what some might call the mission impossible of network TV: attracting 18- to 34-year-old viewers to her channel. That's the demographic everyone in television wants, but the rest of the TV industry is only part of the competition. With young adults, programmers must also battle -- or find ways to work with -- the Internet, which is claiming more of that audience's time. On TV The CW network launches with America's Next Top Model tonight at 8 on WNUV (Channel 54)

Cable channel FX has found a ratings winner in Black.White., a new reality series featuring middle-class families switching racial identities with the help of Hollywood makeup experts. The series produced by rapper Ice Cube and documentary filmmaker R.J. Cutler drew the most young viewers for a premiere in the history of cable TV Wednesday night. (Its audience of 2.8 million viewers 18-to-49 tied MTV's The Osbournes premiere on March 5, 2002. The 18-to-49 demographic is the most desired in television.

On one of the most competitive nights of the television season, the two-hour finale of Donald Trump's The Apprentice crushed the competition Thursday and became the highest-rated regularly scheduled program of the year with young viewers. Up against three of the highest-rated series on television - American Idol, CSI and Survivor - The Apprentice finished first overall with an average-minute audience of 28 million viewers. (By way of comparison, The Academy Awards had an average minute audience of 43.5 million viewers, while the Super Bowl had 90 million.

"Going Places" is not as silly as it may seem on first premise.The new ABC sitcom, which premieres at 9:30 tonight on WJZ-TV (Channel 13), is about four young people working together in Los Angeles on their first jobs in television. The two men and two women also live together in a fabulous house in Malibu.The four are Charlie (Alan Ruck) and Jack (Jerry Levine), two brothers who just arrived from Chicago; Alex (Heather Locklear), who is from Colorado, and Kate (Hallie Todd), who has been living in L.A. a while.

IF TELEVISION had a golden age, when would it have been?Many nostalgic people with flawed memories date it around the time Edward R. Murrow was making a legend of himself in the '50s. The legend, sadly, comes across as a fuzzy, pompous bore when rerun today. The situation comedies of the '50s cause the eyes to glaze before the first commercial.There followed in the '60s and '70s the glory days of broadcast networks, when they were overstaffed, spent money like drunks, killed good shows like homicidal maniacs, owned the airways, owned the Federal Communications Commission as well and first started paying their anchors seven-figure salaries.

From the culmination of Fox's American Idol, to a two-hour season finale of ABC's Lost, May sweeps and the TV season will end tonight with a big bang of spectacular, head-to-head programming. But more impressive than the prime-time lineup is what it represents: For the first time in a decade, network television will conclude a season with more viewers 18 to 49 than it had the year before. Though small, the increase halts the erosion of network TV's most lucrative audience - thanks to series like Lost and Idol.

In a persistent irony of television news, most broadcasts fill their air time with what amounts to visual filler, comprising footage taken long after news has happened.Thus, more often than not we see accident scenes only after the accident, with people milling about, body bags being loaded into ambulances and lots and lots of "talking heads" delivering "sound bites."Ah, but now the average viewer can make television with a compact camcorder. And the popularity of ABC's "America's Funniest Home Videos" made it inevitable that newsier home videos would get their own show.

As the victorious Taylor Hicks warbled his new single on the American Idol finale last night, Fells Point resident Jamie Sienko and her girlfriends were watching in style. The 27-year- old teacher had persuaded her boyfriend to let them use his home movie theater with the stadium-style seats; they had an enviable view of the surprise Prince appearance, Kellie Pickler eating escargot in an ill-advised comedy bit and runner-up Katharine McPhee bravely smiling. But two lucky invitees to the party sent their regrets, and not because they were too busy for television.

As the new CW network prepares to unveil its fall lineup next week, the way that African-Americans are portrayed on TV hangs in the balance. The fledgling network, formed by the merger of the struggling WB and UPN broadcast operations, is expected to announce a fall season aimed at young viewers and anchored by series such as WB's Gilmore Girls and UPN's Veronica Mars. Unlikely to be on the roster, industry insiders say, are several of UPN's eight African-American-themed sitcoms, including shows such as One on One and Half & Half, which now dominate the network's prime-time viewing hours on Monday and Thursday evenings.

Cable channel FX has found a ratings winner in Black.White., a new reality series featuring middle-class families switching racial identities with the help of Hollywood makeup experts. The series produced by rapper Ice Cube and documentary filmmaker R.J. Cutler drew the most young viewers for a premiere in the history of cable TV Wednesday night. (Its audience of 2.8 million viewers 18-to-49 tied MTV's The Osbournes premiere on March 5, 2002. The 18-to-49 demographic is the most desired in television.

The premiere of Over There, cable channel FX's drama about the war in Iraq, was seen by 4.1 million viewers Wednesday night, making it one of the 10 highest-rated debuts in the history of basic cable and the highest rated series of the night on cable TV. The series from Steven Bochco and Chris Gerolmo, the first prime-time drama to depict an ongoing war, scored with young viewers drawing an audience of 2.4 million viewers 18 to 49 years of age. ...

From the culmination of Fox's American Idol, to a two-hour season finale of ABC's Lost, May sweeps and the TV season will end tonight with a big bang of spectacular, head-to-head programming. But more impressive than the prime-time lineup is what it represents: For the first time in a decade, network television will conclude a season with more viewers 18 to 49 than it had the year before. Though small, the increase halts the erosion of network TV's most lucrative audience - thanks to series like Lost and Idol.

I AM 19 YEARS OLD. I grew up with video games and a short attention span. I can call anyone, anywhere, on a cell phone. I can talk to my friends across the country online. I can find any information I want. I can watch anything I want. I can get news from any source I want. So, understandably, there is a reason why I do not watch the local news. It is worthless. In a survey conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts, nearly half of the local journalists polled said that local journalism is heading in the wrong direction.

NBC announced its fall schedule yesterday and there was good news for fans of quality drama: Rookie series "I'll Fly Away" and "Reasonable Doubts" were renewed. There was good news for fans of Norman Lear: His political satire "The Powers That Be" won a spot.But there was bad news, too: The sleaziest reality show yet, "I Witness Video," which features amateur videos of real-life murders and beatings, is going to be on every Sunday night at 9 come fall.Overall, demographics will be the name of the game at NBC next year.

Baby boomers are about to get a shock. For the first time in their adult lives, they are not going to be the center of attention for television programmers and advertisers.And that means, starting this summer and accelerating this fall, boomers are no longer going to be the engine driving popular culture -- with their generational tastes, interests and shared memories celebrated above all else on the tube.The new darlings of Madison Avenue and Network Row are persons in their 20s -- the group that advertisers have dubbed the baby-bust generation and that TV executives are talking about when they say they want "young viewers."

On one of the most competitive nights of the television season, the two-hour finale of Donald Trump's The Apprentice crushed the competition Thursday and became the highest-rated regularly scheduled program of the year with young viewers. Up against three of the highest-rated series on television - American Idol, CSI and Survivor - The Apprentice finished first overall with an average-minute audience of 28 million viewers. (By way of comparison, The Academy Awards had an average minute audience of 43.5 million viewers, while the Super Bowl had 90 million.

OK, television lovers, get out your maps of TV Land, because we have a new locale to chart. It's an island called Glory, and it's somewhere between Dawson's Creek and Jessica Fletcher's Cabot Cove. And, if its architect, Kevin Williamson, can build on the foundation that he lays in tonight's pilot, Glory Island could be a regular weekly stop for millions of young viewers. Glory Days is a new WB series that is part murder-mystery-suspense and part twentysomething relationship drama from the creator of the feature film Scream and the WB teen drama Dawson's Creek.