Epic, Timely, Canceled / Even with good ratings, `Dr. Quinn' perishes at CBS' hands

Marvin Kitman (Newsday.com)

JANE SEYMOUR was shocked by the cancellation of her CBS show "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." And so was I.

Traditionally, whatever mealy-mouthed excuses the networks give for dropping a show, it's the ratings, stupid. But "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" didn't have low ratings. Au contraire.

"DQMW" consistently won its time period - 17 out of 22 weeks this season. Despite being buried in the death slot at 8 o'clock on Saturday nights - when, as the prevailing wisdom goes, nobody watches TV anymore - at season's end, it ranked number 54 (out of 113).

I may not have been the biggest fan of Dr. Michaela Quinn - who went out West to tend to the medical and emotional needs of the people of Colorado Springs - when the show debuted with a two-hour movie in 1993. Let's face it, it was no "Lonesome Dove," which won the Old West for TV again. Jeff Sagansky, then CBS chief executive, didn't like it. CBS threw it against the wall in desperation. And it stuck.

It was, observed Ken Scourbys of Brentwood, "the '90s version of Jane Seymour as Barbara Stanwyck in `The Big Valley,' combined with a bit of `Little House on the Prairie' and a touch of `The Waltons."'

But it was a damn good show for what it was. There was wonderful chemistry between the leads, Seymour and Joe Lando, the enigmatic Sully. Theirs was, as TV series go, an epic love story, told against a historic background. The show also was about family values, while dealing with racism, sickness, death, love and homosexuality, topics just as timely now as in the 1870s.

Jane Seymour as Dr. Quinn was a woman ahead of her time, an outspoken champion of liberal and humanitarian causes, a courageous and successful pillar of the community. She is a much better role model for young women today than that cultural leader, Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls, who has been gaining more headlines than the truly aggrieved frontier doctor.

Being British, Jane has tried to keep a stiff upperlip about the insult and financial injury suffered by the inexplicable cancellation. She is not doing anything rude. But I'm mad about it.

The show made Saturday night a time when the whole family could sit and watch television together, without drugs, sex, violence and cynicism. "DQMW" was a time when Cindy Santner from Valley Stream and her 10-year-old daughter, Sara, could watch a show that not only provided good entertainment but was also educational. "I can't tell you how much my daughter has learned about medicine, life at that time and social issues," said Santner.

Good ratings? Good values? With lots of educated, affluent, passionate folks watching it with their kids? What more could you ask of a show?

It still wasn't enough for Les Moonves, the head programer at CBS - that notorious outlaw, "Doc" Moonves, the crazed leader of a gang of network desperadoes who lynched a whole passel of quality shows this fall. Who in their right mind would have strung up "Dr. Quinn," as well as "Michael Hayes," "Brooklyn South," and those comic legends, Bob Newhart and Judd Hirsch in "George & Leo?"

TV executives have turned every time slot into a scene out of "High Noon." "Dr. Quinn" won the shootout, only to be shot in the back as the show rode off for its summer vacation. What an outrage.

To make matters worse, Doc Moonves has been pouring snake oil on the fire, making disparaging remarks about the quality of his audience. The people who watched "DQMW," according to Doc Moonves, are unacceptable. They are, for example, "too female."

He is not a misogynist, as Jennifer George of Virginia Beach, Va., has charged. He also has labeled the audience as "too soft and too rural."

No, Moonves is only, what we used to call back in the 1870s, a hypocrite.

It was only last year that Moonves was swearing that CBS was a "family entertainment network." Forget the idiocies of running after the youth audience, like all the other networks during that disastrous season of 1996, before he took over. Remember "Central Park West?" And now he is back, trying to ignore the past rhetoric, swearing to Madison Avenue that CBS is going after an "urban male audience."

By taking away Dr. Quinn's license to practice medicine on Saturday nights, Doc Moonves has made room in his hip fall schedule for new target-audience programing like the chopsocky "Martial Law." "America's Night of Television" will now become "America's Kickboxing Fightfest."

Will "Chicago Hope" be next? What about that hip (as in hip replacement) "Diagnosis: Murder"? The network could just as easily round up and cancel "Touched by an Angel," "60 Minutes," "Cosby" and the much-loved "Everybody Loves Raymond," all of which went for an older audience than "DQMW."

The notion of CBS trying to reach a new audience that's not "too female, too old, too soft" or whatever weakness it has by turning Saturday night into allviolence viewing could be funnier than some of its new fall sitcoms. "I was raised in Brooklyn," explained Cathy Steinhardt of Wantagh, "and it's hard to believe that young, urban males are going to be lured into staying home to watch the new CBS lineup on Saturdays. Usually they're out on dates or hanging with friends."

What is this obsession with young urban males, anyway? As Judy Trest of San Diego, who has just fallen from the infamous target audience group, explained: "I'm personally doing 90 percent of the shopping in our family, purchasing items for ourselves as well as two adult children and one 7-year-old grandchild. This includes decisions on cars, furniture, electronics, etc. That is three generations. Your younger `target' audience is generally only purchasing for themselves."

There is something rotten about this business at its core. I'm sorry CBS feels they are not making enough money by "wasting" one night of programing for families. My heart bleeds for any corporation that grosses $2.8 billion a year and can't turn a satisfying profit but can overspend $500 million for NFL rights. But why take it out on "Dr. Quinn?"

You know what? I'm beginning to suspect that there is something wrong with Les Moonves. I've been painting him as a good guy, that he was a champion of quality shows, especially when he started the season with "Michael Hayes" and "Brooklyn South." But maybe he is just as bad as the rest of them. He is just another one of those old snake oil medicine men, promising us anything, then making it disappear and giving us the same old thing. If you ask me, someone should file a malpractice suit against Doc Moonves.