When is a television success not a success?
When it's not as successful as the network broadcasting it had anticipated.And that's definitely the case with CBS's four-part, eight-hour "Scarlett" last week.
" `Scarlett' was a success for CBS on all levels," said David Poltrack, CBS's executive vice president of research and planning. "It was one of the highest-rated programs of the season and substantially improved upon our household and demographic performance in all of the time periods in which it ran. It provided us with a commanding lead in the November sweeps."
Indeed, based on the performance of the "Gone with the Wind" sequel, CBS appears poised to win the November sweeps.
The network is also poised to lose several million dollars.
Over its four-night run, "Scarlett" averaged an 18.5 rating and a 28 share. (Each rating point equals 954,000 homes, and the share is the percentage of homes actually watching television.) That translates into an average of about 26 million viewers per night.
But, unfortunately for CBS, the network had guaranteed some of its advertisers that "Scarlett" would average a 24 rating and a 36 share. It didn't come close.
When a program fails to meet advertiser guarantees, the network has to "make good" - give those advertisers more commercial spots for free. And CBS itself admitted to the Hollywood Reporter that it would lose between $3 million and $5 million on make-goods.
(CBS also said only about half the commercial time for "Scarlett" - a total of about $35 million in sales - was sold with the 24/36 guarantee.)
As expected, "Scarlett" did very well among women and very poorly among men. It won among women ages 18-49 and 25-54 - important demographic groups for advertisters - while only 9 percent of the male viewers aged 18-34 watched any of "Scarlett" at all.
And most of the miniseries' viewers were over the age of 50 - a group that advertisers won't spend the big bucks to attract.
On the bright side, the final hour of "Scarlett" was the first show this season to be NBC's mega-hit "ER" in the ratings.
On the darker side for CBS, the second-to-last hour of "Scarlett" finished a whopping 4 rating points behind two episodes of "Seinfeld" - the first an original and the second a repeat. And "Scarlett" finished first in only nine of the total of 16 half hours it aired.
And for all of that, "Scarlett" was riding mostly on the reputation of "Gone with the Wind." The miniseries was OK, but certainly nothing to get excited about.
As the ratings indicate.
GOOD NEWS FROM FOX: Come January, "Party of Five" and "Models, Inc" will be swapping nights on Fox.
Beginning Jan. 2, "Models" will be seen Mondays at 8 p.m., while "Party" moves to Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Jan. 4.
This is good news for the excellent family drama "Party of Five," which did much better in the ratings when it was recently aired on a Wednesday following "Beverly Hills, 90210."
It's not necessarily good news for "Models," which gets a tougher time slot. It is a better fit with the "Melrose Place," the show it will soon follow - and the show it was spun off from - but even if "Models" fails, losing this boring prime-time soap won't be much of a loss at all.
And if the move preserves "Party of Five," it's well worth it.
JEERS TO NBC: What, exactly, were the advertising geniuses at NBC thinking when they produced commercials for tonight's episode of "Frasier."
The big dopes gave away not only two of the biggest jokes, but half the plot of the episode.
Why not just promote the episode without ruining the surprise for "Frasier's" viewers?
GET A CLUE: Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" ratings are up lately (though he still trails David Letterman), but his interviewing ability is still negligible.
Not that anyone expects him to be Ted Koppel, but it might be nice if he could hold coherent conversations with his guests.
Instead, Leno has a tendency to stumble around with awkward pauses and a general lack of understanding.
He's also so intent on asking his next prepared question that he often doesn't listen to his guests' answers, leading to time after time when he steps on laughs or comes up looking clueless.
Just one case in point: Last week "Star Trek" star Patrick Stewart appeared with Leno, and attempted to tell a humorous story about how he and "Star Wars" star Carrie Fisher were planning a movie that would combine the two "Star" movie serials.
Leno bumbled all over the place, pressing Stewart for details.
And, most embarrassingly, it was obvious that it never dawned on Leno that it was a joke. He turned what could have been a funny exchange into an embarrassingly inept interlude.
Perhaps Leno would be better off worrying about Letterman less and working on his own deficiencies more.
On the other hand, perhaps after 21/2 years as the host of "The Tonight Show" we've reached the inescapable conclusion that, as an interviewer, Leno is never going to get any better.