Ten million people are not enough.
Every week, that's about how many people tune in to watch ABC's highly acclaimed, yet low-rated "My So-Called Life.""That's a lot of people, but it's not so many people by our standards," said ABC Entertainment President Ted Harbert.
And if a whole lot more don't start watching - and quickly - the future for this gem of a show is grim. Its final episode of the season airs Thursday, and whether it will ever return to the ABC schedule is an unanswered question right now.
And all this uncertainty for a program that even Harbert describes as "art." A show that has developed an almost fanatical following 10 million viewers strong.
A thoughtful, involving show about a 15-year-old girl (Claire Danes) her friends and family. A show that's about something, that pulls at your heartstrings, that makes you think.
Winnie Holzman, the co-executive producer who created the show and wrote many of its episodes, bemoaned the fact that 10 million viewers isn't enough to keep a show on the air.
"I feel a certain responsibility to the people that do watch my show . . . and are touched by it, reached by it," she said. "And I don't consider them nobody. To me they're important. And I don't care if they're only 10 million strong. I perceive them as important."
And among the devoted fans of the show is none other than Har-bert himself.
"It is one of my favorite shows in a long, long time," he said. "And reports of its cancellation and demise are premature and untrue."
(Harbert went so far as to insist that his publicity staff schedule a last-minute press conference with the "My So-Called Life" cast and producers so that TV critics would have one last chance to hype the show for him.)
He said no decision will be made until May, when the network announces its fall schedule. "And, boy, would I love to find a way to bring that back. . . . It's really wonderful television," Harbert said.
Whether he can actually find a way is problematic. The feeling among "Life" cast members is that Harbert is meeting resistance from his corporate bosses at Capital Cities/ABC.
"This ends up being the toughest decision a network has to make - just as CBS had to make with `Brooklyn Bridge' or NBC with `I'll Fly Away.' How long does it take?" Harbert said.
Harbert added that he doesn't expect "Life" to be a top-10 hit, but he did expect it to do better than finish fourth in its time slot. And that, while he continues to hope the show can build an audience, he isn't convinced it will.
"Would I love it to be true? You bet," he said. "We just have to make a gut call in May as to whether or not we think that can happen. I just don't know the answer.
"I do know that many people have watched it and decided they don't like it. I don't know if that's because of the time period or just maybe it's too tough a watch for some people. But there's no method on earth to prove that in time more will come."
And "My So-Called Life" can be tough to watch. The subjects it has dealt sensitively with include homelessness, alcoholism, teen sex and homosexuality.
"We ran into this similar problem when we were doing `thirty-some-thing,' " Winant said. "This kind of storytelling really demands that an audience sit forward and pay attention. I think people have been conditioned not to come to television anymore with the notion that they are to sit forward and pay attention. They've been trained to sit back and let the tube entertain them.
"And I think there's a place - matter of fact, I think there's a need for a show that demands that its audience sit up and pay attention."
There has been some criticism that "My So-Called Life," particularly in its first episodes, was too dark and too moody.
"In the beginning I wanted to make a statement and I wanted to come out hard and I wanted to get people's attention," Holzman said. "And then I felt like I could start to explore different places in (Angela, the main character). It wasn't like a conscious decision - like, let's lighten her up. The point is she's a girl of 15. And she's got a lot of different sides to her.
"I didn't soft soap the character. So if some people found it in the beginning more abrasive or more intense it's probably because I was doing something as a writer."
At the same time, Holzman said she was more than a bit surprised to see her show criticized for being too dark.
"I was really shocked, because I watch TV," she said. "I know who's on TV. And Charlie Manson gets onto (prime-time news magazines) and so does Jeffrey Dahmer. And so does every serial killer get his hour on TV. And I find that dark and depressing and I don't care who knows it.
"I mean, I don't find the inner workings of a teenager dark and depressing. I find it of interest."
The producers and cast members point to the show's difficult time slot - Thursdays at 7 p.m. - as the primary cause of their problems.
"(Seven) o'clock on Thursday night is not a good time for a serious drama," said executive producer Marshall Herskovitz. "But when you're doing a show that is demanding, that is intelligent, that is sophisticated and it's up against a show that is sophisticated and intelligent and already well-established, you're doomed at that time.
"The problem is we're at a network that's very successful right now and doesn't really have any other time slots to give us this season."
That is indeed a problem. "My So-Called Life" is, in a way, a victim of ABC's success. Because the network is doing so well with news magazines and "NYPD Blue" in the 9 p.m. time slots, there's no opening there for "Life."
(And when "Life" aired on a rerun on a Tuesday night at 9 p.m., its share of the audience jumped 6 points.)
"I certainly take the rap on the discussion on whether or not this is the appropriate or best time period for the show," Harbert said. "Is it probably the best time period? No.
"Do I have another one that's better? No."
The producers and cast of "My So-Called Life" haven't given up hope that their show will return in the fall and that it will eventually find an acceptable level of viewership.
"Historically, there have been many shows that have performed poorly in their first season and then gone on to become actual big hits their second year or thereafter," Herskovitz said. "Ironically enough, our great competitor, `Mad About You,' was one of those shows."
Other shows that fit that category include everything from "All in the Family" to "Cheers" to "Hill Street Blues" to "Seinfeld."
The producers point to a surge in support from letter writers and through the Internet. "My So-Called Life" receives far and away more support from the computer crowd than any other show on television.
"There's a tremendous passionate support of this show . . . in terms of what's going on in America Online and various support groups that have started up independently of us. When you have people supporting a show that passionately, and you have what is obviously a real problem with a time slot," Herskovitz said.
Harbert acknowledges the strong support the show has received from its fans.
"I go get on America Online sometimes and talk to some of the people that are out there, and the passion is just amazing," Harbert said.
What makes the impending doom of "My So-Called Life" so hard to take is that this is the sort of quality television viewers keep insisting they want to see.
"I doesn't make any sense to me," Danes said. "I mean, I don't know how the Nielsen system works and I can't help but take it a little personally because we work so hard on something - we want everybody to love it."
And, to those involved, the ratings seemed just unreal.
"I was living in an office that was being deluged with incredible mail. Just incredible mail," Holzman said. "Mail that really touched my heart. Onlines and E-mails and faxes that were pouring in. And that's why I stopped caring about the ratings."
While the show's share of the overall audience is only 11 or 12 percent, its share of teenagers and twentysomethings is more like a 28.
"And those are the people who, so far, have been passionate supporters of the show," Herskovitz said. "And that's a lot of people. And what we get from them is that we are in some way affecting their lives. And that is much more meaningful to us than raw numbers."
Herskovitz pointed out that even a top-rated show like "Seinfeld" attracts only maybe 34 percent of the audience.
"That means that 66 percent of the audience is very happily watching something else at the time," he said. "We're not asking for everybody to like us. We don't need for everybody to like us. That'll never happen. And that's not important."
"Maybe after some time, America will see the worth of it," said co-executive producer Scott Winant."Not everybody. Maybe one out of four people will see it and will be grateful they can tune in and see something that challenges them."
There have been reports that, should ABC cancel "My So-Called Life," it could end up on cable's Lifetime channel.
"If we were canceled by the network, I think obviously we would explore other avenues for the show. We would have to," Herskovitz said. "But it's premature for any discussion of that now. It's not something we're thinking about or talking about."