History of Lois and Clark

Since Sunday is the most watched night of television in the U.S. market, FOX felt it had nothing to lose by putting The Simpsons in the 8 o'clock time slot. Ironically, this cartoon with its dysfunctional family values and sardonic sense of humor became the young adult demographics winner and rapidly became the ratings winner of the 8:00 to 8:30 time slot. The only thing that kept FOX from winning the entire hour was their failure to pair The Simpsons with a show that could hold its lead-in.

"Hanging by a thread," is how TV Guide described Lois and Clark's status in the ratings. The revamp had been such a failure that not only did it not attract male viewers, but the series fell twenty ratings points from its second season debut to the midpoint of the season.

The only highlight of this grim era came when someone discovered that a picture of Teri Hatcher wrapped in Superman's cape had become the most downloaded image on the Internet. There was something appealing and risqué in what the fantasy image implied.

A representative from Warner Bros. appeared on-line at Prodigy during the dire low ratings days of second season. His job was to attempt to find out what fans truly wanted and to assure them that changes they might find favorable were being implemented.

The bad situation caused by ABC's revamp apparently prompted the studio itself to move the show back to a relationship-centric format. It's ironic that the episode that would turn the ratings around for Lois and Clark was titled "The Phoenix," the legendary bird that died and rose from its own ashes to live again.

The impact "The Phoenix" had on Lois and Clark was more than just a matter of raising the ratings back up the twenty points it had lost during the revamp. The demographics proved that men who had refused to watch a superhero show were more than willing to tune in a romantic comedy to see a regular guy like Clark Kent win Lois Lane away from the superhero. It never occurred to ABC that few men could empathize with Superman, but almost every man knew what it was like to be Clark Kent.

The true test, of course, was whether or not those who tuned in to see Clark Kent ask Lois out on a date would keep tuning in to watch the progress of the nascent romance. The answer was a resounding yes.

Lois and Clark became so successful at this point that its reruns were beating first run episodes of seaQuest DSV and nearly toppled the Sunday champ Murder She Wrote in terms of "per million" viewers. Neither show would be returning to Sunday night the following season

The second season finale began with Clark determined to tell Lois the truth, that he also just happened to be Superman. Unfortunately, whenever Clark tried, the plot intervened to prevent the revelation. Inexplicably, when he finally did have an uninterrupted moment to tell Lois, he proposed marriage instead.

It was more than the plot line that conspired against Clark's wishes to tell Lois the truth. ABC, obviously not learning its lesson from the revamp fiasco, forbade the producers from writing a revelation. To quote an ABC executive, "We wanted to keep Lois blissfully in the dark."

While "blissfully in the dark" would be an apt description of ABC, especially when it came to knowing the true appeal of Lois and Clark, the writers, producers and even the stars of the series were adamant about Lois being let in on the secret Part 5