Superb show needs viewers -- or else

By Mike Duffy, TV Critic --
High quality, low ratings.

That's been the unhappy mantra for "Once and Again," the superlative ABC family drama that's been struggling for two seasons to find a large enough audience to keep the cancellation wolf from the door.

The most recent setback for the show? ABC pulled it off the schedule the final two weeks of the February sweeps, preempting "Once and Again" last Wednesday for a special airing of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

Such is the shaky prime-time life for Lily Manning (Sela Ward) and Rick Sammler (Billy Campbell), the divorced, romantically entangled single parents at the center of this smart and emotionally subtle series.

"Once and Again" is back on the regular ABC schedule this week, returning at 10 p.m. Wednesday. But the series ranks only No. 78 for the season in the A.C. Nielsen ratings, routinely losing nearly 25 percent of the audience it inherits from "Spin City" -- so renewal for a third season is looking rather iffy.

Created by the talented writing-and-producing duo of Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, "Once and Again" echoes the intelligence, wit and psychological complexity of the team's previous series like "thirtysomething" and "My So-Called Life."

And ABC isn't exactly the villain. The network has promoted "Once and Again" and given it time to attract viewers to three 10 p.m. weeknight time periods during the past two years.

On another network, the series, which has already earned an Emmy Award for Sela Ward's outstanding performance, might well have lasted only a few months.

The crazy thing about a mass medium like television is that you can be considered a flop even when you're drawing more than 8 million viewers every week. A disappointment in the ratings, perhaps, but "Once and Again" has attracted an intensely loyal -- if modest -- audience that adores the series for its rare excellence and absorbing, sophisticated human drama.

Some of those fans have recently begun a Save "Once and Again" Campaign and are encouraging fans of quality television to write letters of support to: Stu Bloomberg, cochairman, ABC Entertainment, 500 S. Buena Vista St., Burbank, CA 91521.

"Once and Again" fans also can go online and check out www.geocities.com/onceandagainfans/ or www.angelfire.com/tv/onceagain/ for updates.__Detroit Free Press (March 5, 2001)