Since rebranding as a comedy network three years ago, TBS has had great success airing reruns of broadcast comedies like “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Friends.” But it has struggled to produce a signature original show that really took off, such as TNT’s “The Closer” or FX’s “The Shield.”
It looks like the network has finally found that show.
The Wednesday premiere of “House of Payne,” the show from “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” creator Tyler Perry, drew the biggest audience ever for a sitcom debut on basic cable.
The 9:30 p.m. telecast, the second half of a two-episode premiere, set records among several demographics in addition to total viewers, where it averaged 5.82 million.
It was the No. 1 all-time premiere among adults 18-34, with 1.42 million; adults 18-49, with 3.06 million; and adults 25-54, with 2.99 million.
It became ad-supported cable’s top scripted telecast of the year in 18-49s and 25-54s, and also was TBS’s best-ever scripted series broadcast.
This comes after several years of disappointing comedy development at TBS. Shows such as “The Real Gilligan’s Island,” “Outback Jack” and “Minding the Store,” which melded comedy and reality, were all busts.
The original comedy “My Boys” has performed decently, but its ratings fell noticeably after a big debut last fall.
With “Payne,” however, TBS benefited from the huge African-American audience that made “Black Woman” a surprise box office hit two years ago.
Among African American households, "Payne" became basic cable's top-rated program of the year with a 19.9 rating for the 9:30 episode. Some 4.89 million black viewers watched the show, including 2.44 million 18-49s and 2.24 million 25-54s.
The show follows a black family struggling with some of the usual family sitcom problems. Dad is cranky, the son is lazy and the nephew has an annoying wife. But there’s also a lot that’s different about “Payne.” One of the main characters is a crackhead, and there are untypical jokes about child beating, drugs and race.
Though reviews, including one in the black daily The Chicago Defender, savaged the show, it seems unlikely to suffer from the big post-premiere dropoff seen by “Boys” and other recent cable sitcoms, like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on FX.
Ratings for the show actually rose more than 10 percent from the 9 p.m. episode to the 9:30 episode, always a good sign.
But the show's real strength may come from the fact that there just aren’t a lot of shows aimed exclusively at African-American viewers these days.
On broadcast, the CW airs four Monday sitcoms targeting blacks, but that’s down from the two nights of black-focused programming the old UPN ran prior to the merger with the WB.
Gone from primetime as well are sitcoms with black leads, such as Fox’s “Bernie Mac” and ABC’s “My Wife and Kids,” both canceled in the past few years.
These days, the top shows among African Americans tend to be reality ones like “American Idol” or “Dancing with the Stars,” which have black contestants.
TBS, obviously aware of “Payne's” potential appeal among blacks, undertook a huge publicity push, previewing the show for church groups around the country, giving out “Payne”-branded ice pops in several cities, and even sending emails to alumni groups of black colleges to pump the premiere.
Perry, the show’s writer, producer, director and creator, also appeared in the first episode as Madea, the wildly popular lead character from “Black Woman.”
“Payne” could become a model for future cable sitcom launches. It is a first-run syndication show, relatively rare these days for a sitcom. One hundred episodes of the program have already been produced, and TBS paid $200 million for exclusive rights to them through August 2008, at which point Fox-owned stations, among others, will begin to air the sitcom in syndication.
