By Gabriel Spitzer

  Through the end of the Cold War, the terms of three presidents, countless floods, earthquakes and locust infestations, two major global conflicts, and the marriage of Motley Crüe’s Tommy Lee, "Baywatch" pulled on all our emotions, real and synthetic.
    But the time has come to say goodbye to our spandex-and-silicone superheroes of the beach.
  Syndicator Pearson Television announced last week that the 11-year-old series would be canceled after this season. The last episode will air the week of May 21.
    Across the sea of history "Baywatch" will not be remembered as a tidal wave of moral and social epiphany. Yet it will not be rudely forgotten either. At least for several years to come social historians will puzzle, likely into beers, over what it said of its time.
    The show, once touted as the most-watched television program in the world, rode a long wave of popularity that peaked in the mid-1990s, the height of the Pamela Anderson Era.
   Now, as "Baywatch’s" eulogy is written, it’s sort of difficult to see just when that wave crashed. But the whats and wherefores of "Baywatch’s" demise are probably secondary anyway. We’ll always have our memories.
    "You always sort of felt comforted living in America knowing that ‘Baywatch’ was in production somewhere," says Professor Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television.
  Thompson explains that "Baywatch" took us back to a simpler time, a time when TV wasn’t so, you know, serious.
   "This show was really kind of a backward, guilty pleasure right from the start. It looked so much like those '70s T&A shows, yet it started a decade after ‘Hill Street Blues’ and ‘L.A. Law’ changed the way we look at network television.
    "The fact that ‘Baywatch’ so shamelessly provided what we loved about '70s TV revealed that it knew something about viewers," says Thompson.
   Two years ago the show’s producers moved "Baywatch" from Los Angeles, its home of nine years, to Hawaii, where it was renamed "Baywatch Hawaii." The stunt failed to produce a significant jump in ratings; this second season has hovered around a 2.0.
    Each episode reportedly costs around a million dollars to produce, and Pearson says it can no longer afford it.
    "The ratings in the U.S. had slid quite steadily, you could say in line with other syndicated shows," says a wistful Brian Harris, president and chief executive officer of Pearson Television.
   "There’s been a decline in the syndication market of 10-15 percent a year for the last five years. When you’ve got increasing costs for a show that’s been on the air for a long time, and a market fall on the other end, there comes a time when that gap is just too big."
   As recently as last December the show’s producers were talking about stockpiling extra episodes to prepare for a possible writers’ and actors’ strike this spring.
     Those plans have been scrapped.
   "It was getting old, it’s way past its life expectancy. And there is a sense that what ‘Baywatch’ supplied, and we all know what ‘Baywatch’ supplied, is now being given to us on so many other programs—on ‘Temptation Island’ and everywhere else," says Syracuse's Thompson.
   "Baywatch" has been televised in more than 100 countries and has served the U.S. as a valuable, and attractive, ambassador to spread the American way around the globe--or at least America's affection for plastic surgery.
   HumorCentral.com once published a list of things that foreigners learn about America from watching "Baywatch," including: "People in the U.S. look thoughtfully at the ocean for an average of 15 seconds after being told anything of any importance," "Americans never worry about getting enough to eat, but fat people are unreliable and sometimes evil," and "Most American women have abnormally large breasts that are worshipped via close-ups for an average of two minutes and thirteen seconds per hour."
   Abroad is perhaps where "Baywatch" will be missed most. It was, after all, practically built for export.
   "This was the ultimate exportable product. The stories are so simple, and it’s so dependent on visuals. And let’s face it, there’s not much to be translated on this show. You could play that thing on Neptune and people would get it," says Thompson.
   And, of course, there is the immeasurable impact that the program had on the silicone-breast-implant industry.
    Just what that impact might be will remain unclear, at least in the immediate. Calls to the American Association of Plastic Surgeons were not returned.
   It is difficult to talk about "Baywatch" without talking about the genre it spawned—spinoffs, knockoffs and coattail-riders abounded throughout the 1990s, says Thompson.
   "‘Baywatch’ was a whole cultural lifestyle. It became one of the best examples of the new, campy B-television. It was the king of the first-run-syndication cheese show. And there was a place for that," says Thompson.
   As with many great and defunct institutions, "Baywatch" remained more or less the same over the years. That means that watching reruns, which will likely air for many years to come, may not be terribly different from watching new episodes.
   "With these things, you’re never quite sure if they’re in reruns or not. There are a lot of ‘Baywatch’ fans who will miss this story and not realize for a year that the show has been canceled. Given what people watch for, do you really need to make new episodes?" says Thompson.
   Further, Thompson believes that "Baywatch" may never truly die.
   "My prediction is that this is not gone. In 10 or 15 years, there will be a ‘Baywatch’ nostalgia boom. It’s going to have a life like ‘Charlie’s Angels’; it may go off the air but it’s never going away. That kind of cultural currency is not easily gotten rid of," he says.
   We can all take comfort in that.

-Gabriel Spitzer is a staff writer for Media Life.

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