This article appeared in The Daily Telegraph and online in the Electronic Telegraph <URL:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/>, at the bottom of the UK news section.
15 November 1996
Headline: Lifeguards flounder in the bay
Story: SATURDAY afternoons may never be the same again for the millions of male fans of Baywatch. The television series that has provided a little light teatime lechery for young and older males after the football results on ITV for the past six years is being ditched mid-series after this Saturday's episode.
It will return, says ITV, but the company cannot say exactly when. At first glance, ITV's decision to pull the next five episodes might seem extraordinary. Baywatch and its principal star Pamela Anderson have achieved a certain notoriety in six years on the screen.
They have been discussed in Parliament and fallen foul of an EU directive. Miss Anderson has become the unchallenged Number One sex goddess of the 1990s, in the mould of Jayne Mansfield and Raquel Welch.
She has become public property, denounced by feminists and fawned over by the likes of Richard Branson - who designed Virgin's latest cola bottle in the shape of her curves and even starred alongside her in one episode. Her image has been pinned up in a thousand garage workshops, and Baywatch has been banned (during the month of Ramadan) in Indonesia.
Across the nation, or so one would suppose, many houses fall silent at 5.20pm on Saturdays as those of a laddish disposition settle down to watch the opening shots of each episode: for 50 seconds as the credits roll, Pamela, her leading male co-star David Hasselhof and the other bronzed members of the "Los Angeles County Lifeguards" run down Venice Beach in their red swimsuits in slow motion, their collective pneumatic parts bouncing along in time to the opening music.
What follows is invariably trash - a variant of just one story in which a drowning boater/swimmer/surfer is rescued. But it has proved compulsive trash in this country and beyond. Baywatch's producers claim the series has become the biggest-ever television success story with each episode seen by one billion viewers in 142 countries, including even Mongolia, which has no coastline.
Last year, a study of newspapers worldwide discovered that Ms Anderson, born 28 years ago in British Columbia, scored more column inches than any other Canadian. Indeed, she received more column inches than Canada itself.
Each Saturday afternoon, dressed up as a children's programme, Baywatch sells an all-American fantasy of beautiful bodies and the great outdoors. However, while Baywatch and Pamela Anderson - a Playboy cover girl for a record six times - have gradually been entering the national language, so viewers in Britain have slowly but surely turned off.
Baywatch is being pushed off the screen by ITV because they fear losing Saturday teatime viewers in their droves to BBC1 which will be showing The Simpsons, the cult American cartoon series, from Nov 23. Though The Simpsons has already been shown in this country on BSkyB, the BBC has bought more than 60 episodes to show at 5.30pm, against Baywatch.
The reaction at ITV has been like a small earthquake. Although the company offered a number of explanations yesterday for suspending the last five episodes in the current series, a senior executive finally admitted that they were scared of The Simpsons.
From Nov 23, ITV will replace Baywatch with the hugely successful American children's series Sabrina The Teenage Witch, about a young girl who discovers she has magical powers when she reaches her 16th birthday. It is quite an irony. Ms Anderson has been chased off British screens by The Simpsons, the ultimate dysfunctional, badly-behaved, nightmare American family led by anti-hero Bart Simpson.
What happened to Baywatch, now in its seventh series in this country? For all its sex appeal, perhaps viewers have seen through its candyfloss vacuity after all. Three years ago, British episodes were attracting up to 10 million viewers. Last year, this had fallen to seven million. This year it is six million. Blind Date, which shows 90 minutes later on ITV, has been drawing 13 to 14 million viewers.
Liam Hamilton, director of broadcasting at London Weekend Television, one the companies that bailed out Baywatch when it almost hit the financial rocks six years ago, explained yesterday that ITV had decided to bring Sabrina, scheduled to start near Christmas, forward by five weeks to fight the BBC head-on.
"It was a difficult decision," he said. "Baywatch on its own is not going to be able to hold off The Simpsons. We had to decide whether we could afford to let The Simpsons establish itself or to go in right at the start on an equal head-to-head basis with Sabrina."
Baywatch fans will have to await the outcome of that battle - probably until Easter at the earliest - before ITV will decide when it should resume. "Baywatch will return. I'd be absolutely stunned if it doesn't," said Mr Hamilton. "It would have to take not one but several more successful shows to bounce it off altogether."
Eric Last, November 15th 1996