Figures, the one time networks don't listen to a focus group, we get 10 years of yuppie crapola:
The Smoking Gun website has posted a copy of an NBC internal report distributed to program executives in 1994 showing that the pilot for Friends received poor marks in audience tests. The show received 41 out of 100 points and was graded "weak," according to the research. "Overall reactions to this pilot were not very favorable," the report began. "Most viewers felt the show was not very entertaining, clever, or original," the report continued and said that "viewing intentions for a series based on this pilot were not encouraging." While teens and young adults "seemed to connect slightly better with the individual characters," older adults found them to be "smug, superficial, and self-absorbed ... and felt they were not really like people they would want to know."
"Not really like people I would want to know" sounds like just about every character on television. NBC was jonesing pretty hard for another hit in 1994, though, even a show that presented the simian David Schwimmer as a romantic lead.
Several years ago (1997), I was in Las Vegas attending a Baptist convention with some friends. We were wandering around, looking for some way to kill time between our morning tipple and our late afternoon binge drunk, and were pulled into a focus screening of a comedy CBS was trying to retool. I'd never heard of it, but gave my helpful feedack anyway. Most of it consisted of comments like, "Sarcastic mother-in-law? Brilliant!" and "Let me commend CBS on yet another sitcom featuring a clueless goof of a husband and an occasionally annoyed but ultimately forgiving wife. This should play well to all three of the Laotian mountain tribes that have yet to sit through something similar."
Of course, I wrote "Clergy" in the space on the form asking for my occupation, so they might not have taken my comments very seriously.
Anyway, that sitcom was Everybody Loves Raymond. I have no idea how much of my advice was taken to heart as I have yet to see an episode. In any event, I apologize for whatever part I played in its continued survival.
Never seen an episode of Everyone Loves Dumbass? You lucky, lucky bastard.