In what amounts to late middle age in television the CBS comedy “How
I Met Your Mother” suddenly finds itself a hit.
Seven years into its run this
well-regarded series, which returns with a new episode on Monday night, is scoring its best ratings. It is up almost 20
percent this season among the audience that advertisers most want to reach, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, and now
ranks as the No. 8 entertainment show in that category.
Beyond giving comfort to late bloomers everywhere, the
performance by “How I Met Your Mother” is proving that the new ways to watch television can sometimes enhance the old ways.
Two factors changed the trajectory of the show this year: its early seasons became available on Netflix, and repeats began
running on FX, a cable channel with an audience especially well matched to the show’s core viewership.
“It’s very
unscientific,” said Craig Thomas, who created “How I Met Your Mother,” with Carter Bays, “but people have told us: ‘I always
heard your show was good. I caught up, and now I watch it live on TV.’ ”
Mr. Bays, added, “What I heard anecdotally
was that a lot of people went to Netflix and just devoured the first seasons of the show.” Both men spoke by telephone from
their offices in Los Angeles.
At about the same time Netflix picked up the series, 20th Century Fox Television, the
studio that produces and owns the show, revised a deal that originally sold its repeats to the Lifetime channel and also made
them available on the more compatible FX. (Both the studio and FX are owned by News Corporation.) “That really pumped up
awareness of the show,” said Gary Newman, chairman of 20th Century Fox Television.
FX ran a marathon of the series
over Labor Day weekend, another invitation for viewers who had heard good word of mouth. The results for the new season on
CBS were spectacular, with viewership up 30 percent for episodes in September. By contrast several shows introduced about the
same time as “How I Met Your Mother” — including “Desperate Housewives,” “House” and “The Office” — have seen their ratings
erode in later seasons.
All of this was especially important to “How I Met Your Mother” because it is a television
rarity: a completely serialized sitcom. The show’s premise revolves around a father in the year 2030 recounting for his
children the circuitous, obstacle-strewn course of true love that led him to marry their mother.
In the past, when
repeats of popular shows became widely available in syndication, they often contributed — with a few exceptions like
“Seinfeld” — to a decline for the original episodes, an effect of overexposure. Now that trend seems to be
reversing.
Another example is “The Big Bang Theory.” That hit CBS comedy has also reached new ratings heights — up 27
percent over last year — coinciding with the introduction of repeats on TBS. And those repeats have lifted TBS to the top of
the ratings among cable channels.
“When audiences for successful series on networks are a little bit smaller, getting
onto another platform and exposing a show to other viewers brings new people to the original broadcasts,” Mr. Newman said,
adding later, “With all the choices people have now, it just takes longer for a show to break through.”
Brad Adgate,
the director of research for Horizon Media, a firm that buys commercial time for advertisers, noted that sitcoms had a
history of success in syndication, breeding continued success in first run. “ ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘Friends’ or ‘Everybody Loves
Raymond’ have thrived,” Mr. Adgate said in an e-mail. But he added, “With the emergence of DVRs and streaming video,
‘HIMYM’ ” — as “How I Met Your Mother” is often called — “and ‘Big Bang’ could be the end of an era.” He noted that TBS opted
not to bid on the rights for television’s biggest sitcom, “Modern Family,” which will be broadcast on USA instead. “Comedy’s
popularity in playback and streaming video may have diminished its value. Time will tell.”
It took a while for “How I
Met Your Mother” to find a first-run audience. The show survived a rocky period for sitcoms after its premiere in
2005.
“We were mentioned in articles about the death of comedy on television the first couple of years,” Mr. Thomas
said. “We were just sort of hanging on those years. And now we’re around to see the articles saying there’s a rebirth of
comedy.”
It did not hurt that two of the show’s regulars, Jason Segel and Neil Patrick Harris, have emerged as major
stars — with films like Mr. Segel’s “Muppets” and Mr. Harris’s turns as host of the Emmys and the Tonys.
But Nina
Tassler, the president for entertainment at CBS, said the most important factor in the survival of “How I Met Your Mother”
was the continued presence of Mr. Bays and Mr. Thomas. “They’ve crafted the show,” she said. “The longer you watch it, the
more invested you are, and the more intrigued you are about the evolving relationships. But also about the question of where
and how we will finally meet the mother.”
That high-concept premise has been both a challenge and an inspiration, Mr.
Bays said. “The first season was very serialized, and we didn’t take off right away,” he said. “We decided we didn’t want to
get ahead of ourselves.”
So for a few years the show took detours, with characters hooking up, splitting up, meeting
new people, having life adventures that did not always drive the overarching story forward.
“That served us pretty
well for a while,” Mr. Bays said. “But the last few years we’ve put a premium on telling a story that’s really fun to watch
week by week in a cliffhanging, serialized kind of way.”
One reason for the change in focus, he said, was the
awareness that people had changed their viewing habits and were now watching shows on DVD or Netflix all in one
sitting.
“We started writing with that in mind,” he said. “So we could try to make every season an epic movie as
opposed to 24 individual little short films.”
Of course that meant stringing out the show’s conclusion, which Mr. Bays
said they had not had trouble doing. “Very early on we decided how we wanted to show to end,” he said. “That kind of reverse
engineering helps the writing process. You know what each episode has to achieve to get you on that road map.”
With
the ratings up, the incentive to reach the end of the road is diminishing. CBS has already ordered an eighth season, and hit
shows are rarely urged to wrap up soon. “I think we could make the show last longer,” Mr. Thomas said. “It’s not one thing
we’re dealing with. It’s the life stories of these characters.”
Having a show run for 9 or 10 years also means a lot
of stuff can happen to the real people playing those characters. A few years ago Mr. Thomas and Mr. Bays said they realized
that the two actors playing the children, David Henrie and Lyndsy Fonseca, who are occasionally seen on a couch listening to
their father (voiced by Bob Saget) recount the tale, would be vastly changed by the time the show ended.
“David Henrie
is already two feet taller than he was,” Mr. Bays said. So they thought ahead and shot a final scene with the children
several years ago, so they would resemble the ages they were when the show began.
“It’s been many years preparing for
the endgame,” Mr. Bays said. “We want to stick the landing.”
