Texas Is TV Toast

Rick Perry sure blew his chances at the nomination this time around but, had the pundits and his campaign staff taken a look at the Nielsen ratings, they could have saved themselves a lot of money and bother. Because Perry ran touting his home state of Texas. And one thing is clear: If TV ratings are any indication of how America feels about Texas, he would have been better off soft-pedaling any mention of The Lone Star State.

Because Texas, in TV terms, is Nielsen-ratings poison.

Yup, pardner, we’re a long way from the Texas-centric heyday of early television when The Lone Ranger roamed under six flags for nearly eight years. And the Ranger wasn’t Lone way back then, either. Early TV was plum full of Texans.

Some of the series that ran long and tall were Laredo, The Rebel, Temple Houston, The Texan, Texas John Slaughter, The Rounders and Judge Roy Bean, although, truth be told, none of these shows was quite as memorable as The Alamo.

But that’s so yesterday: Except for Dallas and Chuck Norris’ pretending to be a Texas Ranger back in the 1980s (and a still very hip PBS music series set in Austin — a city that makes no claims to the rest of the state and vice-versa), the recent track record for Texas-American-TV is dismal.

The biggest example lately was Friday Night Lights, an NBC series that celebrated Texans’ infatuation with high school football. Critics huddled and fell all over each other praising it; viewers fled the stadium after the first kickoff.

And last season, especially, messed with Texas.

ABC, for example, tried to convince America that Texas high schoolers were interesting, with the show My Generation. It premiered on September 20, 2010 and got axed on October 1, two episodes later.

Also last year: Fox’s oddball cop series set in Houston, The Good Guys, featuring Bradley Whitford and Tom Hanks’ son. That got perp-walked after a short year.

And, talk about secession: The most humiliating Nielsen rejection of Texas was the case of Lone Star, a series that aired only once on Fox and got shelved immediately. Deep in the heart of Texas, that’s gotta sting.

So what’s the matter with Texas, as they say in Kansas? Why doesn’t America want to watch these Texans’ hootin’ and-hollerin,’ ropin’ and shootin,’ rootin’ and tootin’?

Maybe the answer lies in the only two hugely popular and successful series that are set in Texas, and, of course, they are cartoons.

King of the Hill may take a sympathetic view of middlebrow Texans, for instance, but the state seems more pathetic than sym in the adventures of the Hill family. The Hills live in a neighborhood of simpletons and the relatives are, shall we say, a might-prejudiced. It’s redeemed by the main character, Hank, a sweet guy who endures all of it, just as we abide our odd relations around the Thanksgiving table, the ones who back up their arguments with “evidence” off the Internet.

King is the creation of Mike Judge, who hails from a Dallas suburb and knows the downside as well as the charms of his home state. But it is Judge’s other series about Texas that may cause Governor Perry to want to hold his horses when it comes to braggin’.

Beavis and Butt-head, one of the most popular shows ever aired on MTV, not only had a wildly successful run from 1993 to 1997, it’s been revived and is back on the air today. The show features two snickering teenagers in Highland, Texas, who lack ambition, are poorly educated, have no clue when it comes to women, think violence is cool and have the moral compass of toads.

But wait. Mid-season promises TV watchers yet another series set in Texas — the upcoming (and highly touted) ABC nighttime soap, GCB, that showcases folks from Dallas. Could this be the Texas-image savior? Uh, probably not. GCB stands for “Good Christian Bitches.”

No, Governor Perry has a long row to hoe if he thinks the rest of the country wants to be like his home state. If Nielsen ratings are any indication of America’s opinion of the place and he has any chance of endin’ up in the Oval Office, he’d best be hopin’ the eyes of America won’t be upon Texas.

The Cheap Reporter is former deputy bureau chief of TV Guide and TV critic for Los Angeles Magazine.