'Boy Meets World' beats 'Dawson's Creek' in the ratings

Last Friday, 8.5 million viewers tuned in for ”Boy Meets World”’s sixth-season finale; that’s 2.3 million more people than saw that week’s ”Dawson’s Creek.” In fact, ”Boy”’s average rating for the season, 11 million, is double ”Creek”’s 5.5 million. So why isn’t the TGIF series’ handsome hunk, Rider Strong, popping up in his own football movie or slasher flick a la James Van Der Beek or Joshua Jackson? Strong thinks it’s because ”World” lacks the hip soundtrack tie-ins and ongoing media attention that surrounds ”Creek.” ”We’re not in everybody’s face,” the 18-year-old tells EW Online. ”Everybody knows about ‘Dawson’s Creek,’ even if they haven’t seen it, but we’re not cutting-edge, or a drama, so that’s not the case with us.”

Although Strong has yet to star in a ”Scream” rip-off or a J Crew ad, don’t feel too bad for him. Along with his teen-mag cover stories and bags of female fan mail, his show has been picked up for a seventh season, he runs his own Northern California-based production company (Redwood Shire Productions), and, lately, he’s begun breaking into more serious mainstream roles. Case in point: last month’s two-episode guest-starring role as a conflicted teen whose father kills his mother on ABC’s ”The Practice.”

Strong got that part even though he wasn’t familiar with the Emmy-winning drama. ”I said, ‘It’s a lawyer show, right?’ and my manager says, ‘Oh My God, I’m going to have to send you some tapes,”’ Strong recalls, explaining, ”I don’t have a TV that works.” If Strong’s ”Practice” role sounds like an extreme departure from his TGIF character, well, it’s called acting. ”It’s a really weird thing, but you can be on a sitcom for a long time, and some people still won’t consider you a real actor,” he says. ”I’ll tell friends about ‘The Practice,’ and they’ll say, ‘Wow, that’s a really good show… You can really act!”’