Thanks Joey,
By happenstance I figured out that Analysis Designer created gadgets that do not have the date range set will display all dates. So as long as there is at least one value in a metric, the metric will be displayed on the report.
See sample code below:
-* File gadget_file_name.fex
-SET &PERSPECTIVE_ID=0;
-SET &OBJECTIVE_ID=0;
-SET &MEASURE_SERIES='0';
-SET &INWH33=0;
-SET &RPT_FLDIN01='IND_ACTUAL_TARGET_DEFAULT';
-SET &RPT_FLDIN02='VAL_ACTUAL';
-SET &RPT_FLDIN03='VAL_TARGET';
-SET &SORTACROSS='TIME_LEVEL03_VALUE';
-SET &REPORT_TITLE='Report_Title';
-SET &WFFMT='HTML';
-SET &THIS_FOCEXEC='PMF_RPT_TMPLT_MEAS_ACRDIM';
-INCLUDE PMF_RPT_TMPLT_MEAS_ACRDIM
WF 7.65. Solaris. PMF 5.11 on Oracle 10g