TV's Real Survivors

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Burbank, California – September, 2006

There is a saying in the television business that it's easier to keep a show on the air than it is to get one on. That may seem odd given the alarming speed with which many of this season's new network TV entries will start disappearing by November. But, that'll give you an idea of just how difficult and hazardous a road any show has to travel to become a hit. Each year 1000 or more series "pitches" get whittled down to maybe 170 scripts, which get reduced to maybe 80 shot pilots – of which maybe 25 reach your home.

And, by the time they do air, they rarely resemble the "idea" that hatched it.

Murphy Brown, for example, began as a partnership between a pair of husband and wife collaborators.

Diane English would write the script, her husband Joel Shukovsky would executive produce, Jo Beth Williams would star as Murphy Brown, while her husband, John Pasquin, would direct. That was the plan anyway. As history proved, that collaboration never came to fruition. Jo Beth, then a very popular feature film actress, decided it was too early in her career to start doing television and withdrew, taking her husband with her. Candice Bergen stepped in to make television history but not until dubious CBS network executives made her audition for the part. Even then, still unsure that Candice had any comedy chops, CBS only agreed to hire Bergen after English threatened to quit the show if she couldn't have Bergen. Diane had two major hurdles to overcome just to get Murphy Brown on the air, and the truth is, with all due respect to Jo Beth Williams and the original concept, could you see anyone but Candice in that role for 244 episodes?

Suddenly Susan had an even more torturous route to the promised land of everlasting life in syndication.

Susan took life in the winter of 1996 as a dramedy from the pen of Clyde Phillips, who was coming off a modest hit Parker Lewis Can't Lose on Fox. NBC had commissioned the script but was lukewarm about the show's prospects after reading Phillips' first effort. The network agreed to give the show a second look if Phillips re-wrote it as a multiple-camera comedy that could be shot in front of a studio audience. It was a format Phillips had never written before. The resultant script brought another resounding yawn.

It's first & goal for Friday Night Lights. It's on the NBC fall schedule. Now, can it score with viewers?

Not one to give up, then Warner Bros. President Tony Jonas (subsequently fired) asked then NBC President Warren Littlefield (subsequently fired) what would it take to get a pilot order for Suddenly Susan. Without blinking an eye Littlefield said, "Get me Julie Warner (an upcoming actress NBC wanted to ‘be in business with') or Brooke Shields." After Julie Warner passed (to do Chicago Sons) Phillips took Shields to dinner and convinced her of the merits of his project. With Shields firmly signed to a contract, NBC and Warner Bros. promptly fired Phillips. Well, they didn't officially fire him – yet – but they did take creative control of the show away from him. (He would ultimately leave the business.) In came Anything But Love veteran show runners Jane Milmore and Billy Van Zandt. They were given the almost impossible task of writing a new script, then casting and mounting a show in less than three weeks. By now it was now early April. Somehow all the deadlines were met. Brooke would be a junior book agent in Palo Alto, California; Phil Casanoff, who had starred in the mini-series Sinatra as Old Blue Eyes himself, was cast as Brooke's boss/love interest. Tony award winner Elizabeth Ashley was cast as the agency's most important client – a diva author of romance novels. Maggie Wheeler, the whiney Janice from Friends, was cast as Brooke's best friend, and Nancy Marchard was cast as Nana.

After three arduous 14-hour days of shooting and a week of around-the-clock editing, the show was delivered to the network on May 8. Within 48 hours Suddenly Susan was given the prime time slot in all of television, 9:30 on Thursday following Seinfeld. Its success was secure. There was only one problem. Although NBC loved Brooke, the network hated the show. Despite their Herculean efforts, Van Zandt and Milmore were fired. "Their comic sensibilities were wrong." Casanoff was "too old" to be Brooke's love interest. Goodbye. Wheeler and Ashley were "too over the top." See ya. Only Marchard would have returned with the series, but she was suffering from terminal cancer and could not be insured. HBO didn't care about Nancy's health, and she wanted to work, so David Chase cast her as the tortured Mafia mother, Livia Soprano, in his new series The Sopranos. Nancy won an Emmy in the months leading up to her death in what would become the signature role of her career. Marchand was an actress in a role she otherwise would not have been available to take. The Sopranos' gain was Susan's loss.

Into the void created by the departure of Van Zandt and Milmore came Gary Dontzig and Steven Peterman, the writers who had taken over Murphy Brown from Diane English during the "Dan Quayle" year. Dontzig and Peterman had their own "vision" for Susan. The book publishing house became a magazine (greater urgency) and Judd Nelson, Kathy Griffin, Nestor Carbonell, David Strickland and Barbara Barrie would become television mainstays. While a new pilot script was being re-conceived for the third time and re-shot for a second time, the joke around the set was that the name of the show should be changed to Eventually Susan.

Like Murphy Brown and The Sopranos, most successful shows benefit from some lucky, unforeseen change of fate that causes it to break out. In the pilot episode of Hill Street Blues, Detectives Hill and Renko, played by Mike Warren and Charles Haid, were shot and left to die in a pool of blood as the closing scene faded to black. That spring viewers response to both characters was so overwhelming that when the second episode aired the following fall, Hill and Renko were in intensive care rather than the morgue.

The Fonz, Urkel and Drew Carey's Mimi were originally conceived as little more than guest stars for one episode. Like Hill and Renko, audience response to them brought about their return, and in the case of Happy Days and Family Matters, the characters created by Henry Winkler and Jaleel White became cultural icons. TV history repeated itself again on George Lopez. We knew going into pre-production that the role of Benny, George's mother, would be the toughest one to cast. The studio and network wooed Rita Moreno long and hard, but to no avail. Finally we turned to the brilliant actress Belita Moreno who was born to play the role. Belita may not have had the "TV Q" of Rita Moreno, but she is as much Benny as Doris Roberts was Maria Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond or Candice was Murphy Brown.

For a show to make it onto the air it must survive politics, egos, threats, infighting, personal agendas, misinformation and deception.

Then it needs to get lucky.

So, as you settle in to sample this year's newest crop of TV shows, be it Studio 60, Smith, Twenty Good Years, The Class, Runaway, Friday Night Lights or whatever, remember, they are not home yet. But they are a heck of a lot better off than those shows that didn't make it on to the schedule.