Next Time, Use a Pencil

When Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen met with reporters in July to discuss their new CBS comedy “Ink,” they likened a television series to pancakes, saying you need to throw the first one away.

Despite that analogy, nobody anticipated that the network, stars and production company would toss out an entire stack.

Yet that’s what happened. CBS announced in late August--three weeks before the show’s scheduled Sept. 16 premiere--that the first four episodes of “Ink” would be scrapped and its arrival delayed until Oct. 21. The show would have a new executive producer, “Murphy Brown” creator Diane English, who would whip up a new creative recipe virtually from scratch.

Re-shooting TV pilots has become commonplace, but to scuttle that many episodes so close to the premiere was virtually unheard of. Doing so cost CBS more than $4 million in production fees as well as untold marketing expenses.

The decision has made “Ink”--already a high-profile project as a central part of CBS’ strategy to rebuild its prime-time schedule--one of the new season’s most analyzed series, a sitcom laced with behind-the-scenes drama.

Immediately, CBS’ competitors pointed to the false start as an illustration of the peril in making star-driven commitments without knowing what the show would be. On the flip side, advertisers generally praised the network for opting not to proceed with a flawed project.

Industry sources, meanwhile, contend that the stars themselves forced the situation because they were unhappy with the early episodes and the show’s executive producer and creator, Jeffrey Lane. Danson and Steenburgen have declined interviews since the decision was made but issued a statement in August saying they were pleased to start over “rather than put on a show that we are all less than thrilled with.”

Trying to mount a new show so quickly has nevertheless prompted some to question the wisdom of undertaking such a challenge, suggesting the series faces handicaps from which it will be hard-pressed to recover.

“This show should go on in January,” says one studio executive. “It’s all crisis management at this point.”

As noted, the stakes are high:

* To CBS, and particularly entertainment division President Leslie Moonves, pairing the Bill Cosby sitcom “Cosby” and “Ink” from 8 to 9 p.m. on Mondays was part of the network’s master plan--using established stars associated with NBC’s heyday to breathe life into its third-place lineup. To land them, CBS raised the ante for talent, committing to 44 episodes of “Cosby” and 22 of “Ink” (the usual new series order is 13) at more than $1 million per episode, nearly double the license fee on most new sitcoms.

* To DreamWorks, the company run by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the show is part of an ambitious attempt to buy into the television business through deals with Danson, Michael J. Fox (currently starring in ABC’s “Spin City”) and Arsenio Hall. DreamWorks previously struck out with one ABC comedy, “Champs,” and is struggling with the ABC drama “High Incident.”

* To Danson, the show marks a return to television--where he starred for 11 seasons on “Cheers”--after an uneven movie career that’s included such inauspicious vehicles as “Getting Even With Dad” and “Pontiac Moon.”

There are even considerations at NBC, which missed out on the deal by playing financial hardball, insisting on partial ownership of the show. “Ink’s” success would give the network a taste of the one-that-got-away second-guessing suffered by ABC after NBC grabbed “3rd Rock From the Sun.” “We made an offer that we were comfortable with,” NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield told an industry gathering in September.

Finally, there is English, who leveraged CBS’ and DreamWorks’ predicament in the deal she was able to strike. Her company, Shukovsky English Entertainment, owns a piece of the show, and English will reportedly make in excess of $100,000 per episode. CBS also agreed to order a pilot she produced, “Lawyers,” for next season.

Many Hollywood pundits see the job as a no-lose situation for English: If “Ink” works, she rescued a troubled show; if not, she was unable to salvage an already-damaged project under remarkable time constraints.

English disagrees but adds wryly: “That’s certainly the spin I’ll put on it if it crashes and burns.”

Actually, English sees considerable career risk in the project. Her track record has been poor since “Murphy Brown,” producing “Love & War” (by no means a major hit) and the short-lived comedies “Double Rush” and “Louie.” In addition, she points out that America loves Danson from his days on “Cheers,” so the show arrives with high expectations.

“If it doesn’t work, I think I do get the blame for it,” she says. “I’m at that place where I’ve had a couple of things that didn’t go the distance. If this doesn’t work, I could really be hurt by this.”

If “Ink” fails, it won’t be for lack of effort. Nothing but the general premise survives from the pilot created by Lane, a former producer on NBC’s “Mad About You.”

The original show featured Danson and real-life wife Steenburgen playing a couple--divorced after eight months of marriage--working together as reporters at the same newspaper. Through unforeseen circumstances, she is made his boss.

Although Moonves told reporters in May (when CBS set its fall schedule) that the pilot was “as good a romantic comedy as I’ve seen,” there were soon rumblings of problems.

James Burrows, who had worked with Danson as producer and director on more than 200 episodes of “Cheers,” left after directing the pilot and one additional episode. DreamWorks indicated that Burrows’ exit had always been planned, but sources hinted of discord on the set.

Burrows is one of the industry’s finest comedy directors, with a resume that includes the pilots for “Friends” and “3rd Rock From the Sun”; he didn’t want to discuss his departure, other than to say, “I love Teddy and we have a long history.” Through a spokesman, Lane declined to comment.

Though many advertisers picked “Ink” as a likely hit because of its creative elements and positioning Mondays behind “Cosby,” the show received a drubbing at CBS’ preseason event for the nation’s TV writers in July.

Critics took the pilot to task for some minor transgressions, among them having typewriters (instead of computers) in the newsroom. One writer told a mildly annoyed Moonves during his question-and-answer session, “I think you need to retool that show pretty seriously.”

During a separate session, Danson and Steenburgen, who are also executive producers, called the pilot “a learning process.” Danson suggested that pilots are seldom a true gauge of a show’s potential (hence the pancake analogy), indicating that the aspects bothering them were being fixed and subsequent episodes were getting better. Those misgivings apparently didn’t subside entirely, though, and reports persisted that the stars were becoming increasingly frustrated.

Moonves denies that Danson and Steenburgen in particular drove the decision to replace Lane.

“It was all of us simultaneously,” he says. “As you know, at press tour no one was jumping up and down [praising] the pilot. We all came to the same conclusion that what we had wasn’t working, and how do we fix it.”

According to Dan McDermott, co-head of television for DreamWorks, there was first “our collective agreement that the show we were doing was not the one we had gotten into this endeavor for,” resulting in the determination that Lane should leave or at least minimize his role.

At that point, attention turned to English, who, ironically, had been among those who sought to produce the project after CBS made its deal with Danson and Steenburgen.

English, however, was in demand, being courted by Brillstein-Grey Communications to take over “The Naked Truth,” which was moving to NBC from ABC. In addition, she proposed that “Ink” needed to be entirely reworked.

“In conversations with Diane, she was very forthright with what the issues and the problems with the show were,” McDermott says. “She felt that the conceptual problems were so significant we had to go back to square one.”

“I don’t think there’s a line of dialogue anywhere [from the original pilot],” English says. “All the characters are different. Even Ted and Mary’s characters are different.”

The couple in the series have now been divorced 10 years and have a 15-year-old daughter. Steenburgen’s character is a globe-trotting reporter who, having not seen her ex-husband for years, much to his chagrin settles down by joining the newspaper where he works--as his boss. Charlie Robinson, who had been set to play a recurring role as Danson’s barber, now appears regularly as a crime reporter.

Even the names have changed, and Danson, who looked a bit haggard and wore unflattering glasses in the pilot, is now depicted as a star columnist and more of a ladies’ man. (Danson still does without a hairpiece, providing the basis for a running joke about his bald spot that English calls “a nice, self-effacing thing to do.”)

“They’ve turned him into Sam Malone,” observed one source at another network, referring to Danson’s “Cheers” role.

The changes allow the central couple to be newer to each other, English notes, making it “possible to create a little more sexual tension between them, which is imperative in a romantic comedy.”

The show also strives for more of an ensemble flavor. In addition to Robinson (who co-starred in English’s “Love & War”), new members of the supporting cast include Saul Rubinek, Christine Ebersole, Alana Austin and Jenica Bergere.

“Ink” will even be more topical. The first episode, for example, features several political jokes as well as a gag about a Unabomber-type character.

“We are going to try to do what we did with ‘Murphy,’ which is blur that line between fiction and nonfiction,” English says, promising that the show will be “much more involving of the world outside than the original pass was.”

Even with that restructuring, the industry was surprised CBS would completely shelve the existing episodes, which weren’t universally considered a disaster. Sources insist the network wouldn’t have done so had the stars not made clear their reluctance to continue along the lines the show was heading.

For his part, Moonves maintains that the public has become too discriminating for anyone to try to slip a mediocre series past them.

“You can’t close your eyes and say, ‘Gee, I’m going to put this show on the air and maybe I’ll fool ‘em,’ ” he said at an industry event in September.

Once English was in tow, the most serious question became when she could deliver the program. CBS pushed for an October introduction before the November ratings sweeps--a key period in determining local advertising rates. A lengthy delay could also prove embarrassing to the network, with “Ink” billboards scattered all over Los Angeles.

“They were overly ambitious,” says one studio executive, suggesting the date didn’t allow any margin for error.

English recalls a Saturday morning meeting with the stars, Moonves and DreamWorks’ Katzenberg where the “when” of the show dominated the discussion.

“I was lobbying for the first week of November, which still isn’t enough time,” English says. “If there were more time, it would certainly be easier for me.”

DreamWorks executives wanted to postpone the premiere as well but agreed to do the best they could out of deference to Moonves.

“This and the Bill Cosby show were the two big cornerstone pieces of his network, meant to rebuild Monday night,” McDermott says. “It was a huge difference to him whether this show went on in October instead of January or February.”

Since then, the parties have made a joke out of “Ink’s” much-publicized troubles. As a presenter at the Emmy Awards, Steenburgen said her first TV series was just like the movies: “You just keep shooting material and throwing it out till you get it right.” Promos written by English’s staff were shot--the first showing Danson accidentally erasing the pilot, forcing them to start anew.

Holding to an Oct. 21 premiere clearly added a degree of difficulty to the process. Schedules will be so rushed that by the seventh or eighth episode there will be only five days for post-production, leaving no time to re-shoot scenes or change the music.

“Ideally, you want two weeks at the least [for post-production],” McDermott concedes. “The first episode won’t be that hard, but every other episode it’s going to be really difficult.”

English kept some of the show’s existing writers, negotiating deals to free up others under contract elsewhere as consultants. They retired to Martha’s Vineyard to work on the show before Labor Day, sending in the new script Sept. 16--the night “Ink” originally had been scheduled to make its debut.

By late September, six drafts of scripts were in various stages of development and 20 possible story lines had been blocked out. English acknowledges there won’t be the usual luxury of second drafts, polishing or rewriting.

“It’s just going to be a machine gun,” she says. “By Christmas we’ll either have caught up or be found dead in our office.”

Casting was done on the fly, with five days of rehearsal before the Oct. 8 taping (a day after Danson and Steenburgen celebrated their first wedding anniversary). English opened the taping by thanking the audience for coming, telling them about “an amazing four weeks and five days” in which the parties mounted the new show.

The script had undergone considerable tinkering since the draft submitted three weeks earlier. Broad laughter ensued when Danson and Robinson flubbed lines in the opening scenes, but, all told, the night went smoothly, with the filming process running a fairly brisk 2 hours, 45 minutes. Ebersole in particular garnered big laughs as a boozy society columnist--underscoring the desire to make “Ink” an ensemble show.

The issue now is how well “Ink” will perform in the ratings. On the downside, viewing levels for “Cosby” have faded considerably--from a 27% share the first week to roughly 20%--so the lead-in audience won’t be as substantial as it would have been five weeks ago.

Taking a page from another DreamWorks show, “Spin City,” CBS and the production company nevertheless couch any potential negatives associated with the delay as positives.

“We’re looking at this as a blessing in disguise,” Moonves says cautiously, pointing to the run another CBS comedy, the Rhea Perlman vehicle “Pearl,” had in “Ink’s” time slot. “ ‘Pearl’ got more of a look than it would have, and we still feel that ‘Ink’ will get launched.”

McDermott also suggests that “Ink” will benefit from avoiding the new-series crush of September, when more than 30 shows were introduced. Only one other new series premieres this week, with Fox introducing “Millennium” on Friday.

Others say “Cosby” may have received better press because of the postponement.

“It allowed all the premiere focus to be on ‘Cosby,’ ” notes one TV producer. “If ‘Ink’ had gone on the air, a lot of the stories would have been [about] how bad ‘Ink’ was.”

Though the new “Ink” figures to be viewed favorably compared to the original, English believes the show must be judged on its own merits. McDermott also points out that, for all the industry chatter and speculation, the program will be brand new to the one constituency whose opinion really counts.

“After all is said and done,” he says, “the only thing that’s going to matter is if America likes what it sees when people turn on their televisions.”

*

“Ink” premieres Monday at 8:30 p.m. on KCBS Channel 2.