Money Speaks Louder Than Good Ideas

When you write about television, people often assume you know a lot more about things than you actually do.

In just the last few weeks, friends and co-workers have asked the following questions: Aren’t the “Friends” gang getting a little old to be hanging out together in those apartments? Can anyone really follow the convoluted conspiracy “mythology” on “The X-Files” at this point? Isn’t Kathie Lee Gifford--who announced plans to leave her syndicated morning show--a bit of a hypocrite for attributing the decision to protecting her family from the media, when she’s the one who chose to make her kids part of the act?

“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” has prompted its own flurry of inquiries, among them: Isn’t three nights a week a little much? Don’t they risk running out of silly questions, if not stupid people? And why does Regis Philbin really need to hang onto his day job, unless he’s just looking for an excuse to get out of the house?

Other unsolved mysteries worth pondering include how NBC can shamelessly run promos hinting at major breakthroughs in the Niles-Daphne relationship on “Frasier” when nothing much happens, why “The Simpsons” plots seem to grow more outlandish, and when someone is going to notice that “Walker, Texas Ranger” is pushing retirement age and should segue to a less dangerous desk assignment.

These are all good questions, and honestly, I can’t answer any of them. In fact, I couldn’t even explain at a party recently whether it was staged when someone threw a bra at Kathie Lee during her guest-host stint on “Late Show With David Letterman.” (It turned out to be a stunt by one of those zany radio stations that have yet to evolve above the level of plant life.)

What I can say, with some certainty, is that these questions have virtually nothing to do with the life-cycles of the programs involved--or any TV program, for that matter, if it happens to be a ratings hit.

Fans often forget that television shows are not just the place where they find cuddly characters with which they spend a little time each week. Rather, each series is an ongoing business concern, and how long they last has very little to do with art and a whole lot to do with commerce.

Producers and actors, of course, insist otherwise. Read interviews and they invariably talk about creative vision and how they have a finite number of stories to tell and fully exploring the emotional depths of characters, yada yada yada.

This all sounds terribly impressive, right up until it’s season No. 6, NBC or Fox desperately needs your show for another two years and a Range Rover packed floor to ski rack with $100 bills is slowly being backed up into your driveway.

It’s worth stating here that the television executives who provide those cars are not necessarily bad people. They love their children and donate money to charities. Many of them have been known to tip generously. Some even occasionally say something in public they genuinely mean.

Their priorities, however, are not about creative vision and artistic purity. The focus, rather, is on avoiding the headache of having an enormous hole to fill on one of the nights that happens to be working for them, since there are inevitably a couple of other nights when they couldn’t do much worse in the ratings by running a test pattern.

As a result, talent gets wooed into sticking with programs for commercial reasons, not creative ones. The hunger to renew “Friends,” a drama that will be played out through the spring, is not about finding new ways to pair and break up Ross and Rachel. It’s about the hundreds of millions of dollars the sitcom is worth to NBC, production company Warner Bros. and the six stars, who, with their hit-and-mostly-miss track record in feature films, should realize the alchemy that has made this show a phenomenon may never come their way again.

This is not to say that all programs must become creatively moribund in their dotage. Series such as “NYPD Blue” and “Law & Order” have managed to consistently reinvent themselves and stay fresh and compelling, even with a steady parade of cast changes. “Frasier,” after what many felt was a creative rough patch, has rebounded to have what has thus far been another Emmy-worthy year.

Not everyone has been so fortunate. Consider “Roseanne” in its later seasons, when the show became almost a parody of itself. “Mad About You,” whose stars succumbed to the allure of $1-million-per-episode each, hung around too long. And “Married . . . With Children” ran out of story lines long before it stopped producing episodes.

Granted, there are occasional exceptions. Jerry Seinfeld walked away from millions of dollars on “Seinfeld” when the show was still at the top of the ratings, if not perhaps the top of its game creatively. Julianna Margulies opted to turn down an enormous payday to remain on “ER.”

Tim Allen did the same on “Home Improvement,” albeit after Disney acted ambivalently about anteing up for the show, which had already lost one of the boys, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who left to concentrate on his film career.

Yet if the money is there, programs usually make like the Energizer Bunny and keep going and going. Roger Ebert’s lonely thumb has kept pointing up and down since Gene Siskel’s death, with various guest critics--ranging from the interesting to the awkward to the hopelessly untelegenic--brought in to share the balcony.

Regis has also indicated he will soldier on without Kathie Lee, even if the need for another chatty morning show seems dubious to anyone but the accounts receivable department at Disney--which distributes it--and Regis’ no doubt overworked financial planner.

As for “Friends” and “X-Files,” both NBC’s Thursday lineup and Fox’s Sunday night would be a little scary without those heavy hitters in place, adding to a sense of urgency that has nothing to do with the 22 additional scripts that would need to be written for seasons seven and eight, respectively.

While this needn’t detract from fans’ enjoyment of such franchises, the next time you sit wondering why a show is clinging to life long past its prime, remember this: For those calling the shots at networks and studios, math and economics are the subjects that matter, and those jobs can be done just as well--maybe even better--if they cut class the days they taught creative writing.

Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.