No Easy Answers for a Quizmaster

Pop quiz: Name the only producer in recent memory to preside over the three top-rated hours in prime time.

If you didn’t immediately come up with Michael Davies, you doubtless have plenty of company. Still, it was Davies, as executive producer of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” who for a brief time towered over the television industry as his quiz-show juggernaut piled up revenue for ABC and programming casualties among its competitors.

In that respect, “Millionaire” became a kind of drug, juicing ABC’s ratings while tempting the network to keep inhaling more of it. Yet when ABC increased the dosage from those three top-rated hours to four editions per week, the high wore off rapidly, leaving the network nursing a major-league hangover.

So it is that a mere 21/2 years after the phrase “Is that your final answer?” became 1999’s version of “Where’s the beef?” or “Go ahead, make my day,” “Millionaire” has become a scapegoat--its very title indicative of the greed that propelled the media through the 1990s and the wake-up call that followed.

“It’s been a learning experience for me to go from having the biggest hit on television to almost the biggest villain on television,” said the British-born Davies, who only recently turned 36 and acknowledges that “Millionaire” has pretty well set him up for life. “I don’t think I’ll ever be naive again when I’m sitting upon a hit to even think for a second that it’s going to last.”

The real question now is what Davies and the show can do for an encore as well as what lessons can be derived from the experience, which exemplifies an age in which this season’s sensation becomes next year’s has-been faster than you can say “Temptation Island” or “Richard Hatch.”

Although “Millionaire’s” parabolic rise and descent have made ABC’s ratings graph resemble a snake swallowing a warthog, the show itself could be here long after Davies is ready to retire. A weekday version of the series, a la “Jeopardy!,” premieres on local TV stations in September. In August, ABC will relaunch the network incarnation in an enhanced form--including multiple millions in prize money--by running it daily for two weeks, emulating the manner in which it was introduced to U.S. audiences in August 1999.

Since then, Davies has produced 365 episodes of “Millionaire,” more than twice as many as “ER” has generated in eight seasons. For that reason, the producer maintains that “Millionaire’s” Icarus-like flight can’t be viewed in the same context as dramatic series and disputes the assertion that ABC strip-mined the franchise through overexposure.

“Shows have a very natural life span,” he said. “I think ‘Millionaire’ had a lifetime, and I’m not sure that had to do with the number of episodes that were made. It had to do with the time that something could be new. As soon as something isn’t new anymore, it goes very quickly.”

Besides, he said, “I cannot sit here and criticize ABC and say, ‘They shouldn’t have done more episodes,’ because if I really felt that strongly, I wouldn’t have taken the money.”

Davies, in fact, always wanted to see “Millionaire” used as a quarterly event, trotted out during sweeps periods to keep the concept special. Still, viewers consumed the show so hungrily that ABC couldn’t resist feeding that appetite or the hundreds of millions in profits that went with it.

Even now, with its ratings having shrunk to a fraction of their gaudy heights at its peak, “Millionaire” remains profitable, largely because each hour costs about $400,000 to produce, excluding prize money, less than a quarter of the price of the average prime-time drama.

“Millionaire” and CBS’ “Survivor” have been the standard-bearers for what have come to be known as “alternative series,” a catchall for anything that doesn’t neatly fall under the headings of comedy, drama or news. Still, if audiences embraced these concepts beyond anyone’s expectations, they have abandoned many of these novelties just as quickly, prompting Davies to characterize the challenge as “how you can give these things more staying power.”

A corresponding question is whether alternative series will become increasingly outlandish and titillating to galvanize viewers. Certainly, the networks seem to think so, given their reliance on such car-crash confections as NBC’s “Fear Factor” or Fox’s “Celebrity Boxing.”

“If I bought that assumption, what I’d have to buy into is the idea that alternative programs can’t be done with the same quality as network dramas and comedies, and I’d also have to buy into the fact that audiences essentially will accept the lowest common denominator,” Davies said.

“When you look at the Top 10 shows in America, more than any other country in the world, people will watch quality: ‘The West Wing.’ ‘Friends.’ These are the best-written shows.... Of course, there are exceptions, but even ‘Fear Factor’ is beautifully produced. People want programs that are competently made.”

Davies, who lives in New York but flits back and forth between London and Los Angeles, wants to establish himself as “the de facto gatekeeper” for British television in the U.S. Through his company, Diplomatic, he hopes to draw on the wealth of nonfiction entertainment produced overseas.

Davies contends that the next generation of alternative hits will be less about bug-swallowing than taking ordinary people through a progression in their actual lives, as opposed to the manipulated environments created by shows like “Survivor” and “Big Brother.”

As for the prevailing sense that the more bizarre concepts on display are inexorably leading toward the modern-day equivalent of the Roman Colosseum, Davies said, “I’d never do ‘Celebrity Boxing.’ I’d never do ‘Fear Factor.’ I’m not saying they don’t have a place on television. They do. But I couldn’t feel very good about doing it.... I sleep very well at night. I don’t think of myself as a scuzzy ‘reality television’ producer.”

All told, Davies has emerged from his brush with the record books feeling no worse for wear. Having dreamed of being a sports writer covering soccer before he graduated from college and moved to the U.S., he has the freedom and wherewithal to pursue passions that range from consulting on ABC’s World Cup soccer coverage to developing a soccer-themed movie with his brother William, a Cambridge-educated writer whose resume incongruously includes the broad comedies “Twins” and “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.”

Though Davies stresses that he has no desire to dwell on the past, he’s well aware that in an industry hardly renowned for its memory, it’s worth savoring the perch he occupied in 2000, when all of television had to look up to find him.

“In all likelihood, I will never be around another show as big as ‘Millionaire,’” he said. “I know that very well.... But you know what? I enjoyed it.”

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Brian Lowry’s column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at brian.lowry@latimes.com.