Everybody except co-star Brad Garrett shared their love for “Everybody Loves Raymond” at a Beverly Hills bash on Monday, even as a few of his colleagues grumbled about the imminent demise of the hit CBS sitcom and the network’s chief relived some epic salary battles.
The cast and crew of “Everybody Loves Raymond” and veteran newswoman Barbara Walters were the honorees at the Museum of Television and Radio’s annual fundraiser at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Larry King hosted the event, though he said he was supposed to be at a party for Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
Notables such as California first lady Maria Shriver and actor Michael Douglas turned up to sing the praises of Walters. Her co-stars on her syndicated chat show “The View” sent in their congratulations by video, as did Oprah Winfrey, who said, “If there hadn’t been a you, there couldn’t have been a me.”
The commemoration for “Everybody Loves Raymond” had a bittersweet feel since the show is now in its final season.
It’s been a great nine years,” Peter Boyle, who plays star Ray Romano’s acerbic father-in-law, told the black-tie crowd. “I could do a few more, but I don’t want to say anything more about that.”
Added Boyle’s bossy TV wife, Doris Roberts: “I wish it could go on forever, and it probably will in some way.”
Garrett’s absence was a reminder of a turbulent time last year when he, Boyle, Roberts and Patricia Heaton, who plays Romano’s long-suffering wife, mysteriously missed some days at work. They ultimately secured generous pay increases, including a share of the syndication profits.
“Negotiating with Doris is like negotiating with your mother … You can’t win,” said CBS chief Leslie Moonves. “Negotiating with Brad is like negotiating with John Gotti.”
Responded Romano, who is reportedly TV’s highest-paid performer with a per-episode salary of more than $2 million, “Like my father, I go to him when I need money.”
Television networks are learning a harsh lesson in reality — too many reality shows are a turn-off for viewers.
As broadcasters increasingly binge on unscripted shows starring ordinary folks willing to do almost anything for cash, romance or 15 minutes of fame, the burgeoning genre of reality TV appears to be wearing a bit thin with U.S. audiences.
At the very least, networks are seeing that the appeal of reality shows has its limits.
“You had a few really good reality programs … and now they turn them out like they were bad two-hour movies,” veteran TV producer Bernie Brillstein told Reuters on Monday. “And they’re not so cheap to make anymore.”
Inspired by the success of such blue-chip franchises as “Survivor” and “American Idol,” the networks have increasingly loaded up on unscripted knockoffs as inexpensive prime-time alternatives, especially as comedies have declined in ratings.
“It’s a Band-Aid,” Brillstein said. He and other industry executives said the mainstreaming of reality shows has led them to suffer the same high casualty rates as conventional sitcoms and dramas.
“With quantity comes failure,” Fox TV reality chief Mike Darnell was quoted as saying in Daily Variety. “It becomes a combination of mediocre shows or shows that are so similar to other shows, they don’t stick out.”
Nowhere has this become more apparent lately than at Fox, which currently devotes about 60 percent of its prime-time schedule to reality shows — more than any other network.
After taking a dive with its much-ballyhooed boxing show, “The Next Great Champ,” Fox TV stumbled with two more reality launches this month — “My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss” and Sir Richard Branson’s “The Rebel Billionaire.”
HIGH HOPES FOR “IDOL”
Fox is still counting on a strong performance from the forthcoming fourth installment of its hit talent show “American Idol,” which premieres in January.
Over at NBC, a hurriedly produced second edition of “Last Comic Standing” was laughed right off the network — its finale ended up airing on cable’s Comedy Central — and “$25 Million-Dollar Hoax” debuted to mediocre numbers last week.
Earlier this season, ABC’s “The Benefactor,” starring the billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, proved such a ratings flop that the network wrapped it up more quickly than planned, condensing the last four episodes into two.
Even some of TV’s reality stalwarts are showing some slippage. ABC’s courtship contest “The Bachelor” has lost about a third of its audience compared with last season; NBC’s Donald Trump show “The Apprentice” is down 18 percent in total viewers from the same point in its first run last winter and the NBC stunt show “Fear Factor” is down 15 percent from last season.
However, audiences have hardly turned their backs on reality shows altogether. “The Apprentice,” CBS’s “Survivor: Vanuatu” and ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” all rank in the top 10 in ratings among viewers aged 18 to 49, the group most prized by advertisers.
In fact, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” has actually seen its overall audience soar 44 percent this season (to 16 million viewers) — an apparent beneficiary of a trend that has seen viewers drawn more to uplifting, wish-fulfillment shows than to edgier competitions and practical-joke concepts.
In the end, however, the biggest limit to the commercial success of reality TV may be its limited shelf life in an industry whose business model hinges on the ability of producers to eventually sell their shows as reruns.
“Part of our business is to get (a show) to last so you can syndicate it,” Brillstein said. “You can’t syndicate this dreck.”
Jeff Rake, executive producer on ABC’s “Boston Legal,” has exited the Sunday night drama to pursue his own development projects.
Rake, who has overseen the show’s writing team with Scott Kaufer, has a development deal with 20th Century Fox TV and is working on possible projects for fall of 2005, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The industry trade paper implies that Rake’s departure was of his own volition.
Prior to joining Kaufer, Bill D’Elia and David E. Kelley on the production team for “Boston Legal,” Rake had served as consulting producer on Kelley’s “The Practice.” He was also a co-creator of NBC’s “Miss Match” and FOX’s “The $treet.”
In other “Boston Legal” news, Rene Auberjonois, a Broadway regular, Tony winner and co-star on series including “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “Benson,” has been upped to a cast regular. Auberjonois has been a regular guest star this season, playing straight-laced Paul Lewiston, a partner in the show’s central law firm.
“Boston Legal,” which focuses on the characters originated by William Shatner, Rhona Mitra and James Spader during the final season of “The Practice,” has averaged 11.78 million viewers this season on Sunday nights at 10 p.m. ET. That’s a dramatic improvement over the audience for the final season of “The Practice.” However, “Boston Legal” regularly loses around 10 million viewers from its “Desperate Housewives” lead-in.
Credit: Dean Goodman/Steve Gorman/Reuters/VNU/Yahoo/Zap2It
