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If you create a good story that has a lot of story value... I think audiences like that. It's why they stick with the same TV show over and over.

If somebody came up with a really good idea, everyone would back it. Especially when we did the show, we had a real dedication that, if you were in somebody else's scene, everyone worked their hardest to make that scene good.

I find that with any good run on a show with good writers, they put something on paper, and you put something back on film, and that affects what they put on the paper the next time.

If you don't have a story that will hold the audience, you won't have a successful show.

We constantly run lines together before every show too, and then there's a long, traditionally long, story to tell the audience every show. Today, we're doing it twice.

The same issue is happening on a show like Everybody Loves Raymond now, which is in its eighth year and struggling to come up with good stories. It'll be interesting to see how they do. The bottom line is, it starts with the writers and ends with the writers.

One thing that took a while to really adjust to was, you do it for the the art, for the money, for being together and having a good time, but you do it for all those people out there who really care about the show. We are now talking about a show we did over 20 years ago.

Many have been with the show for years, and they have sources in the business, so we do know things, but until it is verified, we don't run with the story.

People have really long attention spans, and they love complicated plots. TV series are giving the audience what they want.

But since day one, we've always been kinda up against it. So at the end, it's not surprising that we were kind of led along for so many months and didn't know what the fate of the show was gonna be. It was... in a weird way, just kind of that was the way it's always been.