TELEVISION Ever wonder why shows get the chop? It's not just ratings

Sometimes a star decides to quit, or raises for the cast or crew cost too much.
By LISA DE MORAES
WASHINGTON POST
Who hasn't experienced the devastation of losing a favorite prime-time TV series? Saying goodbye to all those fictitious people who have been such an important part of your life, knowing you now have nothing to chat about at the water cooler -- it can be pretty painful, particularly if the cancellation took you by surprise because many other series were suffering far worse ratings. But sadly, ratings are just one of the reasons your favorite show gets canceled:
UAll those people watching, besides you, of course, are not the audience advertisers want to reach. Usually, this is a euphemism for "show skews too old." But sometimes it has meant that the audience is too narrowly young -- remember when ABC killed "My So-Called Life" in 1995? But perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon was CBS's early-'70s decision to kill its still-strong bubba series, including "Green Acres" and "The Beverly Hillbillies," because the audience was too "rural" for Madison Avenue.
ULousy retention. The most-watched new comedy of the 2001-02 season was NBC's "Leap of Faith," which the network yanked off its schedule after six episodes. That's because although "Leap" averaged 16.5 million viewers, its lead-in, "Friends," was averaging 24 million. NBC thought it could do better in the period with another scripted comedy. It was wrong, of course, but that's 20/20 hindsight.
UA star cashes in. Not every actor is obsessed with matching James Arness' record for the longest role portrayed by an actor on prime-time TV -- Arness played marshal Matt Dillon on "Gunsmoke" for 20 years. Sometimes, when you've made as much money as Jerry Seinfeld, you decide you want to go out on top after nine years, when your show is still No. 1. Others are like Kelsey Grammer, who decided to hang on to his role as Frasier Crane (first on "Cheers"), matching Arness' record -- while the show plunged to No. 43 in the rankings, with only about 11 million watching.
UThe show has become too expensive. Sometimes, when an older series' ratings slide but it is still doing fairly well, the network kills it anyway. This may be because the network wants to pay less for the show (because it has lower ratings), but the folks working on it want raises. Of course, if you're David Kelley and ABC wants to cut in half the fee it pays for your lawyer drama, you make ends meet by whacking most of your highly compensated cast, and presto -- you're back in the black.
UDoesn't play well with others. If the producers of a series are suing a network that broadcasts their series, that can cast a pall over the future of the show. The word in the biz, for instance, has NBC canceling "Good Morning, Miami" in part because its creators, Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, have sued the network, contending NBC didn't pay them as much as for their other NBC sitcom, "Will & amp; Grace," which is produced at NBC Studios. Some industry wags, however, say it's more a case of NBC deciding not to continue to do M & amp;K a favor by keeping this low-rated series just to make nice with the hit producers.