Chuck Lorre Television Showmanship Award

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Having been at the center of several seminal 1990s sitcoms -- "Dharma and Greg," "Cybill," "Grace Under Fire" and "Roseanne" -- producer Chuck Lorre knows a thing or two about showmanship.

Receiving the TV Showmanship honor at this year's ICG Publicists Awards, Lorre presumably also knows a thing or two about the world of publicity. He's worked on shows that have garnered quite a bit of media attention over the years -- as have the antics of the shows' stars.

But Lorre says there's only so much that can be done in selling a TV series to audiences. At the end of the day, a comedy will succeed or fail based on one simple notion: Is it funny?

"I don't claim to understand marketing, but what I do believe is if you put on a good show consistently, people will come back," he says. "The essence of marketing the show is putting on a great show every week."

Currently, as exec producer of "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory," two multicamera sitcoms -- a dying breed in TV, now dominated by single-cam fare -- Lorre actually entertains two sets of live studio audiences each week. That's as close to the definition of a "showman" as there might be in today's TV landscape.

"We do put on a show in front of audiences, and there's an aspect of 'show' in that," he notes. "It's an immediate litmus test for what's funny."

Still, referring to his ICG Publicists kudo, Lorre says, "It conjures up images of jugglers and trapeze artists. I don't regard myself as anything other than a very lucky gentleman. None of this stuff happens in a vacuum, it's a group effort."