E! online report> read!

[JenniferlovesBecker]

Just figured yall might want to read this:


"Becker": The Doctor's Back In

by Bridget Byrne
Jun 17, 2003, 2:45 PM PT

Dr. John Becker has the right prescription after all.

After a somewhat surprising delay, CBS has ordered 13 new episodes of Becker, starring Ted Danson as the curmudgeon doctor.
Until this week, CBS had left the once popular sitcom off its new schedule. Daily Variety notes that insiders felt that the show's plug had been pulled for good, considering the Paramount Network TV production's five-season run of 117 episodes qualified the series for syndication, which, the trade says, would have meant the sitcom's future was only in reruns.

But now the Eye has given Becker life support. The new order indicates CBS will have the doctor sitcom on call to replace the inevitable dud on the net's new lineup.

Becker's creator and executive producer, Dave Hackel, tells E! Online that all CBS told him after the series wasn't announced as part of the 2003-04 schedule at the upfront presentations in New York in May was that "once they had got their ducks in order for the fall, then they would deal with midseason."

A spokeperson for CBS, concurs, saying it just happened that this was one of the years at the upfront presentations when priority was given to new programming and no midseason announcements were made. She says the network considers Becker a "proven performer" that can work in "so many places" on the network schedule.

Hackel thinks the network's decision is because it's better to have "on the bench...a show you know, than one you don't." He has no idea yet of air date, time slot or even "whether we'll be needed," to come off the bench, but he knows, "We'll be ready."

Becker, which started life as a midseason replacement, became a solid performer on Monday nights, usually ranking among the top 15 shows thanks to its can't-miss slot behind the potent Everybody Loves Raymond. But last season Becker was moved to Sundays at 8.30 p.m., where it averaged 10.7 million viewers, a 9 percent gain over the previous year for the time slot, but a considerable tumble from its old Monday numbers.

"I read in the trade papers this morning that network said we have a creatively terrific season," Hackel says. He's glad that the network had apparently recognized that "we are not out of stories," especially since Nancy Travis joined the cast last season, playing Chris Conner, Becker's optimistic love interest. (She fills the behind-the-neighborhood-diner-counter slot left vacant when Terry Farrell got booted at the end of season four.)

The sitcom also stars Alex Desert, Saverio Guerra, Shawnee Smith and Hattie Winston.

With Becker coming back to the CBS roster, it means both Danson and wife Mary Steenburgen, will have gigs on the network. This fall she'll play the mother of a girl who talks to God in Joan of Arcadia, the Eye's new Friday night drama.

In the meantime, CBS certainly hasn't been having any luck with its summer sitcoms. Audiences apparently don't buy Nathan Lane as a life-of-the-party congressman in Charlie Lawrence (ratings for its Sunday debut were 14 percent lower than a Becker repeat) and seem to have lost interest in what Baby Bob has to say on Fridays.

Maybe that's also part of the reason why the doctor's back in.