The most vibrant buzz this summer around the Warner Bros. lot and CBS Entertainment headquarters in nearby Studio City was not being generated by the slate of new shows on the CBS fall schedule. Rather, it focused on the sudden emergence -- during summer repeats, no less -- of a series that had been on the air for two seasons.
The Big Bang Theory, the CBS comedy about two brilliant physicists and their attempts to relate to the world around them -- and to the cute blond woman next door -- began drawing surprisingly strong ratings this summer after it moved to a later time slot on Monday, at 9:30 p.m., immediately after that network's biggest comedy, Two and a Half Men.
In some summer weeks Big Bang repeats drew bigger audiences among certain important demographic groups than when the same episodes were first broadcast. So far this fall Big Bang has further expanded its audience, becoming the highest-rated, live-action comedy among the sought-after young-adult demographic group.
If current trends prevail, its total viewership could soon surpass Two and a Half Men, long the most-watched comedy on television.
The comedies have more in common than their popularity. They were co-created by Chuck Lorre, they tape on adjacent stages on the Warner Bros. lot, and they share several writers and much of their technical crews.
The cast and crew of The Big Bang Theory are enjoying their success all the more after surviving two near-death experiences. The show's first pilot was rejected by CBS, but the network asked Lorre and Bill Prady, his co-creator, to retool their script and try again. The first version featured the same two male lead characters -- Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper, a theoretical physicist and Johnny Galecki as Leonard Hofstadter, an experimental physicist -- but also included a female lead character who was "very damaged and very tough," Prady said.
"We had a really hard time casting the role, and in retrospect ... the problem was not the actresses but the conception of the character," he said. Focus groups were left with protective feelings for the two naive, socially awkward scientists, and they did not like the prospect of a bitter, manipulative woman taking advantage of them.
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