From KCRW in Santa Monica, I'm Claude Brodesser Ackner, and this is The Business.

So you still want to do the show business, and you think that you got what it takes.

I mean, you really got a rap and be all at, but prepare yourself for the breaks.

Check it out.

This week on The Best of the Business, the Strike will put a gaggle of TV shows on the bubble,

and we're not talking about being

drunk on champagne. So today, we'll revisit our conversation with the producers of Scrubs

and Jericho, two shows that came back from the brink of extinction earlier this year. Go nowhere,

it's the business from NPR.

On The Bubble is the television term for a show that's in danger of being canceled.

These are often shows that receive low audience numbers but strong critical acclaim.

Or shows that used to have big numbers but don't seem to be doing as well anymore.

Or it might simply be that the show just doesn't appeal to anybody. But it's just as likely that it was given a difficult time slot

or got moved around like a chess piece or didn't get the right or enough promotion.

The life expectancy of a show that's on the bubble is determined by a complex and somewhat mysterious calculus.

The writer's strike is a new variable that has made the equation even more unfathomable.

A number of new shows, Cave Men on ABC and Kane on CBS for example, weren't doing

too well before the strike and have run out of new episodes.

Unable to build an audience, their chance for survival has gone from

slim to none. Today, we're going to try and make sense of why a show lives or dies when it's on

the bubble, with two case studies, Scrubs and Jericho. NBC's offbeat Dr. Dramedy Scrubs first hit the

airwaves in 2001. Seeing an intern tells someone they're going to die for the first time is strange.

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