From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

Two Boy Wonders got their star in the series, Colombo.

One was Stephen Spielberg.

The other is my guest, the other Stephen, Stephen Bocchko,

who's worked in all kinds of fields from law to medicine to politics in this series.

With his news show, Raising the Bar Up, which premiered recently on T&T,

it was the highest rating in the history of cable.

Mr. Bocco, I should call you Steve.

Thanks so much for doing this.

Thanks, Elvis. I really appreciate it.

You tend to do shows that are incredibly dialogue heavy

with lots of characters in them.

And I guess I wonder what for you is the appeal of the ensemble cast?

Well, what's wonderful about an ensemble cast is that it gives you so many layers

to work with. You know, when you do a television series, you really have to think long-term.

You know, how am I going to do this show if we're fortunate enough to succeed for five, six, seven years, sometimes

beyond.

And the key to that is in having a strong ensemble group that you can write to because it's,

you know, the combinations that you can put together in terms of stories with a with a

multitude of characters is exponential so if I have nine regular characters you know my my

potential for storytelling is just enormous and and you know this past year, first season for raising the bar, we only did 10 episodes.

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