>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: please welcome david e. kelley to this program. for more than 20 years, he has been one of the most heralded television writers and producers with hit series like "chicago hope" and "the practice." here's just a small bit of his award-winning work. >> don't you dare attack me for withholding information from you. i am the one you can trust you. >> we have problems. >> we have big problems. >> hey, doc, i hear what the boss is good and plenty >> ok, that is enough. >> good. because i am not letting some genetic youth toy teach me sex. >> word up. >> we seems to have reached an impasse. >> the vice principal's office. >> look, i've been having a word stretched. last week, i did not to mouth and i finally met summit i could like palin and now, i assault judea's of and i get it on by a rabbi. something tells me i should not invade again until the world begins to make sense to me again. " she could have just said no thank you. >> you are right. ask me again. >> she looks med. >> of all of the things you have done -- never mind the illegality of it, the incentive pay, a soldier lost his life. there is no excuse. >> it was stupid. we never should have done it. if i thought there would have been any bearing on the case, never -- >> course it has bearing. >> this was obviously denny's plan. >> don't sell me out. >> you sold me out. you both be trade me. and the firm and the client. >> you sicken me. both of you. tavis: do you feel old, accomplished, or both? >> that makes me feel very old. tavis: is this what you have always wanted to do, this writing and producing thing? >> i think it is, but i did not know it. i grew up on the east coast. no one ever put that vocation in front of students growing up. you went to school and got a job and you went to more school, medical school or law school or business school. but becoming a writer in television was not something that was put on the play for us. so it just kind of happened, fell into place. once i came out here, i did not look back. tavis: the new project is called "harries lot." it stars kathy bates. here are some scenes. >> all these firms tried to jump out. hot young litigators. they come and they go. unlike the lawsuits of henry korn. we are not hard copy or fuddy- duddy. we're not fuddy-duddy. as a matter of fact, we're far from it. we are pretty good looking. by cincinnati standards, we are great looking good and you know what else? i may be 60 and i may be short, but i am damn hot. ijssel, in fact. you heard me. win thisoing to contest. i want to get the news out there. the law office of harry corn, sexy -- we are hit and we are hot. tavis: if you cannot sell it, nobody is going to buy it. >> and therein lies our problem. we get a pretty respectable number on the show, but our demo is not so hot. kathy is doing her part to put the word out. tavis: tell me more about that challenge. this is the back story on how tv works and why you see shows moving from one to another night. people do not often understand. >> it is all about the 18-49 number. if you fall outside that, you really do not exist. we have a great following, fortunately. most of them are over 50. it does not make sense to me because this is all dictated by madison avenue who are trying to find choppers, obviously. the research shows that people over 50 have the most discretionary income. they spend the most money. they watch the most television. it would make sense to program to them. but, for some reason, that is not the case. the best i can tell, as it has been explained to me, is that the advertisers like it. hit them while they're young because they can make better in printing, as it were. the message will stick. but in terms of who has the most money and was watching the most television, it is the older generation. so one a program to them? tavis: it raises a fundamental question for me as to how this challenges the artist, the creator, the producer specifically. if madison avenue is dictating, essentially, with that 18-49 demo, which you have to pull in every night in terms of ratings, i would think that has an impact on what people bring to television. maybe that is the reason why we see all of this silly reality television. most people do not think it is silly. sorry. tell me how challenged you and other producers are by that madison avenue reality? >> i cannot tell you about the other producers. i can tell you i'm very challenged. i suspect that a lot of producer-writers my age are similarly challenged. the way i personally work -- i like to write what i know, what i feel, and where i am. i am 55 years old. my sensibilities probably reflect that. my insecurities, my fears, and my desires also reflect that. the shows that i like to write are very character driven. i think a writer should wrightwood he loves, the people here relates to -- should write who he loves, the people here relates to. the older ones probably speak to me more. i write to an audience in the constituency which is also similarly older. it is very challenging when you put the marketing hat on and you want to sell your show. they want youth, youth, youth. tavis: what does that mean for us, the viewers, in terms of what our choices are on television? >> get your kids to watch with you. there are many shows that succeed -- "harry's lal" is one of them -- with an older audience where we are challenged in bringing the younger demographic to the plate or to the couch, as it were. "boston public" is a show i did where kids brought their parents to that catch. subsequently, parents brought their kids, too. that was a viewing constituency that seemed to work on two different levels. our viewers are still older. tavis: who watches television like that these days? families do not eat together like they used to. they do not come to the table as families anymore. they do not watch tv together anymore. they all have tv in their room. most kids are watching tv on a hand-held device or a computer. so i do not see how that is even possible. >> i am not a programmer. i cannot speak to marketing. it is not my aptitude. where i come from is what do i like to write. right the characters i love and hope there is a big enough constituency t there to make it viable. tavis: i was really trying to get at how frustrating it must be -- my word, not yours -- wanting to write what you know. the more seasoned yk, the better writer, i would assume, you are. it just seems like a big corbeil matrix that one finds himself in. >> it is a challenge. tavis: tell me more about the new series. i love kathy bates. >> she has been great. it has been a lot of fun to work with her. the series is primarily about her character, harry, and it is really about an older woman, 60 years old, who gets fired from her firm and is forced to start a new in a very difficult economic time and she begins her owner law firm from scratch and tries to build her way back to have been -- back to having a viable practice. it is a bit of an eccentric show, comedic in some ways. that is the strength that kathy has. she is able to put in play both dramatic and comedic muscles. we tried to write to those strengths. it is really a series primarily about her, that character, and the orbits -- the eccentric clientele and a workforce that she billed around her. tavis: of the cincinnati. >> it could have been any city. we like to think it has become hot. but we wanted a lesser market, a city that people did not think of as a sexy city like new york or chicago or san francisco or l.a., but more of a blue-collar, but somewhat cosmopolitan place. tavis: it is so relevant to our contemporary moment -- middle- aged american losing his or her job, having to start over. there are millions of americans who have that. i can see the relevance of it. this may be quintessential answer, i suspect. you have a legal background in real life. i assume that is why you have been so expected to the legal side. w. i love allothe la it changes. it gives you the luxuries as a writer to go in a different direction. but i also love law. i think it is society's best way of legislating social and ethical behavior. it is not perfect at all. in fact, it is extremely flawed. but it is the best system we have. i think, as a writer, what i like to do is explore social and ethical issues and character. and the law is a great springboard for doing those three things so it has worked out for me. tavis: i was thinking in advance of our conversation -- i do not think i have raised this issue with anybody on our program, despite all of the actors that i have talked to who had starred in all of these dramas -- for a society that has so many jokes about lawyers, we are people who like to watch legal dramas. everybody knows a lawyer they hate. i have a few of them. everybody has a good lawyer joke. yet we sock up these little from us. >> we love winning and losing. the cases have winners and losers. the stakes are typically easy locate. in many of these cases, their very life and death -- they are very life-and-death. so it is a very natural way to tell stories, with beginnings, middles, and endings. and the lawyers are very active people. they are real players in that system. so many of our series are about people trying to save, rescue, or help other people, whether it is policemen, doctors, private investigators, or lawyers. this is a very tried and true format. your protagonist, you get to put your protagonist in a position where he gets to make somebody else's world a little better than it was. that is a very romantic notion totart a series with. tavis: over the years, watching your work -- >> i never do. i watch the episode we are working on. i never go back and watch old episodes. i figure nothing good can come out of it. either i will see the mistake that i can no longer fix -- [laughter] i prefer to just keep looking forward. tavis: we talked about the successes you have had and there have been many -- are there one or two series that come in mind that did not fare as well? you have had hits and misses. of the misses, was there anything that you took particularly hard they did not get a fair chance? are there any that you were more emotional about? >> you are disappointed with all of the failures because you put a lot into them. i would say, when they get nipped in the pilot bud, the devastation is less just because you have spent less time with those people. so the loss is lessened. the more your inside a series, the more inside those characters i tend to become. not only do i get to know the company and the crew and the actors to play them, but the characters themselves. so when a series goes down, you do experience loss. i look back at this clip and i miss "allie mcbeal." i miss danny crane. i miss allen shore. those characters were fictitious. they were extremely real in my life for five years, six years, seven years. you live to them, you bring them, so when it is over, it is very much a void. in terms of a series that did not make it -- as i said, i put my heart into all of them. so i'm not sure -- tavis: let me answer the question i asked you. i was disappointed with "chicago hope" as an african- american. the actors who got a chance to star in that series and the location of the hospital and the kind of patients they were seeing, etc., etc. -- there is not enough of that on television. so i was rooting for that thing. ticket kind of hard. -- i took it kind of hard. >> yes. i think everyone felt that its race was fairly run when it went down. so you were somewhat mollified by the fact that you got to tell your stories and develop your characters. "picket fences," that was extremely difficult on me. i remember the day i walked to the set and said, ok, this is our last one. it is over. it was very emotional for a lot of people, including myself, because those characters were so dear to me. also, that was my first series. i think there's something about every creators first series. "boston legal" was tougher than i thought. even though we went into it knowing that it would be a very finite series, we had no expectations that it would run in perpetuity. five years was a long time for that show. so we'll have the sensibility that this was finite and it would end sooner rather than later. yet, it, too, when it ended, it was difficult. mainly, denny crane and ellen shore had become so dear to me after those five years. i also happen to love those actors, working with james spader and william shatner -- it was a real treat. i miss them personally as much as i miss the characters. they're all tough. "picket fences" was probably the one that stands out as the most emotional goodbye that i had to say. tavis: what has most changed about this business over the last couple of decades that just grates you, that just annoys you? >> i have dealt mainly on the broadcast network side. that would be first in the commercials. the commercials have gotten in st.. tavis: too many? >> too many. when i started on "l.a. law," our shows or 48 minutes for acts. we're now down to 41 minutes and six acts in a one-hour presentation. it is absurd. with big loud commercials coming in every six minutes to 7 minutes, it has become an incumbent upon us to go easy, to pound, lb, pound. it is much more difficult to build the emotional stories over time. it is very frustrating to cut to a commercial every six minutes, seven minutes or eight minutes, if you're lucky. that is first. then also the challenge of doing shows for network television -- again, i am 100 years old, so when we started on "l.a. law," there were only three channels. the same is true with "picket fences." by a large, a few made a good show, -- if you made a good show, the audience would be able to find it because word of mouth would push you up the hill. that is no longer true today. there are so many options, so many channels. the word of mouth is more about ratings than it is about content. it used to be that people would watch an entire episode before making their judgment. then it came down to, okay, we will watch the first act before making the first judgment. now we are down to watching the first credits roll. the remote is in their hand and they can flip to this channel and go to that in the push of a thumb. and it happens. it has become much more incumbent upon us to really declare who you are, what you are, coming out of the gate swinging hard. as a result, maybe the slower- paced series that really necessitates the development of character before you get to that audience investment -- you just do not get the time. --rry's law"one, "here is a la >> it had a bumpy start. we excised the half they did not want to put on the air. we made a second half and put it together. that was really the second pilot. that debuted last year at midseason against some pretty significant odds. it came back this season. it struggled with a very difficult wednesday time slot where, if you walk into the living room at 9:00 p.m. on wednesday, you found my family watching "modern family." [laughter] afterwards, can i get you to put in this disc? tavis: yes, it is tough. >> we somehow made it. we were happy about that. but everybody realized -- the network included -- that we are better on a wednesday. so here we are now on sundays. we had a similar progression with "the practice." sunday was their ultimate home and that is where we flourished. i think that "harry" will he a similar fate. tavis: if you love good acting, kathy bates. check it out. thank you for being here. see you back here next time on pbs. thank you for watching. as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on smiley show, visit tavis on pbs.org. tavis: please join me at ny use herbal center for performing arts for a conversation about women, children, and poverty in america. ahead andrs' union financial expert susie ormond. for more info, visit our website at pbs.org. hi, i am tavis: smiley. join me next time for a new conversation with live ledbetter -- with lilly ledbetter. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. is the cornerstone we all know. it is not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.