Fox and the producers announced Wednesday that the long-running medical drama "House" will finish at the end of this season.
It's been speculated about for months, so the announcement isn't that much of a surprise. While the ratings (and quality) have declined over the past couple of years, it's still a big draw for Fox on Mondays. But star Hugh Laurie has expressed his desire to do other things, leading the producers to wrap things up at the end of the year.
Jerry Seinfeld once used the old vaudeville mantra "Always leave them wanting more" when he announced the end of his sitcom while it was still at the top of the ratings mountain for NBC. Certainly, NBC would have still been making "Seinfeld" for as long as it could milk it had Seinfeld showed any interest in continuing. Look at how NBC kept "ER" on long past its shelf life or cajoled the cast of "Friends" to do one extra season.
John Cleese always kept his involvement with his TV shows pretty short for fear of repeating himself -- "Fawlty Towers" had just 12 episodes, while Cleese left "Monty Python's Flying Circus" after the third season.
"House" has languished creatively over the past few years. There's only so many times you can misdiagnose a patient, only to save him at the last minute. And last year's season finale had to be among the worst in TV history, which was especially troubling because the season finales for "House" previously were among the TV highlights of each season.
"House" probably should have ended two years ago, but of course, Fox wasn't going to kill the golden goose. "House" brings in tremendous revenue through DVDs and syndication sales, plus does well abroad. The more episodes produced, the more revenue generated.
I'm more convinced than ever that TV creators need to come up with a natural end date for their series and shoot for it. Otherwise, you get into "X-Files" territory in which producers keep creating episodes long past it becomes logical dramatically to keep a show going.
THURSDAY'S BEST BETS: "30 Rock" (NBC, 8 p.m.) takes up the whole hour tonight, meaning no "Parks & Recreation." But "The Office" and "Up All Night" are new. They are followed by reruns of either "The Voice" or "Grimm" at 10 p.m. as NBC has shifted "The Firm" to the death slots on Saturday.
CBS is new with "Big Bang Theory," "Rob," "Person of Interest" and "The Mentalist," while ABC has new installments of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice."
Fox is new with "American Idol" and "The Finder" from 8-10 p.m., while The CW counters with "Vampire Diaries" and "Secret Circle."
On cable, FX has new episodes of "Archer" and "Unsupervised" from 10-11 p.m.
