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think important that people know that the actors make up the words by themselves and that there is more to life than just being famous, that real work is Rosenthal said. live in a celebrity culture. They only care about the famous face, and unless you stand up for yourself, you will be pushed to the back of the bus. weird. You would think people would be interested in the people who actually make the show to take nothing away from the actors, but they obviously do it Being left at the back of the bus should be construed as hyperbole where Rosenthal is concerned, considering his 12 Emmys and his reported $50- million development deal with CBS and Paramount, but his point about the national obsession with stardom is well taken.

This might explain why invited the cast for a final tribute and producers asked Rosenthal to sit in the audience, the same way creator Marc Cherrybeamed from the audience earlier this season as his cast was interviewed by Oprah Winfreyon stage. But Rosenthal did not beam. Insteadhe protested, reached out to friends in high placesand landed a seat on the stage couch, if only for the last 1 1 2 minutes of the broadcast. Later, when neglected to interview him, choosing to feature only Ray star and executive producer of the show who exits as the highest-paid actor in TV Rosenthal saidhe saw the writing on the wall. He took a look around and did what anyone in Tinseltown would do: He hired a publicist.

just the Rosenthal said. years later and I still get that. Now it turns out that everyone in my position has a publicist. I know that. But if you you get swallowed up.

The writers work very hard, and the soul of the show. why I have a show now where I go around the country with writers and we have such a fantastic time talking about all the horrible things that happened at our houses and then illustrate them on screen with the clips that they Inside the Writ- performs around the country and will be at the WritersGuild in Los Angeles on June 2. The ensemble consists of Rosenthal and most of the writers, a tight-knit group of men who broke another industry tradition by sticking together through the entire run. are brilliant, hilarious guys, and were stand-up Rosenthal said. love to make people laugh because we are all innate performers or frustrated performers.

But the thing about that. I felt it right that in an end-of-series hourlong tribute that me, or anyone in my po- sition, would not be welcome on stage with the actors to talk about how the show was done. Seeing the face behind the scenes fills you in on an entire world and makes you appreciate the show more. So for all of those reasons, on top of the fact that a ham and I want to be on, why On the morning after goodbye bash for Rosenthal relaxed by the pool at his Hancock Park home before heading to lunch with Jeremy Stevens and Lew Schneider, two of the writers who have become his Rosenthal loved the party my little although mention of the sets, which CBS moved to a Santa Monica Airport hangar for guests to view, sparkedan unexpected reaction. not where I know them to be, so it felt Rosenthal said.

felt like it was either in a museum or awake. I guess cooler for outside people to come and see them because they see them where we lived with them for nine years. For me, like, my loved one it belong in a And loved ones is what all about for Rosenthal and Romano, who had never met until Romano was on the hunt for a writer for a sitcom based on his family and the two men clicked after swapping stories over sandwiches. The dysfunctional but endearing Barones were modeled after the Romanos, who lived a quarter-mile from his parents, and his divorced brother, who was approaching 40 and lived with his parents; and the Rosen- thals, who inspired the parents, Marie (Doris Roberts) and Frank (Peter Boyle). needed a Jewish guy in there to balance off my Romano said.

identified with his family life, his sensibility. I could get from our meeting the angst he had, what went on with his family. He had parents who were a little overbearing, the Jewish version of my parents. And he was funny and he also had a style that was similar to mine, but not exactly, which was good. The truth is I think we would be here if it for Truth be told, Rosenthal was second choice the first was already committed to but once the two native New Yorkers got to work, no one looked back.

premiered on Friday nights at a time when CBS ranked fourth among thenetworks. CBS had not had a comedy hit on that night since and Leslie Moonves, who had just become the president, badly needed a show to stick. With its complex family dynamics that portrayed with brio what holds relatives together while simultaneously driving them crazy, more on character than on pranks and became a critical favorite from the start. It took the viewers a little longer. It until the third season, after it had moved to Mondays and went head-to-head with the popular and Night that ranked 11th, and more impor- tantfor the network, became first link in the comeback of Moonves said.

has been a top-10 staple for the last five years. very sad going off the air. It has meant a great deal to me personally as well as professionally because it was the first show my administration said Moonves, now cochairman of Viacom. and Phil were terrific partners from the beginning. The reason the show stayed so good, and it should be a key for every show- runner in history, is that Phil stayed with it for every single episode.

He was the quality control. Being a show-runner is a three- ring circus. And Phil did it so brilliantly because he loved every aspect of Rosenthal knew at the age of 4that acting was his first love, said his mother, Helen Rosenthal, who lives in New City, N.Y. Rosenthal always entertained at family gatherings and was a natural showman, she said. But the mother detected another talent in her son early on.

writings were always very clever, and we tried to encourage him to take writing classes, which he decided he she said. now turns out to be Rosenthal, who recently had asmall role as a chef on and in the fall will appear on one episode of Your dreamed of being Art Carney. After moving to Los Angelesand becoming weary of the daily rejection actors face, Rosenthal teamed up with an old friend who had become a sitcom writer, Oliver Goldstick, and worked short stints on Family for and the landing a three-year gig on Loves is the first pilot Rosenthal ever wrote, and much of its success has to do with a gift he should have never given his mother, a membership to the Fruit of the Month viewers saw Ray Barone bestow on his mother on the small screen. was the best pilot I had ever said Stevens, one of the writers and a longtime friend of who was the first person to read the script. told him, be on for 10 years with Sitting by his pool three weeks before the final and 210th episode airs, Rosenthal joked: he was wrong, he? It was only It is futile to getanyone connected to to reveal anyclues about the finale, which will be preceded by a one-hour retrospective.

Romano: been hypnotized and depro- Stevens: just And Rosenthal: a The united front is not surprising. By all accounts, the roomat was a special place where men cracked jokes and discussed personal woes as if they were in a support group. Then, often to the horror of their spouses and relatives, those revelations were uttered word-for-word on the tube. come together every morning and sit around and just catch up with each other in terms of new or Stevens said. talk as friends.

We were close. If we had problems, bring it up. We realized fairly quickly that the main source of our stories is our lives and that a lot of the humor was going to come out of the gravel of our Monica PMS, for example, was the plot of one of the classic episodes in which Raymond is at a complete loss over (Patricia Heaton) extreme irritability. Horan, who played Amy on the show and has been married to Rosenthal for 15 years, remembers watching the episode and weeping because my God, he heard everything I said. I believe he had absorbed the information and applied it to this literary couple.

And when Raymond says to Debra, my lost it. what Phil says to me private, private and just like that. The same exact father, Max, who along with father, Albert, appeared in five episodes of the show, said he always got a kick out of seeing his life on television, even if situations were exaggerated for effect. Frank Barone (Boyle) taunts his wife the way the senior Rosenthal likes to, my wife says to tell you that I open my pants when I watch Does favorite expression, come from real life? is not me. Insulting the wife, Helen Rosenthal wants the world (the show is seen in 169 countries) to know she never favored one son over another the way Marie Barone always chose Raymond over Robert (Brad Garrett), and she never interferes in their private lives.

certainly this household has not been a model of quiet Rosenthal laughed hard when he heard this an but then his eyes welled up with tears a few moments later when he described the most gratifying part of the last nine years: I get a letter from Sri Lanka, from Pakistan, from Australia, from Denmark saying, my father, my wife, my mother, what all Rosenthal said. not writing about mother in India. I know you. writing my mother, OK? Well, it turns out everything. You write universally, vaguely so that you hit everybody.

If you do that, you miss everybody. What I learned is you write as specifically as you possibly can and therein lies the universality because all of our lives deal in how you connect with people, and that connection is why you put pen to paper in the first Rosenthal and Kevin Winter Getty Images WRAP PARTY: Ray Romano, left, star of Loves and Phil Rosenthal in Santa Monica on April 28. Rosenthal, from Page E1 Here are the rankings for national prime-time network television last week (May 2-8) as compiled by Nielsen Media Research. They are based on the average number of people who watched a program from start to finish. Nielsen estimates there are 277.93 million potential viewers in the U.S.

ages 2 and older. Viewership is listed in millions. Program Network View- ersProgram Network Viewers 1 CSICBS26.65 2 Desperate HousewivesABC26.10 3 American Idol 4 American Idol 5 CSI: MiamiCBS20.70 --------------------------------------------6 Survivor: PalauCBS20.06 7 Everybody Loves Raymond (9 p.m.) CBS19.42 8 AnatomyABC18.86 9 Two and a Half MenCBS17.93 10 Without a TraceCBS17.92 --------------------------------------------11 LostABC17.20 12 HouseFOX17.13 13 Law Order: SVUNBC16.54 14 ERNBC15.66 15 Extreme Makeover: Home Edition ABC15.35 --------------------------------------------16 Cold CaseCBS14.77 17 Part 1CBS13.85 18 Primetime LiveABC13.70 19 NCISCBS13.55 20 CSI: NYCBS13.42 --------------------------------------------21 Apprentice 3NBC13.00 22 Amazing Race: 7CBS12.83 23 MediumNBC12.73 24 Without a Trace 25 Everybody Loves Raymond (8:30 p.m.) CBS11.82 --------------------------------------------26 Numb3rsCBS11.80 27 Law OrderNBC11.70 28 Crossing JordanNBC11.60 29 Law Order: Criminal Intent NBC11.54 30 StackedFOX11.21 --------------------------------------------31 Las VegasNBC10.95 32 24FOX10.88 33 Judging AmyCBS10.80 34 60 MinutesCBS10.74 35 CSI --------------------------------------------36 The Simpsons (8:30 p.m.) FOX10.05 37 Still Standing CBS9.96 38 Family GuyFOX9.90 39 Law Order: Trial by JuryNBC9.82 40 Fear FactorNBC9.53 --------------------------------------------41 42 AliasABC9.16 43 Third WatchNBC8.98 44 SupernannyABC8.82 45 The SimpsonsFOX8.72 --------------------------------------------46 RevelationsNBC8.70 47 Law Order: 48 According to JimABC8.39 49 American DadFOX8.28 50 The BachelorABC8.15 --------------------------------------------51 Nanny 911FOX8.12 52 That ShowFOX8.04 53 CSI: Miami 54 Will GraceNBC7.62 55 Funniest Home Videos (Sun.) ABC7.52 --------------------------------------------56 Potter and the Chamber of ABC7.47 57 JoeyNBC7.46 58 59 Phil: Behind the CBS7.35 60 48 Hours MysteryCBS7.33 --------------------------------------------61 Home 62 Crimetime SaturdayCBS7.23 63 According to Jim (9:30 p.m.) ABC7.22 64 The O.C. (9 p.m.)FOX7.19 65 Primetime LiveABC7.15 --------------------------------------------66 Funniest Home Videos (Fri.) ABC7.02 Dateline: NBC 68 The O.C.CBS6.77 69 CSI 70 Law Order: SVU --------------------------------------------71 Extreme Makeover: They Do That? ABC6.67 72 That ShowFOX6.61 73 Hope FaithABC6.23 74 ContenderNBC6.21 75 Dateline: NBC --------------------------------------------76 Blind JusticeABC6.00 77 My Wife and KidsABC5.65 George LopezABC5.65 79 Dateline: NBC 80 Most Outrageous Moments on Live TV NBC5.40 --------------------------------------------81 Gilmore GirlsWB5.10 82 Next Top Model 4 UPN4.94 83 7th HeavenWB4.89 84 Malcolm in the MiddleFOX4.89 85 King of the HillFOX4.85 --------------------------------------------86 WWE 87 SmallvilleWB4.51 88 Hour 89 EverwoodWB4.21 90 One Tree HillWB4.05 --------------------------------------------91 Reba (9 p.m.)WB3.86 92 Crossing Jordan 93 GirlfriendsUPN3.41 94 Charmed (8 p.m.)WB3.31 95 Half and HalfUPN3.12 --------------------------------------------96 EnterpriseUPN3.01 97 Living With FranWB2.95 98 Blue Collar TV (8:30 p.m.) WB2.91 99 Veronica MarsUPN2.85 100 Kevin HillUPN2.83 --------------------------------------------101 CutsUPN2.81 102 One on One UPN2.78 RebaWB2.78 104 Blue Collar TV (9 p.m.)WB2.72 105 Blue Collar TV (9:30 p.m.) WB2.67 --------------------------------------------106 Blue Collar TV (8 p.m.)WB2.64 107 EveUPN2.31 108 Jack BobbyWB2.22 109 Steve Big TimeWB2.16 110 All of UsUPN2.07 --------------------------------------------111 What I Like About YouWB1.89 112 Next Top Model 4 (Fri.) UPN1.56 113 Charmed (7 p.m.)WB1.53 Network averages Here is the number of viewers (in millions) that each network averaged per hour of prime time, for last week and for the season. Network Last week Season to date CBS13.1712.84 FOX10.009.91 ABC9.9210.08 NBC9.749.83 WB3.323.33 UPN3.283.35 Los Angeles Times Prime-Time TV Rankings.