Lorre

Some of the most provocative writing on broadcast television can be found on CBS on Monday nights. It airs for a combined duration of about two seconds.

The writing comes in the form of what many in the industry call "vanity cards" — an image flashed on the screen at the end of a TV show. Usually, the cards just identify a show's creator or production company. But Chuck Lorre — a writer and executive producer of the sitcoms "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory" — uses the airtime as a public diary.

Shown at about 8:29 p.m. and 9:29 p.m. time, his Chuck Lorre Productions vanity cards feature an essay — usually about 100 to 200 words — on subjects such as meddling network executives, Hollywood culture and his own family drama. The messages can't be read in full as they air, because they're shown so briefly, but they can be read by viewers who have DVR technology with a pause button on their remote control. The cards have attracted a cult following, as well as the attention of network executives.

In one recent message, the 55-year-old Lorre wrote: "I received a phone call from a mid-level CBS exec who began the conversation by saying he wanted to give me a head's up. Having been in this business a while I knew head's up' is code for we've decided to s---- you.'"

In a message to his late father, Lorre wrote, "I want to apologize for despising you for reasons I still don't understand."

Another card says: "Don't hug men while shaking their hand. Enough already with that. The shake/hug (shug?) is probably something Roman guys did when their empire was in decline."

Lorre says, "My vanity cards are like liner notes on an album."

The network reviews each one before it airs, and has censored three of the past 40 cards. A CBS spokesman said those cards "didn't meet our broadcast standards," but declined to be more specific. "I've always had the character flaw of wanting to bite the hand that feeds," Lorre says.

The hand admits to being a bit sore. "I get a kick out of most of — most of — what he does at the end of the show," says Leslie Moonves, president and chief executive of CBS Corp. "If someone wants to give me two hit television shows, they won't hear from me — except for when I'm going to get in trouble with the FCC."

Reference ordered removed

Lorre has brought the network success. "Two and a Half Men," starring Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer, is the highest-rated sitcom on television this season, attracting an average of 12.9 million viewers per episode, according to Nielsen Co. His newcomer, "The Big Bang Theory," attracts an average of 8 million viewers.

This season, which was interrupted by a monthslong writers' strike, more of Lorre's messages focused on behind-the-scenes negotiations between television's creative and corporate forces. In a recent script for "The Big Bang Theory," Lorre included a reference to a fictional Catholic priest molesting a boy. CBS insisted the reference be removed, out of concern that it might offend certain viewers. (The line was changed, to refer to a "chaplain.") In a vanity card that he wanted to run at the end of the episode, Lorre shared the censored reference, explaining how and why he fought to keep it in the script.

After submitting that card to the network, Lorre says he received a call from Nancy Tellem, president of the CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment group. "What are you thinking?" she said. A spokesman for Tellem confirms this account.

"You know you're in trouble when someone that high up the ladder bothers to call," says Lorre.

That card never aired. Instead, he wrote a new one for the show that read: "Just two episodes back from the strike and I've already managed to write a vanity card that is completely unacceptable to the good folks at CBS." He posted the outlawed version on his own Web site (http://www.chucklorre.com).

"We sort of imagine Chuck sitting around saying, What can I try to get away with this week?'" says Chris Ender, a CBS spokesman.

Recently, in a card that aired after one of his shows, Lorre lampooned The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of the paper's new owner, News Corp. Lorre wrote about his vanity cards being the subject of an upcoming "article in The Wall Street Journal (or as I like to call it, The Depressingly Inevitable Next Step Toward the End of a Free Press in America, Thanks a Lot Rupert, Journal)." Robert Christie, a spokesman for Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Journal, declined to comment.

Taking jabs at the media

The card also took a shot at Warner Bros., describing it, in part, as the "monolithic, multi-tiered, entirely un-integrated, boy-did-we-make-a-colossal-boo-boo-with-AOL entity." Warner Bros. Television produces Lorre's shows. A spokeswoman for Warner Bros. Television, a part of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which is owned by Time Warner Inc., declined to comment.

Lorre, who has worked on sitcoms for more than two decades, has used the cards to take jabs at former bosses and the media. Last season, he aired a vanity card that showed a photo of him with two TV critics. It had a caption that said Lorre had supplied the men with cash, drugs and the companionship of women, "in exchange for some favorable press."

"I thought it was hilarious," says Variety's chief television critic, Brian Lowry, one of the men pictured.

In one card, Lorre likened the "pain and humiliation of receiving a colonoscopy in front of a classroom of medical students" to "writing and producing Roseanne,' Grace Under Fire' & Cybill.'"

In an e-mail response, Roseanne Barr, star of "Roseanne" said, "What do you want me to comment on, Chuck's vanity cards or Chuck's vanity?"

Lorre started putting up the messages in 1997, on the sitcom "Dharma & Greg," which he co-created. He says "it was a silly idea," but didn't think most viewers would notice.

Since then, he has written more than 200 cards, and gained a following.