There is a rumor going around that NBC is seriously considering cancelling the original Law and Order program after 20 years. Personally I think that's some sort of insanity in the network's programming division.

I have been a fan since Steven Hill was the the DA, Michael Moriarty was the executive DA and Paul Sorvino was the lead detective. Since then the cast has completely rolled over several times. Detectives and DA's have come and gone and people who were a fan of the original series would not recognize the show today if they had lost touch with the show, except for two things, the writing and the quality of the actors.

Now we have a completely new cast of actors, but the quality remains. An old viewer of the original series would recognize the show on that basis alone. The quality is still there.

Year after year after year the series has maintained, in spite of cast changes, the same production values and quality. The actors that have been replaced have been replaced by other actors who were up to the task of moving into their roles. The stories have stay consistently fresh and topical and so well written that the writers deserved Emmy's every year and won them many times. If they stay on the air one more year they will break the record for a live series currently held by Gunsmoke and I can not think of a series more worthy to take that mantle and I think the fine folks who did Gunsmoke would agree also. Gunsmoke was an iconic TV series and so is Law and Order.

All records are meant to be broken, but Law and Order should NOT stay on the air just to break the Gunsmoke record. They should stay on the air because they are simply that good. Because they deserve it!

Please join me in asking, nay, demanding, that NBC keeps Law and Order on the air! In this era of phony reality programming and light-weight fluffy (and unfunny) sitcoms, don't serious intellectual TV viewers deserve something that we can watch and enjoy? Don't we deserve programming that actually requires us to be engaged and thinking? I hope so.