Michael Borkow

For any American TV producer, a success ratio of one gigantic hit show to one or more failures is considered a triumph. That's because the odds against a program becoming a full-fledged smash are enormous. In this sense, Michael Borkow must be placed at the top of the producer heap, for he has worked on the immensely popular sitcoms "Roseanne" and "Friends," as well as Fox's "Malcolm in the Middle." Each of these programs is in perpetual heavy-rotation syndication, and the first two were pop-culture phenomena. On the failure side, Borkow was unable to continue the success of "Friends" with show star Matt LeBlanc on the NBC spinoff "Joey," and proved with "Quintuplets" that funnyman Andy Richter really belongs at the side of talk-show host Conan O'Brien. Borkow got his start as a writer on the 1992-93 Fox sitcom "Flying Blind," which starred Corey Parker as a young teen who pursues the girl of his dreams (Téa Leoni).