ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
CBS and Warner Brothers Television made it official today: Ashton Kutcher will fill the void left by actor Charlie Sheen on the hit sitcom "Two and a Half Men." For Kutcher, it's a return to his TV roots.
(Soundbite of TV show, "That's '70s Show")
Mr. ASHTON KUTCHER (Actor): (as Michael Kelso) Well, this might tip the scales. I'm not wearing anything underneath my tracksuit.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: That's Ashton Kutcher on the program "That's '70s Show."
Today's announcement got NPR's Art Silverman thinking about cast changes of yore.
ART SILVERMAN: If TV history shows us anything, it's that fiddling around with cast and characters has a mixed record. Successful TV shows fool us into believing characters are friends and family. We hate change.
(Soundbite of TV show, "Adventures of Superman")
SILVERMAN: Back in the 1950s on the "Adventures of Superman," they ended a season with one Lois Lane and started the next with another. Despite that, the show continued for many more seasons.
(Soundbite of TV show, "Bewitched")
Unidentified Man #1: Bewitched.
SILVERMAN: By the 1960s, the show "Bewitched" used a little hocus-pocus to swap husbands.
(Soundbite of TV show, "Bewitched")
Unidentified Man #2 (Actor): (as Darrin Stephens) Did you say something, honey?
SILVERMAN: Darrin was played by two different actors: first, Dick York, and then Dick Sargent. They did this without a mention, which bothered impressionable young people like comic Judy Carter, who always has an opinion on show business.
Ms. JUDY CARTER (Comic): It was disturbing to a little child. I started looking at my dad strangely, going, well, he appears to be my father, but is he really? I mean, this is - this was disturbing.
SILVERMAN: Plenty of other TV shows changed characters over the decades: "Mission Impossible," "Dukes of Hazard," "Charlie's Angels," even "MASH." Some shows eased that change by getting the outgoing star to make an exit on camera, like when Shelley Long left "Cheers."
(Soundbite of TV show, "Cheers")
Ms. SHELLEY LONG (Actress): (as Diane Chambers) Goodbye, everyone.
Unidentified Group: Goodbye.
SILVERMAN: And on the show "Spin City," it was Charlie Sheen, yes, the very same Charlie Sheen, who was the newcomer, replacing Michael J. Fox.
(Soundbite of TV show, "Spin City")
Mr. CHARLIE SHEEN (Actor): (as Charlie Crawford) Those were my balloons. They were supposed to fall on my head.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Man #3 (Actor): (as character) You've got some nerve to barge into your office telling me how to do your job.
SILVERMAN: Now, don't expect Charlie Sheen to pass the torch that way to Ashton Kutcher on "Two and a Half Men." In any case, comic Judy Carter predicts the whole idea is a nonstarter.
Ms. CARTER: No one is going to buy it if they just bring Ashton into the show and go, yeah, it's Charlie, and he's 20 years younger somehow because he may had plastic surgery, and he's twice as tall. So I don't know they're going to do.
SILVERMAN: Whatever CBS does with Kutcher's character, it will be up to audiences to decide if it works, and with TV's record on this, that decision could go either way.
Art Silverman, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.