Consider this quote from a brilliant book (only $999 on Amazon) by Gil Fates, original producer of What’s My Line:

"The show became so important that the offbeat began to seem untoward… Any attempt to break out of the mold became heresy… The power of a program’s creative management to make decisions rises and falls in inverse ratio to the importance of the talent to that program… While we were not willing to admit that he was indispensable, the more the show prospered the less we, the creative producers, were willing to make him unhappy."

Hey, it’s not just TV shows.