Fraser’s hypothesis came from the story of an unused Cheers and a real-life radio doctor

when “Cheers” finished in 1992, as was the original plan‘t for Kelsey Grammer to get his own Frasier Crane show. Instead, “Cheers” creators David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Leigh developed a show about a paraplegic millionaire for Grammer to play, but it was quickly rejected by NBC. The network then advised the writing trio to develop the character of Frasier Crane further, and thus “Frasier” as we know it was born.

But there was a little more than that. It’s all well and good to take a beloved “Cheers” character and give him a spin-off, but since the majority of Dr. Crane’s time in that original series was spent in the titular strip, the actual premise of his spin-off series wasn’t immediately clear. Moreover, the producers of the show There was a lot of concern about Grammer when “Frasier” first started. The character was more slapstick in “Cheers” than he ended up being in his cameo role, and at the time Angell, Casey and Lee weren’t clear on how to translate Frasier from group member to leading man.

Interestingly enough, the idea to finally start a Frasier special series didn’t come from completely abandoning the “Cheers” origin. Rather, it came from adopting an unused story from that beloved sitcom and combining it with a real-life example.

David Hyde Pierce thought the pilot of “Frasier” was terrible at firstThis is mainly because the show seems to feature two similar characters, Frasier and his brother Niles. But it didn’t take long for Pierce to appear, as the series fully arrived. This pilot, titled “The Good Son,” was remarkable for the way it established the magic of “Frasier” right off the bat, especially when compared to many other shows that take a while to figure out all the dynamics.

But getting to this point took some work. In an interview with Television Academy Foundation“Frasier” co-creator David Leigh spoke about how the show went through several iterations before he, David Angell and Peter Casey came up with an abandoned story from the “Cheers” days as the basis for a “Frasier” spin-off series. As he explained to me:

“We remembered that on ‘Cheers’ we had been trying for years to implement an idea we had which was where Frasier got a job as a radio psychologist, an on-air guy who solves problems. We were never able to break the story on ‘Cheers,’ but we started thinking about it again, So we started doing a show where Fraser was going to be a radio psychiatrist.”

An unused story idea proved to be the spark needed to set the Frasier machine in motion. But that was just part of the process.

Once David Leigh, Peter Casey and David Angell had come up with their hypothesis, thanks to the leftover “Cheers” idea, they decided they needed some real-life expertise from radio psychiatrists. So, as he explained to me Television Academy FoundationThe group visited KABC in Los Angeles to see the character Dr. David Viscott live. As Lee recalls:

“We went to KABC here in L.A. and looked at Dr. David Viscott — the guy’s passed away now. He was a radio psychiatrist here in the L.A. area and we watched his show.”

Interestingly, Lee claimed that Dr. Viscott was “really weird,” although he did not explain why. The psychiatrist who Los Angeles Times Called one of the “pioneers of on-air counseling,” he began hosting his KABC talk show in 1980 and remained on the air until 1993, the year “Frasier” debuted. Interestingly, during the DVD commentary track for the “Simpsons” episode “There’s No Shame Like Home”, Matt Groening revealed that Viscott was also a partial inspiration for the character of the show’s consultant, Dr. Marvin Monroe.

For Lee, Angell, and Casey, Viscott’s show gave them insight into how a real radio show works, allowing them to write Frasier as a more believable on-air psychiatrist. Lee summed up the KABC visit by saying, “We just felt like, ‘OK, there’s the producer, OK, there’s another character and there’s other people on other shows who are kind of floating around in the ocean.'” On that visit to Los Angeles, then, the radio station is laying out the originals, not just the copy. The pioneers of Frasier, but also all the now beloved characters who populated Seattle’s KACL talk radio in “Frasier.”