That’s a nifty bit of art, and its concept is absolutely right and proper.
Without Lucille “I Love Lucy” Ball, it’s likely “Star Trek” would never have gone beyond its pilot.
She also created the concept of re-runs - over the objections of male execs who insisted that “nobody would want to watch the same show again”.
From re-runs came the concept of “syndication”, i.e. once there were enough episodes in a series (on average, 23) they and their potential for ad revenue could be sold to other network affiliates as a complete package. That’s now called a “season”, though story arcs that required the episodes to be shown in a proper order came much later (with “Hill Street Blues″, IIRC).
From re-runs and packages came - again in the face of objections from male execs who insisted that “they’ve already been paid once” - the concept of residuals, i.e. a sliding scale of additional payments made to everyone - actors, writers, crew - with credits in a show, when it was broadcast again.
Put very simply, Lucille Ball - who played a classic featherbrained ditz on-screen - was IRL a sharp-minded, forward-looking businesswoman responsible for TV series as we know them today.
Any binge-watching you’ve been able to do this past year is directly thanks to her.
The little Writer’s Guild cheque we got in December, comprising residuals from all over the world that went back to “Scooby-Doo”, “Transformers”, “Batman the Animated Series”, “Sword of Xanten”, “Star Trek The Next Generation” and a bunch of others, is thanks to her as well.
After so long the sliding-scale amount wasn’t much, but it was more than enough for our electricity bill and an order of groceries…