I had a chance to talk to Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks, the morning after the elegiac farewell to J.R. Ewing on TNT's "Dallas."

The show's overnight ratings were up signficantly over the season average, jumping to 3.6 million from 2.8 million a week earlier.

Koonin, who has framed covers of Entertainment Weekly ("Evil Never Dies") and TV Guide stories about "Dallas" in his Turner campus office in Atlanta, was wistful about the loss of Larry Hagman, who died of cancer in November.

His death "was a real surprise," Koonin said. "I had lunch with him the Tuesday the week before he passed away. I'm not sure he knew" how serious his medical condition was. "He was talking about the grandkids coming for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving would be in Dallas. Christmas in L.A. He was a brilliant actor. Maybe he knew. But I don't think anybody thought it was imminent."

Hagman, Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray are "best of friends," Koonin added. "You saw that last night." When he screened the episode a couple of weeks ago, "it made me very sad and weepy."

Koonin had a three-decade old story to tell about "Dallas," when it was on CBS as the top-rated drama on TV. "I asked my [future] wife [Eydie] on a date May 6, 1983. She said she'd love to go but it was the season finale of 'Dallas.' She never misses an episode."

Fortunately, Koonin had one of those hot tech toys of the day: a VCR. "I taped it and we watched it later," he said.

To think, he said, that he'd be Hagman's boss three decades later is "mindnumbing. To the point, even nonsensical!"

He said Hagman's death forced the writers to rejigger the scripts for the second half of "Dallas," but it wasn't as much of an overhaul as you'd think. He estimates maybe 20 percent of it had to be changed.

The writers also had to conjure up a way to kill him off using existing footage of J.R. They ended up "rotoscoping" him into a seedy Mexican hotel room scene so they'd have a pretense to have him killed while he was talking to John Ross about his big plans.

J.R.'s moves. many of which have yet to be revealed, will reverberate through the rest of this season.

"I'm incredibly proud" of "Dallas," Koonin said. "It was a huge gamble. It never should have worked." He noted that skeptics were rife last summer. But he loved the original script and feels the writers have properly balanced the old and the new while injecting plenty of that signature "Dallas" family drama.

Since season two returned in lat January, "Dallas" numbers are down by a third from last summer. Koonin knew the risk of bringing the show back in the winter, when broadcast TV provides far more competition for eyeballs. But he said TNT has to be able to bring audiences all year around with original programming, not just the summer. As for "Dallas," he said they had promised a certain delivery to their advertisers and they're in line with those.

I failed to ask Koonin directly but I get the impression "Dallas" will safely be renewed for a third season.

From there, we'll learn how important J.R. is to the brand and whether viewers will continues to stick with the show without the icon.