It's hard to sell iPods when the world is going to hell.

So in 2001, when David Simon pitched his groundbreaking new drama "The Wire," it wasn't to executives at NBC, ABC, CBS or TNT.

The acronym would be - would almost have to be, said Simon - HBO, the cable network filled with the kind of sultry, violent, profane and gritty content that lit up five seasons of "The Wire."

"Advertisers require that you pause every 12 minutes as they sell you the latest iPod or Lincoln Continental or feminine hygiene product," Simon said to a packed ballroom of writers and series fans in the Holiday Inn Downtown at the Park on Saturday afternoon. "Every 12 minutes, you have to stop the drama."

Simon appeared in conjunction with the Montana Festival of the Book, and shared a table with co-producer and novelist George P. Pelecanos, who wrote six episodes of the acclaimed series and co-produced and edited even more.

Some critics have called "The Wire," with its searing, hyper-realistic and often disturbing portrayal of Baltimore's urban life and institutions, the greatest television series of all time. It ran for 60 episodes from 2002 to 2008.

Simon and Pelecanos talked for an hour about the craft of writing and producing the series, their words eagerly consumed by a standing-room-only crowd.

Pelecanos, a crime novelist ("The Night Gardener"), was initially hesitant to accept Simon's invitation to write for the series, believing that writing is a craft for lone wolves.

"As a novelist, I sit in a room by myself," he said. "Then all of a sudden, you have to get along with people. There are a lot of egos in that room, mine included."

Simon, a former crime reporter and writer-producer of NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street" and HBO's "The Corner," told Pelecanos that the edgy writing the series demanded would be welcome on the cable network.

"Television," said Simon, "has always been an inferior medium - until cable."

Over five seasons, "The Wire" - so-named because of the surveillance cameras and footage the plots rely on - took aim at Baltimore's institutions, including its school system, media, police department, government and ports, portraying all as deeply corrupt, mainly as a result of the federal war on drugs.

Structurally and thematically, it made "Miami Vice" look like a Saturday-morning children's program.

"It undercut the conventions," said Simon. "The convention that if you can find the murderer and get back to the status quo, the world will be just a little better."

Instead, the bleak inner-city landscape and the bright offices of bureaucrats are places of inevitable conflict, betrayal, greed and violence where "What is a bad guy?" is a pointless question, said Simon.

"The show," he said, "was not about good or evil. It was about the systemic."

Early on, some critics complained that the delivery was over the top - "Oh, this is just 'NYPD Blue' with more language and nudity," Simon echoed the thinking.

But having covered the crime beat for the Baltimore Sun for a dozen years, Simon wouldn't tone it down.

"I thought, 'If they think we're going to scale back, just wait until they get to episode four,' " he said.

Pelecanos agreed.

"You write characters the way they would speak," he said. "When you're a writer, you want that kind of meat."

The show never achieved anything close to the audience of other HBO series, such as "The Sopranos" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

But all five years were praised as revolutionary, and that's exactly the time frame that Simon had in mind when he created it.

"At some point as a writer, you need a new universe," he said. "Because the characters have done everything you wanted from them."

Besides, added Pelecanos, adding more seasons could diminish the critical success of the series overall.

"I'm happy we got out five seasons," he said. "Because nobody ever said the eighth season of 'Hawaii Five-0' was better than the second."

Reporter Jamie Kelly can be reached at 523-5254 or at jkelly@missoulian.com.