LOS ANGELES — It's time for the Friday-afternoon writers' meeting in Bungalow 27 at CBS Television City, which is just a fancy way of saying that 10 guys are sitting around a trailer trying to come up with two more Ann Coulter jokes.

Then in comes Bill Maher; everyone in the room defers to him. Most of the writers on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher" have been with him for years, some dating back to his run on his show "Politically Incorrect," which he hosted until shortly after 9/11. He was fired by ABC after famously saying that the suicide hijackers who hit the twin towers might have been many things but they weren't cowards.

In many ways, these are the happy times for "Real Time," which recently began its fifth season. The Democrats have taken control of Congress, the Bush White House has its first convicted felon, and the 2008 presidential campaign has gotten off to a roaring start.

"On our old show," Maher says about "Politically Incorrect" and its celebrity guests, "you had to play to their issue. Pamela Anderson? You talk about animal-rights issues. You're not going to Bosnia. This show is different because our guests are bright."

Maher says that his hope for "Real Time" is what he calls "smart for free" — the idea that an audience can get new information and insights, sandwiched between some jokes and a few dirty words. "We try to have enough comedic stepping stones, so if it does get heavy, there's something coming in five minutes that they'll laugh at," Maher says. "But if you took away the joke, and there's no idea there, I'm not interested in that, either."