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Red Letter day in TV upcoming...

S

ShawnHill1

To borrow a term from bpatrick, a certain anniversary is upcoming two weeks from today. For better or worse (depending on your viewpoint), April 5th marks the 20th anniversary of the real debut of the Fox television network. I know the actual debut goes back to October 1986, with the premiere of the Late Show with Joan Rivers, but IMO, the network made its real mark on that Spring night in 1987. On that very night, we saw the debuts of arguably television's most unusual sitcom (compared to other sitcoms of its era) in Married...with Children and the kinda long-forgotten Tracy Ullman Show (which, of course, gave us The Simpsons). On its debut night, MWC and Tracy ran back-to-back in a three-hour loop. The following week, the rest of Fox's new prime time debuted, in 21 Jump Street (the show that made Johnny Depp a star) and the long-forgotten Duet, which later morphed into Open House (featuring a then unknown Ellen Degerenes).

As we all know, seven years later, Fox really became a big time player when acquired the broadcast rights of the National Football League, which in turn led a number of long-established network affiliates (mostly CBS) to change their network affillations to Fox.

Fox's success (once again, for better or worse) led them to spawn new spinoffs in the forms of Fox Sports Net, Fox News Channel, FX, etc.

From Al Bundy to Bart Simpson to John Walsh to Mulder & Scully to Dr. House to Simon Cowell....Happy 20th, Fox!
 
I never watched Ms. Rivers's show. As for those earliest primetime Fox shows, the only one I watched with any regularity was "Duet", a show about two yuppie couples. I had a crush on Mary Page Keller ;D, who played Laura the caterer opposite Matthew Laurence's aspiring novelist Ben. I think Laurence later appeared in a couple of episodes of "Beverly Hills 90210."

Yes, happy 20th, Fox.

ixnay
 
" the only one I watched with any regularity was "Duet", a show about two yuppie couples. I had a crush on Mary Page Keller Grin, who played Laura the caterer opposite Matthew Laurence's aspiring novelist Ben."

Duet was a well written romantic comedy. The couple's friends (neighbors? can't remember) were played by Alison La Placa and Chris Lemmon - Jack's son. La Placa played an edgy sarcastic character, so she got a lot of the laugh lines. They spun her off into an unsuccessful Fox series called "Open House" in which Ellen DeGeneres was also a regular. I think that marked Ellen's first appearances as an actor...outside of stand-up appearances on Carson, etc.
 
I didn't get my first glimpse of Fox until sometime in 1988 while I was in Los Angeles, though I remember seeing the promos prior to the launch on a few cable networks.

When it began, Anchorage had the only Fox station in Alaska (KTBY); Fairbanks would have to wait until 1992 for their own. But I would start catching Fox regularly in 1989 when I moved to Mississippi, where I had double access to the network via the Gulfport and New Orleans stations; the latter on cable.

By the way...in the early years even with 21 Jump Street and Married With Children as their first breakout hits, Fox's ratings and viewerships were equal to the CW's. But things would get better...and BETTER...and BETTER...in the years to come.

Jonathan Allen
 
I think that not only the quality of shows had something do with Fox's lower ratings at the time, but also with lack of affiliation in some markets, or being on second and third-tier stations no one hardly watched, or in the case of some markets like Portland and the Twin Cities, those stations dropped the Fox affiliation (maybe too soon), and in a sense of irony thanks to corporate deals, the Fox affiliation ended up BACK on their original outlets years later.

Next to Married...with Children, my favorite earlier Fox shows were the short-lived Saturday night edition of a family-themed version of Nickelodeon's Double Dare (the daily syndicated edition already aired on most Fox stations at the time) in 1988, and In Living Color, which premiered Easter Sunday (April 15) 1990.
 
There's a great book that's probably long out of print on the early days of the Fox network.
It was called Outfoxed by Alex Ben Block.

The description of the early days was unreal. Just a handful of people to sign up affiliates, make programming deals, do audience research and sell advertising.

There's a story in there about Scott Sassa, a young executive who had been hired from the Playboy Channel to run advertising and promotion. He spent a ton of money promoting the launch of Joan Rivers' program and didn't have enough for an additional advertising push. He finally convinced his bosses to hire an ad agency to help out. Chiat Day (famed for Apple and Nike ads) was hired. They evaluated everything Fox had done to that point and make one key recommendation at the outset: the network shouldn't call itself by the acronym FBC, it should go by Fox - which had a great tradition of good entertainment.

In my view, that was probably the most important decision Fox ever made. I believe the network would have folded due to low ratings had they continued to go by FBC as a name. The word "Fox" allows for so much more branding possibilities than anything with "BC" attached to it.
 
When Fox hit the airwaves in 1987 (specially in 1986 with the Joan Rivers' Late Show), I thought the network was a joke. However, with shows like "Married...with Children," "In Living Color," and "the Simpsons," the Fox network grew on me. I think the biggest surprise in the television industry came in 1994 when Fox acquired the NFL rights from CBS. This to me was the best television story of the decade. I really don't think Fox had the balls (sorry about the language, but I had to write this) to pull this off, but they did.

Now, Fox has been a popular culture icon with their successful network, their successful news cable channel (Fox News Channel), FX and their other media sources. Happy birthday FOX!
 
Remember the reaction to Fox having the rights to the Emmy broadcast in 1987? NOBODY believed the netlet would make it and everyone just asked why... ::)
 
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