I rephrased a question that was active for only a few minutes about the amount of shows for fall season, and how it dramatically decreased. But, broadcast schedules used to be highly competitive with each slot, and if a show underperformed, it was replaced. I remember the game show Show Me the Money on ABC hosted by William Shatner only airing a few episodes before they put reruns of According to Jim or something in it's place. The same with Day Break, which was a dramatic show in late 2006 which was replaced by AFV reruns (to add insult to injury!) Does anyone else remember when broadcast networks used to do this? It stopped being common midway last decade I think. Today, it's very rare to see that happen with how fragmented viewing has become.
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Remember when broadcast networks would pull a show from the schedule due to bad ratings?
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
I can remember quite a few times that a show was removed from the schedule after only a few airings. Either the network would never show the remaining episodes or they'd run them during the hottest weeks of the summer when many folks were outside or away.
Yes, I remember "Show Me The Money" with William Shatner. I didn't think it was a bad game show. How about the spin off shows from successful series that were ending? The was something called "After MASH" and I seem to remember Betty White and Georgia Engel were in a Mary Tyler Moore show spin off? There was a spin off of The Golden Girls, where several of them opened a bed and breakfast. I believe all these shows were gone before they aired all their episodes.
The one that holds the record is "Turn On." It was a very fast-paced sketch comedy, trying to outdo "Laugh In" with guest host Tim Conway. It only aired one edition and some stations on the ABC network pulled it before it finished its premiere episode. Luckily, it is preserved on You Tube.
Yes, I remember "Show Me The Money" with William Shatner. I didn't think it was a bad game show. How about the spin off shows from successful series that were ending? The was something called "After MASH" and I seem to remember Betty White and Georgia Engel were in a Mary Tyler Moore show spin off? There was a spin off of The Golden Girls, where several of them opened a bed and breakfast. I believe all these shows were gone before they aired all their episodes.
The one that holds the record is "Turn On." It was a very fast-paced sketch comedy, trying to outdo "Laugh In" with guest host Tim Conway. It only aired one edition and some stations on the ABC network pulled it before it finished its premiere episode. Luckily, it is preserved on You Tube.
I remember the now defunct site TV.com having a contest on which shows would be pulled from the air first. I think in 2013 it was We are Men with Tony Schalub and the guy from Kangaroo Jack. I looked up to see which shows in recent years they've done that to. Apparently a show called Promise Land was yanked from ABC in 2022 and placed on Hulu with 5 episodes remaining....it must have done especially poorly, since that practice is very scarcely used today.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
In fact, it did not air in the Pacific Time Zone at all, the network cancelled it so abruptly.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
"South Of Sunset".
Crime drama starring Glenn Frey (yes, the Eagle), produced for CBS. The premiere episode aired on October 27, 1993 ... except for Los Angeles, where CBS O&O was too busy covering brush fires in Malibu to be bothered with running the network schedule. (They aired it three days either, on a Saturday, when viewing levels were historically lower.)
CBS was so disappointed at the poor ratings for the pilot episode that they cancelled it, with six more episodes left unaired. The closest they came to being seen by a mass audience was when VH1 reaired the pilot and four of the six remaining episodes the following year as part of a week-long "Eagles Family Tree" promotion.
Crime drama starring Glenn Frey (yes, the Eagle), produced for CBS. The premiere episode aired on October 27, 1993 ... except for Los Angeles, where CBS O&O was too busy covering brush fires in Malibu to be bothered with running the network schedule. (They aired it three days either, on a Saturday, when viewing levels were historically lower.)
CBS was so disappointed at the poor ratings for the pilot episode that they cancelled it, with six more episodes left unaired. The closest they came to being seen by a mass audience was when VH1 reaired the pilot and four of the six remaining episodes the following year as part of a week-long "Eagles Family Tree" promotion.
Nope. That urban legend came when someone took Tim Conway's joke "they cancelled it while it was airing on the East Coast" literally.
It aired on the West Coast. At least on KABC. Some markets didn't show it:
I watched it on KABC. I was 12. I didn't get it, but I watched.
The GM at WEWS, Cleveland is said, in urban legend, to have pulled it off the air during a commercial break, but that didn't happen, either, as we learned in a thread her about two years ago:
Short version, it aired on a Wednesday and ABC said it was going "On hiatus" on Friday. The finished and ready-to-air episode 2 never did.
And now, you can watch it. But will you? Should you?
UPDATE: George Schlatter, in going through the vaults, found material that would have been used in episode 3 of "Turn-On". So, he and a crew put together a third episode just last year:
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K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I didn't see it, but then I was probably down at channel 16 that evening getting a few more evenings of running Master Control in before our final-ever broadcast that Saturday.
I stand corrected, based on your first-hand report.
Also on ABC, March 1982:
It's hard for some folks to believe, given the success of the "Naked Gun" movies, but the movies only happened because ABC cancelled "Police Squad" after only four episodes, pulled it from the schedule and burned off the remaining two episodes over the summer.
The problem? American TV viewers weren't yet accustomed to laughing without a laugh track and to paying close attention to sight gags and elaborate wordplay. The show simply couldn't gain traction and ABC didn't want to risk low numbers in primetime that close to May sweeps.
Zucker-Abrams-Zucker took (mostly) the same show, including Leslie Nielsen, made movies and made millions.
It's hard for some folks to believe, given the success of the "Naked Gun" movies, but the movies only happened because ABC cancelled "Police Squad" after only four episodes, pulled it from the schedule and burned off the remaining two episodes over the summer.
The problem? American TV viewers weren't yet accustomed to laughing without a laugh track and to paying close attention to sight gags and elaborate wordplay. The show simply couldn't gain traction and ABC didn't want to risk low numbers in primetime that close to May sweeps.
Zucker-Abrams-Zucker took (mostly) the same show, including Leslie Nielsen, made movies and made millions.
You were running Master Control in a TV station at age 12?
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Yes. In fact, I was the Master Control operator the day the station's financial backer pulled out and the entire technical staff walked out. Up until then, I had been the co-moderator of a Saturday night discussion show that pitted teenagers against young adults in their 20's ... the walkout came on the day I was supposed to come down to the studios after school for a pre-production meeting.
Upon spotting me, the owner escorted me to Master Control and said "you're a bright child ... see if you can figure out how to get us on the air at 5:00." Somehow I did, the owner did the 6:00 news himself, accomplished by my locking down a camera in the studio and going back to MC to insert the commercials.
I spent a lot more time behind the camera than in front of it after that.
Wow.
As the kids say, mad respect.
"Co-moderator of a Saturday night discussion show that pitted teenagers against young adults in their 20s"---at 12 is, by itself, a pretty big deal.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I was something of a minor celebrity at Cabrillo Junior High School for those several weeks that the show aired.
And about a year after KKOG-TV signed off, the Ventura Unified School District decided to experiment with television in the classroom, and I was told by the faculty advisor that they used Cabrillo as the test school "because we already have a student there who knows something about television."
I didn't do any "in front of the camera" work again until around 1971, when the local cable company started experimenting with local origination programming on the weather scanner channel on Saturdays. But I still spent at least half my time there either running a camera or the rudimentary Master Control we had set up in the back of the building.
It was good old Cable Channel 6 that got me into radio; the Ventura County Fair Parade passed right in front of the cable company offices, so naturally we aired it live, with several replays. We had an ambitious three-camera setup, and a well-known local radio guy, Fred Hall, was going to be the on-camera host. He heard one of my station breaks (I was doing practically all of the announcements, on cart), asked about me and after I came down from the roof where I had been running camera, he told me that if I got my Third Phone he would hire me for weekends. I did, he did, and I stayed for four years (as I have already recounted in the thread on stations that found themselves needing to go more contemporary in the mid-70s to remain viable).
Fred was also the guy who recommended me to the Wallaces in 1978.
And about a year after KKOG-TV signed off, the Ventura Unified School District decided to experiment with television in the classroom, and I was told by the faculty advisor that they used Cabrillo as the test school "because we already have a student there who knows something about television."
I didn't do any "in front of the camera" work again until around 1971, when the local cable company started experimenting with local origination programming on the weather scanner channel on Saturdays. But I still spent at least half my time there either running a camera or the rudimentary Master Control we had set up in the back of the building.
It was good old Cable Channel 6 that got me into radio; the Ventura County Fair Parade passed right in front of the cable company offices, so naturally we aired it live, with several replays. We had an ambitious three-camera setup, and a well-known local radio guy, Fred Hall, was going to be the on-camera host. He heard one of my station breaks (I was doing practically all of the announcements, on cart), asked about me and after I came down from the roof where I had been running camera, he told me that if I got my Third Phone he would hire me for weekends. I did, he did, and I stayed for four years (as I have already recounted in the thread on stations that found themselves needing to go more contemporary in the mid-70s to remain viable).
Fred was also the guy who recommended me to the Wallaces in 1978.
Used to? They still do.
You guys make me feel like an underachiever. There you were having all that fun in California while I was freezing in a typical Iowa winter! I was a year younger at the time...and have absolutely no recall of whether I saw the show or not.
So I went back to the newspaper archive for the Des Moines Register (since I was in Iowa) at the time, and its weekly tabloid pull-out TV magazine. There was a feature article about "Turn-On" titled "Making Laugh-In Seem Slow". It quoted the producer, Digby Wolfe, who described the show as "a comedy-oriented assault on the viewer". Based on the subsequent outcome, looks like he got that right.
Anyway, what might I have seen that Wednesday night at 7:30 pm (Central)? The schedules as published:
ABC from KTVO in Ottumwa: "Turn-On"
CBS from KRNT-TV in Des Moines: A half-hour show called "Good Guys" which was not further described.
NBC from WHO-TV in Des Moines: The last half-hour of a Hallmark Hall of Fame special, "Teacher, Teacher", an original drama about the struggles to teach a teenager who was what we would now call developmentally disabled, with a teen who himself was disabled in the lead role, also starring Ozzie Davis, and David McCollum. A feature on the special was the cover story for the TV magazine that week.
NET from KDPS-TV in Des Moines, if conditions were right: "Book Beat" with Marc Connelly as the guest.
No independent TV.
Alternatively, sixth-grade homework.
Normally, NBC ran "The Virginian" in the 6:30-8 pm slot. The previous hour on CBS was "The Glen Campbell Show", and maybe that would have been on since my parents were country music fans of a sort. Then the set could've stayed on channel 8 for whatever "Good Guys" was. I don't remember it, either. The Hallmark Hall of Fame? My mother was a teacher and administrator of a program to teach reading to pupils who needed extra help. At home, she did NOT want to watch shows about schools. So scratch that. I do remember "Here Come the Brides", which ABC aired 6:30-7:30 pm, but nothing about what was on after that. "Book Beat" is highly doubtful, if we could get it at all. Cable TV was still a couple of years away.
So my best guess is...homework.
The "Turn-On" controversy didn't land in the pages of the Register until February 10, in a wire-service story about its cancellation. The show still appeared in the schedules published in the Register's TV magazine for February 9, but I chalk that up to lead times due to production requirements.
I didn't realize the unique place of "Turn-On" in TV programming until decades later. Score one for the Internet.
So I went back to the newspaper archive for the Des Moines Register (since I was in Iowa) at the time, and its weekly tabloid pull-out TV magazine. There was a feature article about "Turn-On" titled "Making Laugh-In Seem Slow". It quoted the producer, Digby Wolfe, who described the show as "a comedy-oriented assault on the viewer". Based on the subsequent outcome, looks like he got that right.
Anyway, what might I have seen that Wednesday night at 7:30 pm (Central)? The schedules as published:
ABC from KTVO in Ottumwa: "Turn-On"
CBS from KRNT-TV in Des Moines: A half-hour show called "Good Guys" which was not further described.
NBC from WHO-TV in Des Moines: The last half-hour of a Hallmark Hall of Fame special, "Teacher, Teacher", an original drama about the struggles to teach a teenager who was what we would now call developmentally disabled, with a teen who himself was disabled in the lead role, also starring Ozzie Davis, and David McCollum. A feature on the special was the cover story for the TV magazine that week.
NET from KDPS-TV in Des Moines, if conditions were right: "Book Beat" with Marc Connelly as the guest.
No independent TV.
Alternatively, sixth-grade homework.
Normally, NBC ran "The Virginian" in the 6:30-8 pm slot. The previous hour on CBS was "The Glen Campbell Show", and maybe that would have been on since my parents were country music fans of a sort. Then the set could've stayed on channel 8 for whatever "Good Guys" was. I don't remember it, either. The Hallmark Hall of Fame? My mother was a teacher and administrator of a program to teach reading to pupils who needed extra help. At home, she did NOT want to watch shows about schools. So scratch that. I do remember "Here Come the Brides", which ABC aired 6:30-7:30 pm, but nothing about what was on after that. "Book Beat" is highly doubtful, if we could get it at all. Cable TV was still a couple of years away.
So my best guess is...homework.
The "Turn-On" controversy didn't land in the pages of the Register until February 10, in a wire-service story about its cancellation. The show still appeared in the schedules published in the Register's TV magazine for February 9, but I chalk that up to lead times due to production requirements.
I didn't realize the unique place of "Turn-On" in TV programming until decades later. Score one for the Internet.
That is really impressive and a great story!
And there are some shows that should have been canceled that went on far too long.
They let it finish its run though. What I'm referring to is shows that get taken off midway through their run
That continues to happen. Shoes get pulled and dumped elsewhere. Not all, just like in the past when some finished their run and some didn’t.
‘Promised Land’ Pulled From ABC Schedule, to Finish Season 1 on Hulu I think the last time it happened was 2022.
Hate when shoes get pulled and dumped.