kalbir

First week of 1986/87 and we can already see that NBC made a mistake moving Miami Vice up 1 hour and CBS made a mistake moving Simon & Simon and Knots Landing up 1 hour. I don't know why NBC didn't move Miami Vice back to Friday 10 pm when they moved L.A. Law to Thursday 10 pm. At least CBS saw the error of their ways and moved Simon & Simon and Knots Landing back to Thursday 9 pm and 10 pm but the damage was already done.

I wonder if People will have a special issue for Y&R's 50th anniversary. They didn't have one for the 40th.

@divinemotion Then again, Bill Bell basically replaced Caroline with Taylor.

1986/87 sitcoms going strong, primetime soaps still tanking, action shows all but done. The Cosby Show second consecutive season at #1 and it is still a killer show destroying everything in its path (time slot wise and overall). 22 out of 25 episodes finished #1 in the week of their original broadcast, 2 episodes finished 2nd, and 1 episode finished 3rd. This season The Cosby Show's had its highest-rated episode ever. The Cosby Show once again pulled up the rest of the NBC Thursday comedy block: Family Ties remained 2nd and it also had its highest-rated episode ever this season, Cheers moved up from 5th to 3rd and this season it had its highest-rated episode until the series finale, Night Court moved up from 11th to 7th. Murder, She Wrote once again continued to defy expectations and had its second consecutive Top 5 finish. This season Murder, She Wrote had an episode finish #1 and it also had its highest-rated episode ever. The Golden Girls had their first Top 5 finish and with Amen being the highest-rated new scripted series of the season, NBC Saturday is cemented. ABC Tuesday dominance starts again with Who's the Boss, Growing Pains, Moonlighting all in the Top 10. 1986/87 saw no change to the previous rankings: NBC #1, CBS 2nd, ABC 3rd. With the Top 10 fallout of Dallas, the CBS primetime mess era was about to start. With the exception of Murder, She Wrote, the drama lineup was either aging (Cagney & Lacey, Dallas, Falcon Crest, Knots Landing; Magnum, P.I.; Simon & Simon) or not showing any growth (The Equalizer). CBS really should have ended one of the aging dramas this season. Sitcoms were showing some signs of life, with Newhart and Kate & Allie still going and the renewals of My Sister Sam and Designing Women, but not enough to compete with the NBC and ABC comedies.

The Tortellis was one season and done. During the final five seasons of Cheers, NBC used Thursday 9:30 pm as a testing ground. Several shows passed through that time slot in that era: Dear John, Grand, Wings, Seinfeld.

Week of May 11-17, 1987. Family Ties, The Cosby Show; Murder, She Wrote; Cheers, Moonlighting were all repeats as their season finales were the week before. Growing Pains was a repeat but it's season finale was the following week.

@Soapsuds January 22, 1987 was the night The Cosby Show and Family Ties had their highest-rated episodes ever, and Cheers had it's highest-rated episode until the finale.

@Soapsuds Based on NFC Championship coverage being in the Top 11, this is the week January 5-11, 1987. NBC sitcoms taking up five of the Top 11. They really did have the sitcom game on lock in the second half of the 1980s. Two weeks away from the historical night January 22, 1987.

@AMCOLTLLover The first half of 1986 was when all the big storylines of the H. Wesley Kenney era culminated. The second half of 1986 was the start of Cricket eating the show.

I loved those big 1980s mini series based on best-selling novels. Agree that by the 1990s mini series were mostly a sad state. One memorable 1990s mini series you didn't mention, Alex Haley's Queen. You are killing me 🤣

AFAIK Fresno is the only comedy mini series ever attempted. 🤣

Was Another World the most affected ratings-wise by the huge rise of the ABC big three in the late 1970s/early 1980s? It seems like every show that wasn't the ABC big three was a mess back then but a good number of them recovered but somehow Another World didn't yet NBC/P&G kept it.

The Jabot/Newman corporate battles are getting stale?

I don't know anything about contracts, but with Y&R being in budget mode I can see this happening.

Friends of Jill from Santa Barbara to Guiding Light: Vincent Irizarry, Justin Deas, Marcy Walker, Marj Dusay.

Agree. That was Y&R's second worst nepotism. I don't know if any big soap names were considered for Ashley in 1988, but if a big soap name was cast as Ashley in 1988 it might have taken attention away from Bill Bell's pets Cricket and Cassandra. Remember 1989 was all about Cricket and Cassandra and the rest of the main females got second/third tier storylines.

Bill Bell recast Y&R Ashley twice (1988 and 1996) and in hindsight, neither worked. Can we think of anyone who would have worked in either 1988 or 1996?

Dorothy McGuire's arc was two months, May-July 1984. I think it was mentioned here that it was a big deal back then for Y&R to get a Golden Age Hollywood actress in a short arc.

Tom Langan cast several 1980s Y&R actors on Reilly's Days: Deborah Adair, Eileen Davidson, Nick Benedict, Jaime Lyn Bauer, Lauren Koslow.

@dragonflies The chris evans you linked to is the same Twitter user that got EB trending in Summer 2021. I really hope these lack of appearances are due to EB's recovery from knee surgery, and not his role being reduced.

Also add CBS Master of the Game: February 19-21, 1984; 9 hours Mistral's Daughter: September 24-26, 1984; 8 hours Robert Kennedy and His Times: January 27-29, 1985; 7 hours Fresno: November 16-20, 1986; 6 hours I'll Take Manhattan: March 1-4, 1987; 8 hours Lonesome Dove: February 5-8, 1989; 8 hours NBC Marco Polo: May 16-19, 1982; 10 hours A.D.: March 31-April 4, 1985; 12 hours Peter the Great: February 2-5, 1986; 8 hours Noble House: February 21-24, 1988; 8 hours

There was a Fall 1992 issue of the week episode partly set in South Central Los Angeles. That episode might have referenced the riots.

Miami Vice weakened Falcon Crest in 1985/86 and if NBC left Miami Vice at Friday 10 pm in 1986/87 it might have finished off Falcon Crest. Miami Vice may have been the new hotness, but it still got beat by Murder, She Wrote. It will never not be funny to me that Miami Vice was clean swept by Murder, She Wrote (in weeks where new episodes of both shows were broadcast, Murder, She Wrote finished ahead of Miami Vice in all those weeks). Angela Lansbury referred to Miami Vice as Miami Heat in a 1985 Los Angeles Times interview. It might have been an accident or she might have been throwing shade but in an elegant and classy way though.

It's funny that Heather Tom has played Katie longer than she played Victoria, but Victoria is her signature role. I think she's staying at B&B until it ends, plus she has her directing career going so she's prepared for post B&B life.

ABC having the World Series and Winter Olympics in 1987/88 played a big part in them moving up to 2nd. 1987/88 was also the peak of Growing Pains and Who's the Boss, plus the premiere of The Wonder Years, and Moonlighting was still going strong. That's why I refer to Miami Vice as the new hotness. I pointed out earlier in the thread that NBC probably got too overconfident from Miami Vice Top 10 finish in 1985/86 that they moved it up 1 hour in Fall 1986 but Miami Vice did not do the job in 1986/87 that NBC wanted it to do (clobber Dallas). Those February 1984 ratings were a month before Kate & Allie premiered and Kate & Allie was the only sitcom to finish in the Top 10 in 1983/84. Agree that Fall 1984 was the start of the sitcom revival.