You’re welcome @kalbir . I did notice overall the ratings were down all across the board.

Re: Moonlighting’s series finale. What a pathetic rating and ending, then again a fitting end to a very, very abysmal final season.

Flipping back to the early 80’s attached in the April 12-18 1982 top 15 ratings. Dallas aired a repeat of the season premiere, but Falcon Crest still finished at #9 with their season finale of the first season:

@soapfan770 I pointed out Moonlighting final season as sabotage in the Tank Jobs and Sabotage thread. My feeling is Robert Iger had enough of their backstage drama, thus the move to dead zone Sunday 8 pm.

1 hour ago, kalbir said:

@soapfan770 I pointed out Moonlighting final season as sabotage in the Tank Jobs and Sabotage thread. My feeling is Robert Iger had enough of their backstage drama, thus the move to dead zone Sunday 8 pm.

That would make sense. Between the budget overruns and constant preemptions, Bruce's burgeoning film career and Cybill's protracted maternity leave and battles with Glenn Gordon Caron (which resulted in the latter leaving the show before the final season), "Moonlighting" had become a huge mess.

Edited Friday at 03:12 AM2 days by Khan

1 hour ago, soapfan770 said:

You’re welcome @kalbir . I did notice overall the ratings were down all across the board.

Re: Moonlighting’s series finale. What a pathetic rating and ending, then again a fitting end to a very, very abysmal final season.

Flipping back to the early 80’s attached in the April 12-18 1982 top 15 ratings. Dallas aired a repeat of the season premiere, but Falcon Crest still finished at #9 with their season finale of the first season:

Dallas season finale was the week before and had a 27.9 rating.

Edited Friday at 04:09 AM2 days by Soapsuds

Gary Coleman really delivered for NBC in those years. Diff'rent Strokes survived various timeslot moves -Fri/Wed/Thurs/Sat and his TV Movies always scored.

NBC Fri & Sat schedules were a disaster-reruns of Dalton Gang and Goldie & The Boxer. They gave up by this stage of the season.

On 6/12/2026 at 1:09 AM, Paul Raven said:

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NBC Fri & Sat schedules were a disaster-reruns of Dalton Gang and Goldie & The Boxer. They gave up by this stage of the season.

I don’t see it listed, and maybe because it fell outside of the Top 70 lol, but in April ‘82 NBC began airing the rest of Chicago Story in the 8:30/7:30 Friday night slot after the Saturday night slot flopped, which was even worse. I guess NBC wanted to burn off the experiment.

Chicago Story ended up being ranked at #101 for the season. What a mess.

Chicago Story began airing Fri the week after the posted ratings.

It began with a 3hr episode-not sure if this was just 2 90 min eps back to back?

It ranked #66 for the week.

On CBS Dulkes was #13, Dallas #6 and FC #9

ABC Benson #47 Barney Miller #48 Pheonix #46 Strike Force #50

I don't know what possessed NBC to order a 90 min series that would be difficult to schedule.

The original plan was One of the Boys Fri@8 Chicago Story @8.30. I guess the hope was that Boys would do well and the Chicago Story would follow through and draw viewers away from Dallas. But that scheduling was dropped and Chicago Story was stuck on Sat and then Fri with ill matched sitcom lead ins.

The only way I could see it working was @9.30 following a more adult oriented sitcom a la Cheers, But NBC had nothing like that on offer.