Looking back...Primetime Ratings from the 80's

[kalbir]

CSI was CBS's biggest hit drama since Dallas. The CBS primetime mess era was from when Dallas fell out of the Top 10 to the start of Survivor and CSI.

Since Dallas ended, only three CBS dramas have lasted 15 or more seasons: NCIS (19 and renewed for 2022/23, its 20th season), CSI (15), Criminal Minds (15). NCIS: Los Angeles was renewed for 2022/23, which will be its 14th season, tying Dallas and Knots Landing.

[Faulkner]

And CSI and Survivor are still driving CBS to this day. CSI more in its influence but Survivor is vying to be the top-ranked series on broadcast in its 42nd season. That’s a format resonating through the generations.

[Khan]

Which, to me, was unfortunate, in retrospect.  Before "C.S.I." (and "Survivor" and "Big Brother"), CBS had a long-standing reputation as a network for shows that appealed largely to women, going all the way back to "I Love Lucy."  I mean, when you think about all the female actors and characters who have helped shape the modern television landscape, the majority of them, I would say, came largely from CBS shows.  With the success of "C.S.I." and others, however, it seemed as if the tide began to turn AGAINST women at the network, to the point where Les Moonves felt entitled to remold CBS itself into this testosterone-driven bastion of white, male toxicity that persists to this day, long after he was officially shown the door.

To put it another way: it's hard for me to reconcile the CBS that gave us "C.S.I." and all its' spinoffs with the CBS that gave us Lucy, or "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," or "Murphy Brown."  It's like watching two completely different networks.

I can't believe that generic-as-[!@#$%^&*] spinoff has lasted as long as DALLAS and KL.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Khan

[Faulkner]

And that legacy has destroyed its daytime series.

[Khan]

Agreed!

[kalbir]

I brought this up in the Primetime Soaps thread, but I wonder if there's a connection between Les Moonves moving up the ranks at Lorimar and the CBS big three primetime soaps salary dumping mostly their long-time female cast members when they went into budget mode. 

[soapfan770]

I think what doomed CBS overall was they were slow to change and adapt quickly which resulted in an identity crisis for CBS during the Larry Tisch & Howard Stringer years. 
 

Sure CBS had hits like Northen Exposure, Murphy Brown, Nanny, Chicago Hope and Walker Texas Ranger but they are all largely forgotten today. CBS seemed to get to a point where they were throwing anything to see if it stuck quite recklessly: making the dead last morning show very quirky, snatching dying shows from other networks, putting Connie Chung on the evening news and giving Andrew Dice Clay a sitcom? With the ideas like that no wonder the network was floundering.

Makes you think doesn’t it? Also after Howard Stringer, who once claimed he didn’t believe in cable TV, left his mess at CBS he moved to become head of Sony America about the same time of Sony’s takeover of Columbia and lasted a decade there. Hmmm….. 

[Khan]

Agree.

[Soapsuds]

For the week ending January 13, 1985

 

 

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[Khan]

I can't believe "Webster" ranked that highly, lol.

[kalbir]

@Soapsuds This was the week that CBS moved The Jeffersons and Alice from Sunday 9 pm/9:30 pm to Tuesday 8 pm/8:30 pm, where they got clobbered by The A-Team and eventually cancelled.

[Wendy]

Wow, no wonder Hunter was almost cancelled in its first season! Kind of shocking to see it in 66th place! (It was on opposite Dallas on Fridays, though it had premiered in September on a Tuesday.) I recall reading about how someone showed Brandon Tartikoff the upcoming 2-parter, "The Snow Queen" (with Dennis Franz as a dirty cop in the guest cast), and that was when he made the decision to wait on axing the show and wait for another night to open up to give the show another chance.

Exit a show called Hot Pursuit (starring Eric Pierpoint, probably better known from Alien Nation and as Rita's last steady boyfriend, Eric Russell, before she and Chris got together on Silk Stalkings), which bombed, then the 9 p.m. show, Partners In Crime with Lynda Carter and Loni Anderson, was moved to an hour later when Hot Pursuit fizzled; that did no better, and finally, Hunter was moved to Saturday nights at 10, and the rest is history.

That was the beginning of the turnaround for NBC on Saturday nights. Once The Golden Girls premiered the following season, NBC saw its fortunes massively improve...

Edited April 20, 2022 by Wendy

[Paul Raven]

For every Hunter that was given a shot in a new timeslot, there were dozens of other shows that missed that opportunity.

Alice and the Jeffersons were fading as they were the only remnants of the Sunday comedy block and now looked a little out of place, but CBS must have known sending them to Tuesdays against A Team was a death knell.

Did they deserve that? Both of them had been moved around the schedule in past seasons and dipped in the ratings before returning to better slots.

Or were they creatively spent, expensive to produce and CBS quickly wanted to get rid of them?

[Soapsuds]

35 years ago today ratings in 1987

 

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[Khan]

I think "Alice" and "The Jeffersons" stayed on maybe a year or two longer than they should have.

Man, this is taking me back.  So many shows that I remember watching every week.  I miss those days of TV a lot.