@soapfan770 Thanks for posting 1996 Super Bowl week.

1995/96 not a very good season. ER reaches #1 and Friends blows up. The rest of the broadcast network primetime lineups that weren't NBC Thursday, not looking so good.

On 2/2/2026 at 11:02 PM, kalbir said:

@soapfan770 Thanks for posting 1996 Super Bowl week.

1995/96 not a very good season. ER reaches #1 and Friends blows up. The rest of the broadcast network primetime lineups that weren't NBC Thursday, not looking so good.

No it wasn’t overall was it?

We all know CBS was the biggest MESS. It’s biggest nights were Mondays and I guess Saturdays at this point? Oddly CBS canceled the Nancy McKeon & Marissa Hargitay sitcom Can’t Buy Me Love after one season despite breaking into the Top 30, but it just didn’t hold onto the Nanny audience leading into Murphy Brown.

ABC was a checkered board mess. An aging yet still decently rated Tuesday night while TGIF was hanging while shows like Lois & Clark moderately thrived in its own corner. ABC threw around a bunch of new sitcoms but nothing worked.

Outside of NBC’s Thursday night lineup, things looked either decent (Frasier on Tuesdays, L&O on Wednesdays) or they looked rough.

Fox soaps were beginning to age and decline. The X-Files gained a lot of momentum, but the rest of the network’s established hits were trending downward.

UPN and WB both cellar dwellers.

There wasn’t any real breakout hit. Drew Carey show premiered but wasn’t a hit yet. JAG premiered and was cancelled. Shows like Can’t Buy Me Love, Hudson Street and The Naked Truth showed promise but were quickly cancelled or moved instead of trying to let their ratings grow. Caroline in the City was just a timeslot hit. I guess there was 3rd Rock from the Sun but that ended up a being more of a wacky show with a cult following than a mainstream hit.