Tank Jobs and Sabotage

[kalbir]

As we've seen in the 1980s Ratings, 1990s Ratings, and Time Slot Hits threads, scheduling often plays a big part in the success of a primetime network series.

We all know some scheduling moves were more successful than others.

There are scheduling moves made by the networks to get an aging or fading show to a quicker end (tank jobs) or to get a show no longer wanted by the networks to an end (sabotage).

Here are some examples. 

Tank jobs

1984/85: CBS moves The Jeffersons and Alice from Sunday 9 pm/9:30 pm to Tuesday 8 pm/8:30 pm where they are now head-to-head w/ The A-Team. The Jeffersons and Alice are both below the Top 30 and are cancelled. The A-Team is 6th.

1985/86: CBS moves Trapper John, M.D. from Sunday 10 pm to Tuesday, where ABC has made a comeback w/ Who's the Boss taking off, new comedy Growing Pains, and Moonlighting showing growth. Trapper John, M.D. falls out of the Top 30 and is cancelled. Who's the Boss is 10th, Growing Pains is 17th, Moonlighting is 24th.

1986/87: NBC moves Hill Street Blues from Thursday 10 pm to Tuesday 9 pm, where it is now head-to-head w/ Moonlighting. Hill Street Blues is below the Top 30 and is cancelled. Moonlighting is 9th.

Sabotage

1987/88: ABC moves Hotel from Wednesday 10 pm to Saturday 10 pm. Hotel is below the Top 30 and is cancelled. Brandon Stoddard had a goal to get Aaron Spelling shows off of ABC, thus the move to a dead zone time slot.

1988/89: ABC moves Dynasty from Wednesday 10 pm to Thursday 9 pm, where it is now head-to-head w/ Cheers. Dynasty is below the Top 30 and is cancelled. Cheers is 4th. Brandon Stoddard knew exactly what he was doing when he moved Dynasty to a dead zone time slot. That move accomplished Brandon Stoddard's goal of getting Aaron Spelling shows off of ABC.

1988/89: ABC moves Moonlighting from Tuesday 9 pm to Sunday 8 pm, where it is now head-to-head w/ Murder, She Wrote. Moonlighting falls out of the Top 30 and is cancelled. Murder, She Wrote is 8th. My feeling is Robert Iger had enough of the backstage drama at Moonlighting, thus the move to a dead zone time slot.

1995/96: CBS moves Murder, She Wrote from Sunday 8 pm to Thursday 8 pm, head-to-head w/ Friends. Les Moonves wanted Murder, She Wrote gone from CBS so he knew exactly what he was doing when he moved Murder, She Wrote to a dead zone time slot. Murder, She Wrote falls out of the Top 30 and is cancelled. Friends is 3rd.

Some moves that might be considered tank jobs or sabotage but I'd say they were more fill space in the schedule.

1985/86: CBS moves Crazy Like a Fox from Sunday 9 pm to Wednesday 9 pm, head-to-head w/ Dynasty. That move filled the space from CBS cancelling new Wednesday shows Stir Crazy and George Burns Comedy Week. Crazy Like a Fox falls out of the Top 30 and is cancelled. Dynasty is 7th.

1988/89: CBS moves Simon & Simon from Thursday 9 pm to Saturday 9 pm, head-to-head w/ The Golden Girls. CBS never really had much success on Saturday. Simon & Simon is below the Top 30 and is cancelled. The Golden Girls is 6th.

1989/90: CBS moves the final four episodes of Falcon Crest from Friday 10 pm to Thursday 9 pm, head-to-head w/ Cheers. That move filled the space from CBS cancelling new Thursday 9 pm shows Top of the Hill, Island Son, Max Monroe: Loose Cannon. Cheers is 3rd.

If anyone has more to add, please do.

[Paul Raven]

@kalbir You know this is right up my street!

Fall 85

ABC moves The Fall Guy, fading on Wed due to Highway to Heaven to the Thurs @8 dead zone up against Cosby Show #1. Ratings are awful and ABC brings in a movie for Nov sweeps. Fall Guy is moved to Sat @8 to replace flop Hollywood Beat, before being dropped. The remaining episodes resurface in another ABC dead zone Fri @10 up against two tough competitors Falcon Crest and Miami Vice

Fall 86

The A Team, a top 10 show Tues @8 for several seasons dropped to #30 once Who's The Boss took hold. So for it's final season A Team gets shunted to Fri@8 where they haven't had a hit in years, it gets cancelled after 13 eps.

More to come...

[Vee]

Twin Peaks Season 2 (the scheduling, not the content which is a whole other topic). 'Nuff said.

Edited February 2, 2024 by Vee

[kalbir]

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Yes, The A-Team got weakened in 1985/86 by Who's the Boss and Growing Pains but I don't feel the move to Friday 8 pm was a tank job. I guess NBC thought the competition was less on Friday 8 pm (Webster, Mr. Belvedere, Scarecrow and Mrs. King) but it turned out not to be the case. Also NBC was trying to build a new Friday drama block w/ The A-Team, Miami Vice, and L.A. Law but that didn't work.

[Paul Raven]

I get your point and I could see NBC hoping that a known action/adventure show might take the time period where there was no clear leader, but it was 50/50 proposition.

They'd already gone down that road the season before  when Knight Rider began to fade Sun @8 and it was moved to Fri @8.

Has a fading show ever gotten a new lease of life by moving time slots?

[Khan]

I would argue that the "The Jeffersons" did. 

Its' first season (1975-76) ranked fourth in the ratings.  The next two seasons, the show still finished within the Top 20.  However, by the end of the 1978-79 season, "The Jeffersons" had fallen out of the Top 30 entirely.

Then, at the start of the 1979-80 season, CBS moved the show to Sunday nights, where it rebounded, finishing at #8, I believe, as part of CBS' comedy block that also included "Alice," "Archie Bunker's Place" and "One Day at a Time."

Meanwhile...

What NBC did to "A Different World" in its' last season (changing its' time slot frequently and without much heads-up, lack of promotion for new episodes, including the series finale; pre-empting episodes that weren't even aired until after the network already had cancelled the show, etc.) could only be described as a "hit job." 

NBC was always nervous about ADW and its' eagerness to tackle controversial issues, but I think the fact that "The Cosby Show" had ended the previous season gave the network license to do whatever they could to bury it.  Even if you were to argue that ADW was fading creatively after 5-6 seasons and probably didn't have that much life left in it - and I would say that that would be a fair argument - I think a series that had been a reliable performer for several seasons on the network's biggest night every week deserved better treatment.

Two more examples of tank jobs:

1. NBC moving "The Golden Girls"'s time slot up an hour (from 9/8c to 8/7c) at the beginning of its' seventh and final season.  The previous season still finished within the Top 10, but NBC likely saw the proverbial handwriting on the wall.

2. CBS moving "Designing Women" from Mondays to (I believe) Fridays for its' final season.  Ironically, the previous season was the show's highest-rated, but I think that was due mostly to the controversy surrounding Delta Burke and the Thomasons.  The truth is, with Burke and Jean Smart no longer in the cast, DW lagged creatively; and once Burke's replacement, Julia Duffy, decided not to return, I think the network just decided they had had enough.

Edited February 2, 2024 by Khan

[Khan]

To this day, I remain pissed over how CBS and Les Moonves treated that show.  MSW literally kept CBS afloat for years.  No show lasts forever, but MSW and Angela Lansbury deserved to go out on their terms.

[kalbir]

What you described reads like sabotage.

NBC messed up Saturday in 1991/92. The Golden Girls moved up from 9 pm to 8 pm and Empty Nest moved up from 9:30 pm to 9 pm, and none of the new 8:30 pm offerings took hold.

1992/93 CBS attempted a Friday comedy block The Golden Palace, Major Dad, Designing Women, Bob to compete w/ TGIF but that was an epic failure.

100% this. I'm holding myself back from stating further opinions of Les Moonves and his sabotage of Murder, She Wrote as its neither here nor there for this thread.

 

[Errol]

He did the same thing to The Nanny. Moved it from Mondays to Wednesdays. I recently watched clips where Fran Drescher talks about it, and it was clear Les wanted to make his stamp on the network. Under him, CBS became the CSI and NCIS network. While some of those additions have helped keep CBS in business to this day, it was done so savagely to the detriment of the shows that were doing well on the network. One thing I will point out, though, is that by moving Murder, She Wrote, it helped Touched by an Angel.

[DRW50]

I was curious about The Nanny because I thought one of the reasons they finally had Fran and Max get together (after stalling this for at least a year too long, if not longer) was down to ratings erosion. In some ways I felt like that final season was a parting gift and it had reached a natural conclusion at their wedding. 

[Errol]

In the interview I watched, the network basically told them to either get Fran and Max together or else. So they got them together. Supposedly ratings started to falter with the move to Wednesdays. The show was lucky to eke out an extra (and final) season on Wednesday nights solely due to how well the wedding did. In the final season, after so many episodes, they rested the show only to later bring it back with episodes leading up to and including the series finale episodes. Only in the summer did we see some of the episodes that were taped before the finale but after the scheduled break.

From Fran's interview, she said the show was moved off Mondays so the network could accommodate Bill Cosby's new (comeback) comedy. When that show failed on Mondays, it bumped The Nanny off the schedule altogether during much of the latter show's final season.

By the time The Nanny returned to CBS, the network wanted to air the series finale during sweeps (those were the days), so they jumped over a number of already taped episodes so it could air the finale during the all-important May ratings period, despite the show having a ratings decline. The remaining episodes, I believe, aired in June or something.

To your point, yes, because they figured the show was ending anyway. At that point, it got what would be considered a "proper sendoff" in terms of series finales. I love, love, love the show, and I still watch clips or full episodes on YouTube almost every day when they upload them. In 2022, I binged the whole series when Max was still HBO Max.

Actually, I take that back, I binged all the episodes within days of it joining the HBO Max (now Max) library. So, that was in April 2021, actually. I remember because I was watching episodes while I was at my brother's house.

[DRW50]

Thanks @Errol . I do remember how much Cosby struggled initially, to the point of bringing in Phylicia Rashad and moving the show away from its original premise from the UK version (for Bill to be playing a real ass)

[Paul Raven]

Who's The Boss?

In it's 6th season Boss finished #19 but was running out of steam.  ABC had Full House ready to take over and freshen the schedule. So ABC moved it to Sat @8 which had been a black hole for them since TJ Hooker ended. It ended up against another fading hit Golden Girls.

I think in a lot of cases, the networks want to rid themselves of aging shows because they are increasingly expensive to run with salaries for on and offscreen personnel increasing while ratings/profits move in the other direction.

Also stars are quite often ready to quit and there are enough episodes in the can to start making the real bucks in syndication. 

In the case of WTB, did the show feel like it had run its course by the final season?

I would wager a steak dinner that The Jeffersons would have to be the show that had the most timeslot changes.

 

Designing Women should have been moved a few seasons earlier when it was still peaking.

[kalbir]

Touched by an Angel took over Sunday 8 pm in Fall 1996, after Murder, She Wrote was cancelled.

[Errol]

Right. What I meant by that was by moving Murder, She Wrote, it gave Touched by an Angel a timeslot to thrive in. Had Murder, She Wrote stayed in its Sunday timeslot and continued to do well, and continued in general, who knows if Touched by an Angel would have succeded the way it did.