Tank Jobs and Sabotage

[Paul Raven]

Schedule-wise, I could put it at 8 p.m. Saturday, with Once a Hero in the 9 p.m. Sunday slot.

@Franko Sorry can't see Once a Hero Sun @9. The show was kid oriented and was a disaster Sat night.

Maybe - Dolly/Buck James/Hotel on Sat night? And back to a 2hr Disney Movie 7-9 Sun followed by a Sunday night movie.

ABC wasted their movies on Thurs night that season.

@Khan Re Dolly Fri @9. Risky as Dallas/Vice were still battling it out, although I could see Dolly making some noise there. Do you have an idea for Dolly's Sunday @ 9 slot?

 

[Franko]

Bold move.

What can I say? I'm flailing a bit.

Oh, absolutely. It's not surprising that they eventually went back to having Sunday night movies.

[Khan]

Believe it or not?  "Moonlighting."  I always thought "Moonlighting" was a Sunday night kind of show.  Something witty and fun to kick off the week with.

Other options: "Hooperman"/"The Slap Maxwell Story," or just program "The ABC Sunday Night Movie."

[kalbir]

Looks like a tank job but it could be a move to fill space.

1988/89: Midseason CBS moves The Equalizer from Wednesday 10 pm to dead zone Thursday 9 pm, replacing new drama Paradise which moved to Saturday 8 pm. The Equalizer run ends at four seasons.

Yes, The Equalizer wasn't a hit and didn't show growth during its run but CBS was in the midst of its third place primetime mess era so it really wasn't in a position to have any tank jobs.

Edited July 19, 2024 by kalbir

[Khan]

It's really a shame that the original "Equalizer" wasn't a hit.  I thought it was such a fantastic show, with a one-of-a-kind actor in the lead.

[All My Shadows]

This is a neat thread, can't believe I'm only just seeing it. I don't have much to add, except

To me, Gunsmoke is the poster child for this. It was a huge hit in its first decade on Saturdays at 10pm ET but started to slide rather quickly in the mid-1960s. As the story goes, CBS was ready to cancel it in 1967, but it was the Paleys' favorite show, so at the last minute, the decision was made to try it out on Mondays at 7:30pm ET, sending Gilligan's Island to its cancellation. The new timeslot, along with stories that were much lighter than what had originally made the show a success (for better or for worse, according to who you talk to), shot Gunsmoke up from #34 in 1966-1967 to #4 in 1967-1968. It stayed in the top 10 for most of the rest of its run and never left the top 30 again - though the average age of its audience had to be about 60 years old.

CBS could have moved Gilligan to another night/time, but it had already suffered from being in a new timeslot for each of its three seasons.

[Paul Raven]

Re Fading shows getting a new lease.

The Jeffersons. CBS moved it so many times

Season #1 following All in The Family it ranked 4th . For 75/76 it moved up to lead of the Sat night lineup, It dropped to 21st.

76/77 It began the season Sat @8 but mid season CBS shuffled things around and it was moved to 8.30 Wed following Good Times and then to Monday @8. It ranked 24th.

77/78 it was back to Sat night, now at 9pm. In Summer reruns it was shifted to Mon @8. It fell out of the Top 30.

78/79. Another timeslot Wed @8, then moved to Wed 9.30 then back to Wed @8 e3fore a late season move to Sun @9.30. Again the ratings fell with all those time shifts. It barely scraped the Top 50.

79/80 That final move to 9.30 Sun was the new lease on life and The Jeffersons shot to #8.

80/81  It retained its timeslot and was #6

81/82 Best season ever ranking # 3

82/83 Moved up 70 9pm Sunday and was #12

83/84 Finished #19

84/85 Finally ran out of steam and mid season was dropped from Sun @9 to finish the season and it's run Tues @8.

[kalbir]

Possible tank job

1983/84: Midseason CBS moves One Day at a Time twice, from Sunday 8:30 pm to Wednesday 8 pm (head-to-head w/ The Fall Guy) then Monday 9 pm. One Day at a Time falls out of the Top 30 and is cancelled.

[soapfan770]

Always weirds a little to think about shows like the Jeffersons, One Day at A Time, Alice etc. lasting as late as 1984/1985 or so as they were always 70’s shows to me, even growing up in the 80’s lol

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Comparisons I can think of on that end is something like NBC just letting Empty Nest run for years on Saturday nights into oblivion; or networks letting shows like Roseanne’s original run, Murphy Brown, Wings, etc. run just a season or two too long that once popular and relevant shows ende in complete irrelevance. 


 

[Khan]

I think I read somewhere that CBS wanted to pick up ODAAT for a tenth season, but that Valerie Bertinelli and Bonnie Franklin were eager to move on.  (If you ask me, I think that was for the best.  By the ninth season, the threads were really starting to show).

The thing is, the longer a show runs on TV, the more expensive it becomes to produce.  So, I never understand why the networks would allow shows to go on for so long when they're clearly past their prime unless it has to do with contractual obligations.

One good example: "The Drew Carey Show," which ABC renewed for three more years (and at a hefty price) after its' sixth season.  However, no one apparently counted on the show's ratings dropping, which they did during the next (7th) season.  By the end of the eighth season, the show wasn't even in the Top 100 anymore!  ABC tried to get out of its' deal with WB, but when that proved impossible, the network basically burned off the last season during the summer, often airing two episodes per week.

Ooo chile, you ain't kidding about that, lol!  I finally watched some early "Gunsmoke" and MAN, that show was DARK in the beginning.

I wonder how the radio series' originators, John Meston and Norman Macdonnell, felt about the changes to the show's tone over the years.

Edited July 25, 2024 by Khan

[soapfan770]

I’m wondering if that’s what happened as well to CBS and to  some extent ABC sitcoms around 1983-84 with the reliance on aging shows and “Hey here’s a new spinoff!!!” leading to the unofficial declaration sitcoms were dead until NBC’s 1984 Thursday night lineup took off.

Barring a good number of exceptions and special cases lol, a new decade usually means new shows for the most part. Most of the pre-1971 shows got deliberately axed in 1971, most of the 80’s show’s abruptly collapsed and ended with either the 91-92 or 92-93 seasons, and most of the 90’s staples just faded away one by one between 2001-04, and most of the 00’s shows just limped into the ‘10’s if they had survived at all. 

And as for dark “Gunsmoke” early on, it reminds me of what happened to Law & Order being a dark & gritty show until 1998 and then it became an old people’s show with increasingly older conservative producers at the helm. The recent revival is one of the worst and most pointless revivals I’ve ever seen

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[te.]

Well, networks only pay licensing fees, so they might end up paying a fraction of the cost of production. There's also the fact that once a show goes into syndication it can become very profitable and there's also overseas sales which might spur the production studio to essentially give it away for free (the most infamous example of this was 'Til Death, but Sony in general was for a while well-known for lowering their license fee next-to-nothing in order to get flailing shows to syndication).

There's also the issue that there's only so many shows that can launch per season - so if your network is going through a funk like CBS was in the late 80s through the 90s, that might also be an incentive to keep at least the well-known properties going while they try to fix everything else.

[Paul Raven]

TV history is littered with shows that stayed on too long , for various reasons.

So few shows went out at the right time - Mash, Mary Tyler Moore, Cheers but most others saw the writing on the wall but refused to call it quits. Guess that's just how network TV worked back then.

One fading show that was revived was Simon & Simon, another in a long line of Tues 8pm CBS series that failed to make any impression against Happy Days/Laverne & Shirley.

After a lackluster run, CBS took it off and replaced it with another flop,QED. It was a foregone conclusion that it would be cancelled.

Meanwhile on Thursday nights, Magnum and Knots Landing had been moved forward an hour and though Magnum was regularly Top 10/20, Knots was losing a lot of that momentum, so CBS moved it back to 10pm and placed newcomer Cagney & Lacey in that slot, which didn't do any better. So with three new episodes left  in the can, CBS placed Simon and Simon at 9pm and within weeks the show was in the Top 20 and CBS had found the right show to follow Magnum.

[soapfan770]

A more 2000’s example of tank job and sabotage is Malcolm and the Middle @Vee

Tank job:

After treading water in the ratings during the show’s 5th season, Fox moved the show to an earlier time slot from 9PM ET to 7:30ET for Season 6. The show tanked in the ratings and the season itself received lukewarm reception compared to earlier ones.

Sabotage:

For the 2005-06 Season 7, Fox moved the show to an 8:30 ET timeslot on Friday nights behind the untested Bernie Mac show. The show absolutely collapsed, plummeted to the bottom of the ratings, and cancelled along with Bernie Mac. 

[All My Shadows]

A live action show in that 7:30ET slot on Sundays is just so old-fashioned, imo, even twenty years ago. I love the idea of a family-oriented sitcom focused on the kids doing well there, but it's really just a time for football, 60 Minutes, and adult cartoons.