<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>For instance, "All In The Family" would probably not have worked at all even 5 years earlier. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
All in the Family almost didn't work
then and certainly wouldn't work today. It got marginal to poor ratings during its first season run. In today's market it would have been cancelled within a few weeks. In those days network executives who believed in a show could keep it on the air, and that's what happened with
All in the Family. During the summer rerun season millions of people who had been watching other shows in the fall and spring discovered the show. It found and audience and it started its climb to the top of the ratings the following fall.
Something similar happened wth
M*A*S*H. Today no one allows a show time to find an audience. (With seemingly random schedule changes, they often make it hard for the audience to find the
show.) Chris Carter's post-
Millenium series (I'm drawing a blank on the name) was cancelled after only
three episodes. If you're not doing well out of the gate you're dead. (Sometimes, if you're not
predicted to do well out of the gate you can be dead. TNT just cancelled another series without airing it, and this one it will probably never air, because they figure they'll make more on the write-off than they would from advertising revenue.
)
Regards,
Joe
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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net