An unprecedented 36 new series premiered in the winter and spring (January-May) of 1979 on ABC, CBS and NBC, the most over a mid-season period since the early 1950s when there existed a fourth network, Du Mont. The driving force behind this new series glut was NBC’s legendary strategically aggressive programmer Fred Silverman. After solidifying CBS’s top-rated status earlier in the decade, then propelling ABC to overtake CBS and have it reign in the top spot for the first time in its history, Silverman moved in on hapless NBC to once more work his ratings magic on that network for a perfect trifecta victory. ABC and CBS, however, were determined to not allow that to happen and so churned out multiple new shows of their own. After all three networks launched their barrage of mostly terrible series, the prime-time battlefield by the summer had become littered with the slaughtered bodies of 26 of them.
In the fall of 1978 NBC debuted 10 new series, including a pair of quick early replacements, after which Silverman introduced 16 more new shows through the mid-season stretch, of which only 3 survived the cancellation ax, Real People and BJ and the Bear, Hello Larry and a fourth, Mrs. Columbo (a.k.a. Kate Columbo, Kate the Detective, Kate Loves a Mystery) barely inched its way into the first month of a second season before being swiftly yanked off the schedule. ABC and CBS saw 6 of their combined 20 new series slip into at least a partial or full second season, The Ropers, Angie, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Bad News Bears, The Chisolms and Stockard Channing in Just Friends (a.k.a. The Stockard Channing Show). The end result found ABC becoming again the top-rated network champ for a third consecutive year in 1979, CBS a runner-up second, and NBC having fared worse in last place than it did in the 1977-78 season. The third time proved to be not the charm for Silverman’s magic and he would struggle for three seasons to turn the network’s woeful numbers around, but never gained traction at it and ultimately failed before becoming replaced himself in 1981.
To Note:
CBS’s Co-ed Fever had a single special airing in the post-Super Bowl slot but rated so poorly that it never continued as an intended weekly series in what was to have been its Monday time slot. Also, this video excludes a quartet of NBC limited-run series, being the two-hour length mini-series From Here to Eternity and Studs Lonigan, both under the NBC Novels for Television title, and, separately, Backstairs at the White House, along with the irregularly scheduled Centennial maxi-series, which aired in 2-hour as well as 3-hour installments. NBC’s irreverent newsmagazine program Weekend was also omitted, since while it may have been new to prime time (as a monthly series) in the fall of 1978, it had actually shifted over from its original late-night Saturday 11:30 pm-1 am berth where it had aired monthly since 1974 and in lieu of Saturday Night Live since 1975, and so by that definition it can’t really be considered as a new series. But if one wanted to factor in the limited-run series and even Weekend, the total number of new shows that appeared through this hellish mid-season period of 1979 would then be 41, with only From Here to Eternity returning the following mid-season as a short-lived hour-long weekly series. Whichever way one looks at it, to say that the mid-season of 1979 proved to be underwhelming, especially in terms of quality and the ratings of its new shows, would be greatly understating the fact.
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