I am a white suburban teen of the 1980's and in my experience, everyone in my high school watched this program.

NBC was the network on Thursday night. If I am not mistaken, it was Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court and Hill Street Blues in the early 1980's. All great shows and NBC ruled and cleaned up.

A lot of guys from my high school loved Michael J. Fox. We even had a poor guy in my school named Michael J. Fox. I liked the show for Justine Bateman, she was gorgeous, and a member of my generation and someone from my grade (although she was a year older than me). It was more of a sexual thing, she was gorgeous. I think it also was a good representation of a 1980's family with teenagers of the time.

Generation X really made this show go. I do not mean to be "racist' by saying that only white people liked Family Ties because of course, this was not true. But I think suburbanites really loved this show. This was the base, and I dare say that 95% of us watched this show (1% hated it, while the other 4% were indesposed to watch the show that particular Thursday.)

Interestingly, when asked, President Reagan said that this was his favorite TV show.

Thoughts?

In it's final season The Keaton's fought racism when a black family moved into the neighborhood and it happened to be one of Steven's co-worker. NBC made a mistake when they moved the show to sunday.

In it's final season The Keaton's fought racism when a black family moved into the neighborhood and it happened to be one of Steven's co-worker. NBC made a mistake when they moved the show to sunday.
Totally agree. And the fact that A Different World was awful during it's first season made it worse. The show wasn't canceled though. The cast was ready to move on. It probably left the air at the right time.

Totally agree. And the fact that A Different World was awful during it's first season made it worse. The show wasn't canceled though. The cast was ready to move on. It probably left the air at the right time.
And FT was offered a ninth season butthe cast was ready to move on. Gary David Goldberg stated in his book "Sit, Ubu, Sit" that he and Michael J. Fox regret not taking the ninth year.

And FT was offered a ninth season butthe cast was ready to move on. Gary David Goldberg stated in his book "Sit, Ubu, Sit" that he and Michael J. Fox regret not taking the ninth year.

There were only seven seasons. It would have been nice if there had been an eighth season.

I remember reading in the newspaper that they were planning episodes with Alex and Mallory living in NY for the final season but they scrapped them because there was a writer's strike that year. It might have been interesting. I also remember that Meredith Baxter-Birney was pretty vocal about wanting to leave. There were articles about her during the last 2 years so I don't know if she would have stayed anyway for an extra year.

I remember reading in the newspaper that they were planning episodes with Alex and Mallory living in NY for the final season but they scrapped them because there was a writer's strike that year. It might have been interesting. I also remember that Meredith Baxter-Birney was pretty vocal about wanting to leave. There were articles about her during the last 2 years so I don't know if she would have stayed anyway for an extra year.


I always thought the episode where Alex moved to New York necessarily had to be the series finale . It's hard to do a final episode for a TV series about a married couple and their children, but an episode where the star / most popular character leaves for a new job in another state and says his goodbyes is a top -- notch idea . I wanted to respond to Yong Fang's post, and now here's my chance .