If Winkler had caved on the issue of re-naming the series, how would the show have gone?

better? worse? the same as in our history?

any time a show has caved in to he network's demands for big changes it usually kills the show - look at what happened to Mork and Mindy. I think fan backlash and changing the focus of the show to just Fonzie would have made it burn out in popularity a lot quicker and it probably wouldn't have lasted another 2 seasons.