The Rural Purge of 1969-1972

[treky]

Originally Posted by MrCleveland

Though NOT a rural show...The Ed Sullivan Show got cancelled in 1971, the same time the rural purge came full-blast.

so did THE JACKIE GLEASON SHOW and THE RED SKELTON SHOW

[visaman666]

[QUOTE=Ledhed

All of these shows stayed on air about 3-4 seasons too long. Perhaps others can think of more shows from this period that fit this category.

thx for reading [/QUOTE]

M*A*S*H*

[Mace Dolex]

Originally Posted by TVOFYOURLIFE

Take a look at TVLand for instance, when it first came on it showed programs from the 50's-70's, today its mostly 90's & 2k shows.

If TVLAND would just air the old shows they would generate no revenue because the audience would be too old.

...and dead too.

[Dr. Thong]

Originally Posted by Ledhed

I think there's another potential topic - somewhat similar - concerning the period that bridged the 70s into the 80s.

During this period my observation is that a number of shows were kept on the air far beyond their expiration dates. Unlike the Rural Purge period, I think TV executives in the early 80s got lazy and just let a bunch of shows run themselves into the ground. If you watch the later seasons of these shows, they're near unwatchable considering how good they were earlier.

Examples: The Jeffersons, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Alice, One Day At a Time, Three's Company (pretty much ABC and CBS).

All of these shows stayed on air about 3-4 seasons too long. Perhaps others can think of more shows from this period that fit this category.

thx for reading

How can the executives be "lazy?"

if the shows in question are still delivering ratings and profits, then of course they'll keep them on. Quality or watchability have nothing to do with it. The executives care about $$$ and demographics.

[Sal]

Originally Posted by bencasey

The addendum to this topic is the short-lived relevancy era. The main purveyor of this was ABC, which flooded its schedule with relevant shows:
The Young Lawyers, The Young Rebels, The Mod Squad, The New People, The Music Scene, Matt Lincoln, even a western like The Outcasts tried to be relevant. You can even throw Love American Style into that category. But as bad as most of these were, and except for The Young Lawyers, most were pretty bad, the CBS copies were ten times worse. The only thing worse than a bad, pseudo-hip relevancy show is a watered down copy of one. As bad as these were on ABC, the ones on CBS were far worse.

But getting back to the original topic, CBS was tired of being the network of old, rural viewers and they wanted to attract a younger, urban audience, which is what they accomplished by cutting the dead wood.

ABC also came out with Room 222 and The Courtship of Eddie's Father which were also considered relevant and topical and they didn't do too badly. NBC also chipped in with a couple of minor hits with Julia and The Bill Cosby Show and for a while these shows and similar ones like That Girl, Love American Style, and Nanny and the Professor (all on ABC) helped to bridge the gap between the 60s and 70s. Once Mary Tyler Moore and All In The Family hit it big, suddenly the rules changed and they became the models that everyone else was trying to copy, and that's still the case today.

[antoniod]

So what happened in 1975-76? TV got so inane(with exceptions)that I swore the demographic Networks were aiming for from the mid-70s through the 60s was 12-year olds.

[Coffeecup]

What really blows my mind is that 45 years ago we had about 100 shows on the air. Now there a 100 tv stations on the air each with about 100 shows . I don't watch much current tv. In fact the only current show I see is Devious Maids. The rest retro shows. The new shows which I sometime bump into are so loud in background sound, actors voices and laugh tracks. 45 years ago, tv was so different.

[James28]

I'm also thinking that the over-50s who liked the rural sitcoms so much and would have been left with nothing to watch on their TV sets when those rural sitcoms were cancelled probably switched to the cop and detective shows like Cannon, Ironside, Adam-12, Mannix, and The FBI. Perhaps that is a reason why even the crime/police procedurals of today skew older.

[Lee]

Originally Posted by CommonTater

I am old enough to remember all this and I wasn't happy. I loved the shows they decided to can. I still hate that the networks decided what we want and like when they have NO clue what millions of us want. I wish we had shows on today like the classic shows. As stated in the article, the themes of those shows were the honesty and "strong family values supposedly inherent in small town life. Those shows are now classic's.



Note: The following shows were canceled at their end of the respective seasons. Some shows did not have a rural theme, but were perceived to appeal primarily to rural audiences or had a low youth/urban audience.
1969-70 season

Petticoat Junction (CBS, 1963–1970)[1]
The Red Skelton Show (NBC, 1951–53, CBS, 1953–1970, NBC, 1970–71, cancelled by CBS and renewed by NBC)
The Jackie Gleason Show (CBS, 1962–1970)

1970-71 season

Green Acres (CBS, 1965–1971)[1]
The Beverly Hillbillies (CBS, 1962–1971)[1]
Mayberry R.F.D. (CBS, 1968–1971)[1]
Hee-Haw (CBS, 1969–1971,[1] first run syndication 1971-1991)
Lassie (CBS, 1954–1971, first run syndication 1971-1973)
Family Affair (CBS, 1966–1971)
Hogan's Heroes (CBS, 1965–1971)
The Jim Nabors Hour (CBS, 1969–1971)[1]
The Red Skelton Show (cancelled by NBC)
The Lawrence Welk Show (locally in Los Angeles 1951-1955, ABC, 1955–1971, first run syndication 1971-1982)
The Johnny Cash Show (ABC, 1969–1971)
The Governor & J.J. (CBS, two seasons)
The Virginian (NBC, 9 seasons)
The Andy Williams Show (NBC, 10 seasons)
Wild Kingdom (NBC, 1963-1971; syndication 1971-1988)

1971-72 season

The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (CBS, 1969–1972)

1973-74 season

Bonanza (NBC, 1959-1973)
Here's Lucy (CBS, 1968–74, following the related CBS series The Lucy Show (1962–1968), The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957-1960), and I Love Lucy (1951–1957)

1974-75 season

Gunsmoke (CBS, 1955-1975)

Bonanza was the 1972-73 Season, not 1973-74

[treky]

Originally Posted by CommonTater

I am old enough to remember all this and I wasn't happy. I loved the shows they decided to can. I still hate that the networks decided what we want and like when they have NO clue what millions of us want. I wish we had shows on today like the classic shows. As stated in the article, the themes of those shows were the honesty and "strong family values supposedly inherent in small town life. Those shows are now classic's.



Note: The following shows were canceled at their end of the respective seasons. Some shows did not have a rural theme, but were perceived to appeal primarily to rural audiences or had a low youth/urban audience.
1969-70 season

Petticoat Junction (CBS, 1963–1970)[1]
The Red Skelton Show (NBC, 1951–53, CBS, 1953–1970, NBC, 1970–71, cancelled by CBS and renewed by NBC)
The Jackie Gleason Show (CBS, 1962–1970)

1970-71 season

Green Acres (CBS, 1965–1971)[1]
The Beverly Hillbillies (CBS, 1962–1971)[1]
Mayberry R.F.D. (CBS, 1968–1971)[1]
Hee-Haw (CBS, 1969–1971,[1] first run syndication 1971-1991)
Lassie (CBS, 1954–1971, first run syndication 1971-1973)
Family Affair (CBS, 1966–1971)
Hogan's Heroes (CBS, 1965–1971)
The Jim Nabors Hour (CBS, 1969–1971)[1]
The Red Skelton Show (cancelled by NBC)
The Lawrence Welk Show (locally in Los Angeles 1951-1955, ABC, 1955–1971, first run syndication 1971-1982)
The Johnny Cash Show (ABC, 1969–1971)
The Governor & J.J. (CBS, two seasons)
The Virginian (NBC, 9 seasons)
The Andy Williams Show (NBC, 10 seasons)
Wild Kingdom (NBC, 1963-1971; syndication 1971-1988)

1971-72 season

The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (CBS, 1969–1972)

1973-74 season

Bonanza (NBC, 1959-1973)
Here's Lucy (CBS, 1968–74, following the related CBS series The Lucy Show (1962–1968), The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957-1960), and I Love Lucy (1951–1957)

1974-75 season

Gunsmoke (CBS, 1955-1975)

all those shows were cancelled in 1971? I never knew that!

[upperco]

Alan Brady's Hair is absolutely right -- there were other factors at play in the Rural Purge than straight demo-targeting.

In fact, the only element of this programming trend directly correlated to demographics was part of a power play between CBS' new network president Bob Wood and Senior Programming VP Mike Dann, the latter of whom had essentially been making all of the scheduling decisions since the mid '60s and tended to base decisions solely on total viewership. To exert his new authority over Dann and the '70-'71 season's schedule, Wood's tactic was to convince Paley that advertisers specifically wanted younger audiences -- the kind Gleason and Skelton weren't delivering.

Paley went along with Wood and cancelled those two shows (along with PETTICOAT JUNCTION, which might have gotten ousted anyway), and successfully shocked Dann, who had squeaked out a technical victory in total ratings over NBC for the '69-'70 season by employing Operation 100, a sweeping strategy in which low-performing shows were pre-empted by special presentations, and therefore assumed that his judgment was king. With the network now rejecting his entire philosophy, Dann quietly left CBS that summer and was replaced by Fred Silverman.

However, in this discussion, it should be noted that the targeting of younger demos was not yet a proven science at the start of the '70-71 season, despite being a factor in the way some networks (specifically NBC) spun their numbers in the late '60s to make themselves look like winners. Interestingly, although Wood really believed advertisers were eyeing younger audiences, his plan to inject CBS' schedule with "relevant" programming seemed like a passing, and mostly unfruitful trend by the November 1970 sweeps, when the next year's schedule was being drafted.

As a result, a few back-to-normal decisions were made (the kind that one might have expected from Dann) for the start of the '71-'72 season. But with both ALL IN THE FAMILY and THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW quickly emerging as TV's most prestigious new offerings, Wood's theory was seemingly validated and the following year, '72-'73, was readied with content of a similar, more "relevant" type. By then, it looked like both NBC and ABC were now scrambling to follow CBS' lead, even though they'd both been trying to skew young since at least '66 as a means of undermining CBS' valid claim of being the most watched.

With regard to the FCC's 1970 passage of the Prime Time Access Rule, although that decision was crafted to have more of an impact on the affiliates than the networks, it was the latter group that seemed the most affected. With less time for the networks to program each night, they not only had to cut shows (and they each had a lot of not-so-great offerings that they were glad to have an excuse to sacrifice), but they also needed to cut their own expenses (drop old stars) and maximize profits (make bulk deals with larger studios instead of many independents).

The networks' response to the PTA passage is really the reason why all those long-running "rural" shows (like GREEN ACRES and THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES) were dropped when they were, after the '70-'71 season -- not simply because they were demographically unimportant or no longer in keeping with the network's brand, but because they were getting too expensive to bankroll, and the executives, knowing that times were changing, needed material that was financially expedient to distribute.

The fact that television tastes changed around 1971 in favor of shows that indeed pulled younger crowds was merely a good excuse that could be applied to what had been a business decision (in 1970) to accommodate the ruling, which itself was made just after the '70-'71 schedule had already been announced. If that ruling had come a month before, more "rural" shows would have likely been axed before the new season had even begun -- and before demo-targeting had cautiously been tested by Wood on CBS' schedule.

[treky]

Originally Posted by Alan Brady's Hair

The FCC passed a rule that, beginning in the 1971 season, network primetime was reduced from 3 1/2 to three hours. I think it was only six days a week, so each network had to cancel three hours of programs before they even thought of introducing new shows.

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/...d.php?t=329522

was that when the start of prime became 8:00 instead of 7:30? (eastern time)

[IllinoisTVFan]

Originally Posted by Ledhed

I think there's another potential topic - somewhat similar - concerning the period that bridged the 70s into the 80s.

During this period my observation is that a number of shows were kept on the air far beyond their expiration dates. Unlike the Rural Purge period, I think TV executives in the early 80s got lazy and just let a bunch of shows run themselves into the ground. If you watch the later seasons of these shows, they're near unwatchable considering how good they were earlier.

Examples: The Jeffersons, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Alice, One Day At a Time, Three's Company (pretty much ABC and CBS).

All of these shows stayed on air about 3-4 seasons too long. Perhaps others can think of more shows from this period that fit this category.

thx for reading

This happened a decade later as well. There were several sitcoms that ended around 1991-1993 that should have ended a few years earlier.

[Coffeecup]

I remember that 7:30 starting tv time. If I recall the Wonderful of Disney was on Sunday? and it started at 7. I think it was nice that the youngsters including me at the time could see a show and be in bed by 8 or 9.

[jimpickens]

They need to a reverse purge today to thin out all the urban and suburban shows that are stinking up the airwaves.