The Marketing Campaign for "AfterMASH"'s Second Season

[James28]

CBS moved the comedy series AfterMASH from its original Mondays-at-9-pm timeslot (where it thrived during its first season with a 20.1 average rating, ranking 15th) to Tuesdays at 8 pm for its second season... opposite NBC's Top-Ten hit The A-Team. CBS launched a marketing campaign for that second season featuring illustrations by Sanford Kossin of Maxwell Q. Klinger in a female nurse's uniform shaving off Mr. T's signature mohawk, theorizing that AfterMASH would take a large portion of The A-Team's audience. Instead, AfterMASH (despite attracting a very good 18.2 household rating as a lead-in for the 36th Primetime Emmy Awards) would plummet to near the bottom of the weekly television rankings, leading to it being pulled from the CBS schedule only six episodes into that second season, while The A-Team would continue until its own midseason cancellation in 1986-87 (itself having its ratings sink following a move to a different night -- Fridays at 8), with 97 original airings.

What do you think of this illustration by Mr. Kossin? You put Klinger and Mr. T in a Hair vs. Hair match (one of those "Lucha de Apuesta" bet, wager matches in Mexican Lucha Libre), and Klinger losing such a match to Mr. T would be a reflection of AfterMASH's second season downfall.



In any case, AfterMASH didn't deserve to steal a large portion of The A-Team's audience. In fact, based on that negative reception, AfterMASH was undeserving of being a potential flagship for CBS. Maybe it would have been better if AfterMASH had never even been thought of and CBS should have just put Newhart in M*A*S*H's old timeslot for its second season instead.