Ratings For The 1970-71 Season

[Duster76]

Originally Posted by James28

A commenter over at TheTVRatingsGuide (by the name of "Tony Fleming") stated in 2024 there was a website called Ratings Ryan and it had pictures of the actual ratings sheets for every show in every week of the 1970-71 season. He stated that from the info compiled on Ratings Ryan, he added the ratings separately for both The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres, and then divided by the number of episodes to get the average. Green Acres finished with a 19.1 average rating; That would have placed it just outside the top 30 as the CBS Friday Movie is shown to be 30th with a 19.3 rating. The Beverly Hillbillies finished with an 18.0 rating, which would have put it around 40th place or maybe lower.

I think the person in charge of that site took it down around May of 2024 because it was costing him too much to do the research. Because of this, I regret to inform you there is no way for me to realistically provide the source of that information. And if any sources did exist, they would be behind a paywall. Ratings Ryan was the only hope of verifying this information. I apologize for not finding out about the Ratings Ryan site earlier (only for a short while before it shut down).

I remember the Ratings Ryan site it was very good.

I think your calculations are pretty accurate. From what I remember Green Acres finished in 35th place for the 70-71 season which was about the same as the year before. I think the Hillbillies were in 37 place which was a big drop from a year earlier.

I've said this before I don't think the so-called rural purge effected either show. The Hillbillies had fallen off badly from two years earlier when it was number 10, Green Acres may had another year in it but the best years were in the rearview mirror.

[Alan Brady's Hair]

One thing to keep in mind is that the FCC's prime time access rule also kicked in beginning in the fall of 1971. Each of the three networks had to cancel three hours of existing programming before they even considered replacing an old show with a new one.

[Duster76]

Originally Posted by Alan Brady's Hair

One thing to keep in mind is that the FCC's prime time access rule also kicked in beginning in the fall of 1971. Each of the three networks had to cancel three hours of existing programming before they even considered replacing an old show with a new one.

Good point, an older series in rating decline stuck out like a sore thumb in that environment.