The 20 Biggest Mess-Ups/Mistakes in CBS History

[mr awesome]

Originally Posted by TMC

I find it odd that a sitcom featuring a scene w/ a man in drag would be considered controversial given that we had a whole show built around that sort of premise in Bosom Buddies at least 10 years prior.

Dweebs appears to have been sort of a proto, '90s version of The Big Bang Theory.

Ahead of its time in that regard. I don't remember how many episodes aired but I remember watching at least two episodes and it wasn't bad. Of course, the main thing the show had going for it was the hotness of Farah Forke. Heck, that's the main reason I probably watched. It was up against TGIF on Fridays IIRC.

[irehtman]

I have two of them:

1.) Killing that Evan Cortez character from Nash Bridges' 100th episode in the wrong time before his marriage to Cassidy. It turns out that actor Jamie Gomez, who played Evan, was turned down too quick before he left Nash Bridges too soon for no reason at all.

2.) Making Martial Law sitcom become dependent on Walker Texas Ranger sitcom by helping WTR actor Chuck Norris' struggling acting career and return to the movies. Martial Law is more of an independent sitcom that Walker Texas Ranger.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by irehtman

I have two of them:

1.) Killing that Evan Cortez character from Nash Bridges' 100th episode in the wrong time before his marriage to Cassidy. It turns out that actor Jamie Gomez, who played Evan, was turned down too quick before he left Nash Bridges too soon for no reason at all.

2.) Making Martial Law sitcom become dependent on Walker Texas Ranger sitcom by helping WTR actor Chuck Norris' struggling acting career and return to the movies. Martial Law is more of an independent sitcom that Walker Texas Ranger.

I woudn't consider the first "mess-up" that you listed to be a specfically CBS network related "mess-up" per se. If you're going to go that route, then we'll be here a long time listing all of the biggest mistakes that CBS' shows made on their own instead of the network as a whole.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by treky

canceling all there rural sitcoms

The Rural Purge: The Year CBS Gave the Finger to Its Most Loyal Viewers

I don't necessarily agree w/ the writer's statement that the "rural purge" was the biggest mistake that CBS ever made. I will still contend that letting the NFL package go to Fox in 1994 was even worse. Without the NFL, CBS had a much harder time finding a platform to promote their shows. Remember back in the day when Pat Summerall (RIP) would say towards the end of the late afternoon games on CBS in his baritone voice "Stay tuned for 60 Minutes followed by Murder...She Wrote!"? Also, as I said prior, they lost many key affiliates to Fox. It was sports that I think really kept CBS in the black since they for the longest time had a harder time attracting worthy advertisers (who tend to target the 18-34 demographic) due to their perception of being the "old folks network".

[treky]

Originally Posted by TMC

The Rural Purge: The Year CBS Gave the Finger to Its Most Loyal Viewers

I don't necessarily agree w/ the writer's statement that the "rural purge" was the biggest mistake that CBS ever made. I will still contend that letting the NFL package go to Fox in 1994 was even worse. Without the NFL, CBS had a much harder time finding a platform to promote their shows. Remember back in the day when Pat Summerall (RIP) would say towards the end of the late afternoon games on CBS in his baritone voice "Stay tuned for 60 Minutes followed by Murder...She Wrote!"? Also, as I said prior, they lost many key affiliates to Fox. It was sports that I think really kept CBS in the black since they for the longest time had a harder time attracting worthy advertisers (who tend to target the 18-34 demographic) due to their perception of being the "old folks network".

yea well, I'm not into sports.

And who's Pat Summerall?

[TMC]

Originally Posted by treky

yea well, I'm not into sports.

And who's Pat Summerall?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Summerall

[factsoflife]

Originally Posted by TMC

I find it odd that a sitcom featuring a scene w/ a man in drag would be considered controversial given that we had a whole show built around that sort of premise in Bosom Buddies at least 10 years prior.

I think the difference is that Bosom Buddies was played for comical effect and was seen as innocent and light in nature. Public Morals was a bit more raunchy, and the use of drag in that show was done in a more raunchy manner.

[factsoflife]

Originally Posted by irehtman

I have two of them:



2.) Making Martial Law sitcom become dependent on Walker Texas Ranger sitcom by helping WTR actor Chuck Norris' struggling acting career and return to the movies. Martial Law is more of an independent sitcom that Walker Texas Ranger.

I don't understand this one. Martial Law and WTR are both dramas and neither one is a sitcom. and I don't get what you mean by "making Martial Law dependent on WTR".

[mets82]

I have to agree about CBS losing the NFL. That was such a huge blow and it took CBS years to recover. I posted a thread about "The Rural Purge" and I think if a show is popular there's no way you should cancel it.

As for Les Moonves. Facts are facts. He came in and with the help of shows like Survivor, I believe its the number 1 network on television. And btw, anytime I could see Julie Chen is a plus for me.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by 70s show watcher

he also fired bud grant who was still doing a decent job as head of programing and replaced him with kim lemasters who was probably the second worst entertainment head of any network ever theonly progamer who was worse than lemasters imho was jeff zucker of nbc

For the sake of the argument, here's an examination of Kim LeMasters' regime at CBS:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/01/ar...place-cbs.html

As the chief programmer for the network, Mr. LeMasters made the key decisions on the selection of prime-time shows and their scheduling for the last two years. The network has been last in the ratings throughout Mr. LeMasters tenure as president of entertainment and has not added a significant hit program in five years. No new CBS series has regularly placed in the weekly Nielson top-10 list since ''Murder, She Wrote'' was added to the schedule in 1984

In addition, the network has continued to be unsuccessful in attracting the younger viewers most sought by advertisers. The audience for CBS programs is dominated by viewers over 50.

The network made some improvement in the early hours of its prime-time schedule this fall, and this was one of Mr. LeMasters's stated goals. He said yesterday that he believed CBS had strengthened its programming at 8 P.M. on three nights. They Came. They Saw. They Left. But much of CBS's improvement came in the early weeks of the season after an expensive promotional campaign. CBS's programs have lost ground since September, and three have already been removed from the schedule.

[70s show watcher]

Originally Posted by TMC

For the sake of the argument, here's an examination of Kim LeMasters' regime at CBS:

thaks for posting the articles they were both interesting and pretty much right on the money

[Patty Duke]

Originally Posted by treky

canceling all there rural sitcoms

[TMC]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...k/LiveActionTV

• CBS notoriously did this to an entire genre of television programs. From 1970-72, in what would later be called "The Rural Purge", the network cancelled most of their sitcoms and dramas focusing on country life or country folks living in the city. Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Mayberry RFD, Lassie, and Hee Haw were among the shows that got their pink slips during this period, as well as The Ed Sullivan Show; Pat Buttram (Mr. Haney on Green Acres) famously said 1971 was "the year CBS killed everything with a tree in it". Networks began to move away from rural settings to more modern shows set in suburbia and aimed at a younger demographic, such as The Brady Bunch over at ABC. In CBS' defense, their new shows such as All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mash, The Bob Newhart Show, Maude, Good Times, One Day At A Time, and The Jeffersons were all successful, often wildly so, with critics and audiences.
  
  Essentially, this bookends NBC's cancellation of Star Trek — Nielsen's demographic breakdowns of a show's ratings had become more specific between 1969 and 1971, thus if Trek's early demise (good demos but low overall ratings) was the before, the 1971 CBS Rural Purge (of shows with good overall numbers but lousy 18-to-49 ones) was the after.

• Similarly, in 1979 CBS canned Wonder Woman and The Amazing Spider-Man while never going forward on the Doctor Strange and Captain America pilots...not because their ratings were poor, but because CBS didn't want to be seen as "The Super Hero Network". Only The Incredible Hulk survived.

• The CBS Prime Time Soap 2000 Malibu Road was canned after just six episodes... but not over ratings, which were quite fine — it was because Aaron Spelling didn't want it competing against another of his shows.

• American Gothic premiered at 10:00 PM on Fridays, a fairly-good timeslot. There was plenty of press, promotions, a lot of hype. The show aired, got rave reviews from critics and fans alike...and then, for no apparent reason, scheduling issues began cropping up. Whether the executives in charge at CBS changed and wished to do away with the success of their predecessors (though CBS was transitioning from the disastrous cheapskate Tisch era of the network to Westinghouse ownership; the final-year Tisch era had left a FOX-lite schedule with post-NFL transition disasters such as an Andrew Dice Clay sitcom where he plays a family man, Bless This House, and Central Park West with the new owners), didn't understand how good a thing they had, or didn't understand the show at all, all sorts of problems began plaguing the show. It would be preempted; there would be no episode shown, something else randomly stuck on in its place with no explanation; there would be gaps of several weeks between new episodes, sometimes filled by reruns but usually not; episodes were shown out of order, or never aired at all. Then, without warning, the show was completely yanked from the line-up and vanished for many months. Granted, the show was unusual, not for everyone, and very different from most of CBS' usual fare, but with so many praising it for its daring and disturbing nature, you'd think they'd have gotten a clue. Luckily, the creators knew long enough ahead of time that the plug was being pulled and managed to wrap up the main plot points, but even these final episodes were withheld for a long time before being suddenly plunked on TV one right after another as a three-hour movie "event".

• Central Park West is an interesting case. The show was originally a way for CBS to bounce back after their disastrous 1994-95 season. The network threw their entire marketing clout behind the show, which was touted as the hottest and sexiest drama to ever air on a network, and bolstered it with a massive advertising campaign - huge banners on buildings, bus advertisements, commercials, you name it. For a reason only known to the executives, CPW's first two episodes were scheduled against anniversary episodes of the two biggest prime time soap operas airing at that time (Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place). It also had to deal with the big affiliate shuffle in the wake of the FOX/NFL deal, where the new CBS stations just wanted to make sure viewers knew where they were on the dial first before getting into things such as network promotion. The show was trounced in the ratings, which would've led to its cancellation had CBS not already invested so much money into the program (roughly $13-15 million for the first season alone).
  
  The show was continually pre-empted, aired on different days (which led to its being trounced by Party of Five) and then taken off the network while the show was Retooled. When it came back, half the cast was gone and the show's theme was changed to a Dynasty-esque clone. However, it didn't last even a handful of episodes before CBS pulled the plug for good.

• When Due South first premiered on CBS in 1994, it produced higher-than-expected ratings for the network (and for the CTV network in Canada). Because one of the CBS executives who endorsed the series was fired, the show was canceled. Then, after CBS' Fall lineup became DOA, the show was brought back again. After several months of beating Friends(!), the show was canned once more. This came after a press release praising the show's critical acclaim. It's a good thing the series was then picked up by Canadian and foreign investors.

• The US Eleventh Hour had consistently good ratings, but was cancelled by CBS because it essentially didn't get the ratings of its lead-in CSI.

• Family Matters, at the very end of its run, was a victim of this. After declining ratings, the series was silently moved from ABC to CBS for its last season, where ratings became almost non-existent. Adding insult to injury, the final episodes aired during Summer 1998 (when TV viewership was typically down due to between-season reruns) and the Grand Finale received little promotion or recognition from CBS. The fact that it aired just a couple months after the Seinfeld finale probably didn't help matters.
  
  It's also an example of an actress getting screwed over by the network. Jaimee Foxworth was inexplicably written off after Season 4 after demanding more money and a larger role for her part. The rest, they say, is history.

• Gilligan's Island, despite having decent ratings, was cancelled because one CBS executive hated the premise and wanted to give its timeslot to Gunsmoke, which was the show that originally was going to be cancelled. Luckily for James Arness, the exec's wife was a fan of the western show.
  
  This came back to bite the network on the ass. Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of the show, was so angry at CBS that he vowed not to work for it again. The next show he created ran on ABC, which you may be familiar with.
  Arguably, both sides got something out of this. Gunsmoke ran for 20 seasons, more than twice the running time of Gilligan/BB combined. However, Brady and Gilligan became two of the most syndicated shows of all time. Alongside spin-offs, reunion movies, and the 1990s Brady films that were a good-natured parody and deconstruction of the series, in the long run Gilligan/Brady have been much more successful.

• The success of The Jeffersons notwithstanding, CBS still chose to cancel it two weeks after the end of Season 12 (the longest run of any Norman Lear sitcom), leaving Sherman Hemsley to find out in his morning newspaper. They didn't even get to shoot a farewell episode, leaving it to the Series Finale of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to provide the needed closure, when Louise and George buy the house.

• When Jericho got canceled the first time, CBS decided not to announce its impending doom until after the cliffhanger season finale aired (it made the nuts all the more necessary).
  
  The only consolation prize from all of this was that the writers were prepared for an either-or situation (two different endings, both filmed) and that CBS informed them of their cancellation before airing the series finale. Notice how networks now are giving more of their serial dramas (and their fans) ample warning of likely cancellation before their season finale airs to give writers some time to wrap up major storylines. The Jericho fans may have been a major influence in this change, which would make this seem like a bittersweet victory for fans of quality TV storytelling.

• The very short-lived 2012 lawyer series Made In Jersey was cancelled after only two episodes. A shame, since it had set out to undo some of the damage wreaked on the state's reputation by Jersey Shore by having the Jersey girl be the heroine instead of the butt of jokes, and by portraying New Jersey and its citizens in a favorable light instead of as cartoonish stereotypes. The New Jerseyans in the series were refreshingly portrayed as being just as noble as their brethren in New York, a nice change of pace from the usual Jersey-bashing fare put on TV by Hollywood and the New York media.
  
  What really killed this one was the awful reviews and the Friday Night Death Slot. The show basically being a tourism ad for New Jersey only made things worse.

• CBS screwed over The New Adventures of Old Christine in its last season by cancelling it despite it being their highest-rated show on Wednesday nights (it was pulling in 8 million viewers on average).

• The short-lived series Now And Again was dropped into a Friday Night Death Slot with no lead-in whatsoever, despite its unique premise and high budget. While it initially did well (even defeating Chris Carter's lauded Harsh Realm in the ratings wars), CBS suddenly started to cut back on promoting the show in the spring and the ratings dropped as a result. According to cast members who spoke at conventions that summer, rumor has it that the show was being set up to fail due to internal politics and the CBS/Paramount/Viacom merger.

• Unforgettable had Top 20 ratings and was first in its timeslot, but got almost no buzz at all and didn't do better than what The Good Wife did the previous season, so it was canceled at the end of the season...only to be Un-Canceled for a Summer run in 2013 upon CBS realizing Lifetime and TNT were kicking the tires of the show to bring it (and CBS "It Girl" Poppy Montgomery) to their network. The replacement show, the Period Piece Vegas, did no better and also ended up canceled for being popular, but not among anyone under 50.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...sternAnimation

• CBS screwed over its own cartoon lineup in 1994 with budget cuts, so it could have a live-action line-up to compete with TNBC (note that CBS was third place —even fourth sometimes— in ratings back then). It was really bad in the case of Garfield and Friends which was still going strong in the ratings after seven seasons, the show's creators were so outraged by the poor treatment that they decided to end the show rather then letting it suffer from budget cutbacks. For unknown reasons the planned live-action block never materialized, with a revamped cartoon block taking over.

• Later on, in 1998, they had a block of Saturday Morning cartoons, The Early Show for two hours, then another two-hour cartoon block led off by Birdz. That show was the first to go, getting replaced in spring 1999 with a cartoon based on Fisher-Price's Rescue Heroes toys.

• And when it screwed over Kewlopolis, all DiC cartoons including Strawberry Shortcake got the short stick. While most of the shows have already ended production and fully aired at least once when Kewlopolis got cancelled, Strawberry Shortcake had just finished airing it's third season on Kewlpolis and was about to air Season 4, the final season, when it got the boot. Adding to the complication was the four-way lawsuit between American Greetings, DiC, Cookie Jar, and Moonscoop over the franchise' ownership. Luckily tho, the DVD releases did not stop- and it became the only way Americans could watch the fourth season, which only wrapped up in 2012, 5 years after the series finale aired in Europe!

[mr awesome]

I wonder when CBS's Saturday Morning ratings started to fall, I remember they were number one for much of the late 80s and very early 90s, when FOX got the top spot. I'm pretty sure they out-ranked ABC in the early-90s. I have no idea how TNBC did by comparison to the cartoon line-ups.

CBS always was playing catch-up on saturdays, they had to have their own sat morning news show because Saturday Today was a success even though practically no one watched their mon-fri morning news show.

They shouldn't have cancelled Captain Kangaroo, that show was an institution. They should have continued to make room for it early Saturday Mornings before the cartoons began. Or at the very least air Captain Kangaroo in the place of CBS Storybreak.

[irehtman]

WTR actor Chuck Norris' acting career is in danger and he needs Martial Law to support both his continuance on acting career and return to the movies.