Jump the Shark - "Green Acres"

[Rezny@gmail.com]

When do you think "Green Acres"jumped the shark?

[treky]

it never did.

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...CBS did when they moved it from Saturdays to Tuesdays at 8pm(et) in the fall of 1970, in an effort to "minimalize" the flow of rural sitcoms on their schedule ["THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES" preceeded it at 7:30, having moved from their traditional Wednesday night niche the season before]. It was quite obvious executives Bob Wood and Fred Silverman were de-emphasizing older "rural" audiences in favor of younger "urban" viewers by scheduling those kind of series appealing to "country folk" as minimally as possible {these included "MAYBERRY R.F.D.", "THE JIM NABORS HOUR", "HEE HAW" and "THE GLEN CAMPBELL GOODTIME HOUR"- only the latter continued into the fall of '71}. And when "GREEN ACRES" was finally cancelled with "THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES" in the spring of '71, that was the end of an era...

[treky]

Originally Posted by TV Knowledge Fan

...CBS did when they moved it from Saturdays to Tuesdays at 8pm(et) in the fall of 1970, in an effort to "minimalize" the flow of rural sitcoms on their schedule ["THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES" preceeded it at 7:30, having moved from their traditional Wednesday night niche the season before]. It was quite obvious executives Bob Wood and Fred Silverman were de-emphasizing older "rural" audiences in favor of younger "urban" viewers by scheduling those kind of series appealing to "country folk" as minimally as possible {these included "MAYBERRY R.F.D.", "THE JIM NABORS HOUR", "HEE HAW" and "THE GLEN CAMPBELL GOODTIME HOUR"- only the latter continued into the fall of '71}. And when "GREEN ACRES" was finally cancelled with "THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES" in the spring of '71, that was the end of an era...

I wouldn't call it "the end of an era" since "HEE HAW" moved into first-run sydnication, where it continued for a few more years.

[jehobden]

Originally Posted by TV Knowledge Fan

...CBS did when they moved it from Saturdays to Tuesdays at 8pm(et) in the fall of 1970, in an effort to "minimalize" the flow of rural sitcoms on their schedule ["THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES" preceeded it at 7:30, having moved from their traditional Wednesday night niche the season before]. It was quite obvious executives Bob Wood and Fred Silverman were de-emphasizing older "rural" audiences in favor of younger "urban" viewers by scheduling those kind of series appealing to "country folk" as minimally as possible {these included "MAYBERRY R.F.D.", "THE JIM NABORS HOUR", "HEE HAW" and "THE GLEN CAMPBELL GOODTIME HOUR"- only the latter continued into the fall of '71}. And when "GREEN ACRES" was finally cancelled with "THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES" in the spring of '71, that was the end of an era...

Oddly enough, when All in the Family premiered on CBS on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 1971 at 9:30 PM ET, it was preceded on the CBS schedule that night by The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Hee Haw. It must have been quite a shock to a lot of the fans of those shows.

[broadmoor]

I don't believe "Green Acres" ever really jumped the shark. Perhaps the final two seasons seemed to suffer a bit from lesser production values. And, Oliver's hilariously combustible tempter seemed (unfortunately) to go down a few notches, unlike the earlier seasons when you could practically see smoke coming out of his ears at every bit of Hooterville insanity. But the series stayed satisfying and never really veered off-course all the way til the end (excepting those two weak 'pilots' that were worked into the show).

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...when I said "the end of an era", I meant for CBS. "HEE HAW", like "THE LAWRENCE WELK SHOW" (which also left network television in 1971 after ABC also decided it was "too old" to attract younger viewers and advertisers), flourished in first-run syndication for years, where local stations knew what their audiences wanted to see [and knew how to profit from the "barter" arrangements both shows shared with their "affiliates": they cost the stations nothing to schedule them, airing a few minutes of national advertising in the bargain, and keeping the profits from local advertisers' commercials sold during the rest of the program, of which they often "stood in line" waiting to buy those local "spots"]. After "THE GLEN CAMPBELL GOODTIME HOUR" was cancelled in 1972, there were no further "rural programs" on the network's schedule.

As for those "two weak pilots", Jay Sommers knew CBS wasn't going to buy any more "country" comedies from him, so he tried to interest them in other "urban-based" ideas {a Hawaiian hotel managed by a father and daughter; a secretary in the big city who can't keep her nose out of her family and boss' business}, disguising them as episodes of "GREEN ACRES". The network correctly rejected both. Sommers tried selling them another Eddie Albert series a few years later, "DADDY'S GIRL" {widower trying to raise a young daughter}, but CBS didn't want that one, either.

CBS was unsure about how "ALL IN THE FAMILY" was going to be accepted by viewers, so they deliberately "buried it" inbetween their Tuesday night "rural lineup" and "CBS NEWS HOUR" ["60 MINUTES"/"CBS REPORTS"], figuring if it flopped, they could point to the programs around it and say, see, it never had a chance with a predominant "rural audience". But word of mouth quickly made it a "Top 10" program before it temporarily went off in the summer of '71.

[Miss Lisa]

I think that Green Acres, as much as I love that show jumped the shark somewhere within the last two seasons. It seemed to me that they were running out of ideas, so in order to keep the show going they started changing the characters, not really completely changing who they were, but starting to over exaggerate certain traits. Lisa, the one who started out with the ability to think started getting more and more airheaded and for some reason they started to focus more and more on the fact that she is Hungarian. I have no problem with the Hungarian thing, I'm part Hungarian myself, my grandma used to be able to speak it fluently along with Slovak so I like that they do that it just kinda seems weird though to me how they take a couple seasons to actually begin to point that out though. Then there was Mr. Kimble who gradually got more forgetful to point where it was overly ridiculous at the end. Oliver was more irritable for some reason, where it would actually made more sense to make him less irritable since he would have been more used to living in Hooterville. I still like the show at the end, but like I said, the people were starting to over do things, so IMO I think its a good thing that it ended when it did.