Why Did The Lucy Show Not Thrive in Syndication like I Love Lucy

[lucyandethel]

I've wondered this. It has been years since I have seen The Lucy Show and thankfully the DVDs are out now. But, I Love Lucy seems to thrive in reruns, airing as much as three or four times a day in many places. Can't we make a little room for The Lucy Show...at least the first three seasons?

Any ideas?

[Marvo301]

I think the biggest reason The Lucy Show didn't thrive in syndication is because in syndication it had to compete against I Love Lucy! Even Lucy couldn't compete against Lucy!!

[Mr. Television]

It's funny. When I was a kid, The Lucy Show was my favorite of Lucy's shows. I don't understand why it doesn't do well in syndication. It's a classic.

[LittleRickyII]

Originally Posted by lucyandethel

I've wondered this. It has been years since I have seen The Lucy Show and thankfully the DVDs are out now. But, I Love Lucy seems to thrive in reruns, airing as much as three or four times a day in many places. Can't we make a little room for The Lucy Show...at least the first three seasons?

Any ideas?

I think your question is appropriate: Why did The Lucy Show not thrive in syndication like I Love Lucy? But I think it should be pointed out that The Lucy Show did have a pretty good run in syndication compared to most sitcoms. Think about it: when is the last time you saw an afternoon rerun of McHale's Navy, or Gomer Pyle, USMC, or Family Affair, or Alice, or Hogan's Heroes, or The Odd Couple, or Get Smart, or That Girl, or any of the many, many other sitcoms from the past? The truth is all those sitcoms had pretty good long runs in syndication before fading away. And so did The Lucy Show. But none of them come close to the success that I Love Lucy has had in syndication. And I guess that's what sets apart a popular sitcom from a true classic. All those shows were popular in their time, and had extended lives in syndication, but they do not rise to the level of a classic. Classics are timeless and stand out from the crowd and continue to endure.

So I guess my point is, The Lucy Show, like McHale's Navy and Gomer Pyle, USMC and the others, was a very popular sitcom, but it never achieved the status of classic like its predecessor. And I will point to several reasons why I think that's the case. But before I do, let's consider the post-production success The Lucy Show did have, which I think is pretty impressive. Shortly after The Lucy Show went out of production in 1968, CBS began rerunning it every weekday morning at 10:00 AM. It stayed on their weekday morning schedule for four consecutive years, 1968 to 1972. In addition, The Lucy Show also aired as a summer replacement series for Here's Lucy for three summers: 1969, 1970 and 1971. So the fact that CBS kept The Lucy Show on its schedule for four years, both in morning reruns and in primetime, is quite impressive. How many series can you think of that have remained on a network schedule that long after ceasing production? I personally can't think of any, other than I Love Lucy, which remained on the CBS schedule for a full 10 years (1957 to 1967) after its original run.

So anyway, The Lucy Show spent its first four post-production years as a regular fixture on the CBS schedule. Then it went into syndication in 1972. I was a kid at the time and remember seeing a lot of The Lucy Show in afternoon reruns during the early and mid 1970s. It was around 1977 that it began to fade from a lot of local stations (though I still remember seeing it in some areas between 1978 and 1981). But that was after a strong five years in syndication, which came on the heels of those four years on CBS morning TV. So in all, that's nine years of pretty strong rotation before it started to fade. But that still wasn't the end of it. Around the time we were seeing less of The Lucy Show on local stations in the late '70s, cable TV was spreading throughout the country. And in those early days of cable, there weren't a zillion channels like there are today. Pretty much what you got when you got cable was all your local stations, plus HBO, maybe Showtime, Nickelodeon, maybe Chicago superstation WGN, and most definitely Atlanta superstation WTBS (now known just as TBS). And The Lucy Show was a staple on the WTBS schedule for years. So if you got cable back in those days -- we got ours in 1981 -- you were guaranteed to have WTBS, and with the small number of offerings on cable at that time, you would likely spend a lot of time watching WTBS, which meant there was a good chance you would have seen The Lucy Show. For awhile, I think TBS ran The Lucy Show on both its morning and afternoon schedule. In the early '80s, I think it was just on in the morning. But it remained on their regular morning schedule until about 1986, a full 18 years after it went out of production in 1968. TBS continued airing it irregularly for another couple years in late night and early morning. Then in 1992, it reemerged on Nick-at-Nite, where it remained on their schedule until 1996. So all in all, that's not a bad run!

Now why didn't it do even better? Well, because only true classics can do that much better. As funny as it is, it is not an equal to I Love Lucy. (And what show is?) The hilarious bickering between Fred and Ethel was replaced with bickering between Chris and Jerry, which is not quite the same thing. The classic Lucy/Ethel pairing continued with the Lucy/Viv pairing, which brought us many more classic scenes, which usually would come towards the end of an episode -- the climax. And a The Lucy Show Lucy/Viv climax could be on par with an I Love Lucy climax, but it's those moments leading up to that climactic scene where The Lucy Show falls short, compared to I Love Lucy: all that build-up to those scenes -- the Fred and Ethel moments, the Lucy and Ricky battles -- were gone. Bringing in Mr. Mooney in the second season helped fill in some of those gaps, but not completely.

The other thing, lets face it, most of the best episodes were from the first season. And many local TV stations didn't think viewers wanted to watch Lucy in black and white, which is odd given that every single episode if I Love Lucy is in black and white. But with The Lucy Show, many stations just wouldn't air those 30 episodes, which is a shame because most of the best are from that season. So after deducting those 30 episodes from the total 156, you're left with 54 Lucy/Viv/Danfield episodes, and 72 California episodes. While there are some wonderful episodes here and there from the California era, there are too many that are just mediocre. So when you cut out the 30 first season episodes, that leaves you with a six-in-ten chance of catching one of those sub-par California episodes which, chances are, will leave you unsatisfied. Some of the appeal of those episodes at the time was the guest stars, but as time passed, many of those guest stars became somewhat forgotten and not necessarily a draw. At the end of the day, someone tuning in to a Lucy episode does so to watch her, not her guest star.

Incidentally, a couple months after 9/11, a Washington, DC station brought back The Lucy Show to its morning schedule thinking after that horrific event, people would find comfort in this show. But as was typical, they started with the first color episode from the second season. From there, they ran episodes up until about the end of the fourth season before pulling it from their schedule. If they had started with the first season, I think they might have hooked more viewers.

[Benno123]

A local Christian TV channel here in Northwest Ohio had, up to about a year ago, shown reruns of The Lucy Show on its schedule - not the "public domain" episodes as I have seen someone report on here seeing on a low power channel before. And another local channel that reruns I Love Lucy has, in the past, shows the Comedy Hours followed by the first 30 b/w episodes of The Lucy Show. Then it starts the rotation again of the first episode of ILL.

[Kasey]

Great post, and I also recall Comedy Central ran TLS in 1991 along with other vintage fare such as "The Jack Benny Show", "That Girl", "Soap", "Rhoda" and "Phyllis".

Eventually they rebranded as a more modern station with shows like "Kids in the Hall" and "Absolutely Fabulous" and that's when TLS moved to Nick at Nite. It was one of the first old shows to leave Comedy Central but since both were owned by MTV, they probably thought it may do better on Nick, paired with "Dick Van Dyke" which was doing very well for them at the time.

[LittleRickyII]

Originally Posted by Kasey

Great post, and I also recall Comedy Central ran TLS in 1991 along with other vintage fare such as "The Jack Benny Show", "That Girl", "Soap", "Rhoda" and "Phyllis".

Oh yes, I forgot about that! It was actually originally on Comedy Central's predecessor, Ha! (After about a year, Ha! and The Comedy Channel merged to become Comedy Central.) Anyway, I remember that Ha! launched on April Fool's Day 1990 with a 48-hour marathon of The Lucy Show (96 back-to-back episodes). I went out and bought a new VCR just for the occasion! After the marathon, it aired daily for two years on Ha! and its successor Comedy Central, then moved over to Nick-at-Night in 1992 where it remained for another four years. So in all, that was a run of six consecutive years, equaling the length of the original network run back in the '60s! The only difference, during the 1990-96 run, it wasn't on just once a week, but five to seven days a week.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...AA0894D8494D81

[McGillicuddy]

I think the California seasons were run much more in syndication over the years. All I know is that many of the episodes from seasons 1-3, I've never seen in my life. Its been a real treat seeing Lucy adventures that were new to me!

[Marvo301]

I think one of the reasons The Lucy Show didn't thrive in syndication is because of the major changes to the show when Viv left and the children were dropped from the show. It was almost like seasons 1-3 and seasons 4-6 were two different shows. This probably made the show a tougher sell in syndication.

[LittleRickyII]

Originally Posted by Marvo301

I think one of the reasons The Lucy Show didn't thrive in syndication is because of the major changes to the show when Viv left and the children were dropped from the show. It was almost like seasons 1-3 and seasons 4-6 were two different shows. This probably made the show a tougher sell in syndication.

When you say it didn't thrive in syndication, are you talking about now or years ago? As I tried to point out in my post above, I think it had a pretty darn impressive run after it went out of production. It was rerun heavily for many years. It's not going to go on and on like the real classics do (e.g., I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, etc.), for the reasons you cite, as well as those I and others mentioned above, but compared to most shows from its era, it was a great success.

[Marvo301]

Originally Posted by LittleRickyII

When you say it didn't thrive in syndication, are you talking about now or years ago? As I tried to point out in my post above, I think it had a pretty darn impressive run after it went out of production. It was rerun heavily for many years. It's not going to go on and on like the real classics do (e.g., I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, etc.), for the reasons you cite, as well as those I and others mentioned above, but compared to most shows from its era, it was a great success.

I meant in comparison to I Love Lucy which is what the original question was in this thread.

[Jude The Obscure]

I think The Doris Day Show suffered from this same type of tough sell as Marv points out. In fact, it's very ironic how much The Doris Day Show followed in the Lucy Show's footsteps, right down to have a Mr. Mooney type boss for the last couple of seasons as well as the forgotten kids.

[McGillicuddy]

Originally Posted by Jude The Obscure

I think The Doris Day Show suffered from this same type of tough sell as Marv points out. In fact, it's very ironic how much The Doris Day Show followed in the Lucy Show's footsteps, right down to have a Mr. Mooney type boss for the last couple of seasons as well as the forgotten kids.

Atleast they explained where Lucy's kids went, Chris to college and Jerry to military school. Doris just comes back for her fourth season as if she never had kids, the dog's gone, Buck, Myrna & Mr. Nickolson never referred to again as if they never existed. The only people that still existed from Doris' first universe were Angie and Mr. Jarvis (the mean neighbor).

[LittleRickyII]

Originally Posted by markway895

Atleast they explained where Lucy's kids went, Chris to college and Jerry to military school. Doris just comes back for her fourth season as if she never had kids, the dog's gone, Buck, Myrna & Mr. Nickolson never referred to again as if they never existed. The only people that still existed from Doris' first universe were Angie and Mr. Jarvis (the mean neighbor).

To make matters worse, in a 5th season episode, a reference is made to a phone call from Doris's mother, who the previous four seasons we thought was dead! And in the 4th and 5th season, Doris is suddenly Miss Martin instead of Mrs. Martin, so she was never even married before!

[carric12]

Originally Posted by LittleRickyII

I think your question is appropriate: Why did The Lucy Show not thrive in syndication like I Love Lucy? But I think it should be pointed out that The Lucy Show did have a pretty good run in syndication compared to most sitcoms. Think about it: when is the last time you saw an afternoon rerun of McHale's Navy, or Gomer Pyle, USMC, or Family Affair, or Alice, or Hogan's Heroes, or The Odd Couple, or Get Smart, or That Girl, or any of the many, many other sitcoms from the past? The truth is all those sitcoms had pretty good long runs in syndication before fading away. And so did The Lucy Show. But none of them come close to the success that I Love Lucy has had in syndication. And I guess that's what sets apart a popular sitcom from a true classic. All those shows were popular in their time, and had extended lives in syndication, but they do not rise to the level of a classic. Classics are timeless and stand out from the crowd and continue to endure.

So I guess my point is, The Lucy Show, like McHale's Navy and Gomer Pyle, USMC and the others, was a very popular sitcom, but it never achieved the status of classic like its predecessor. And I will point to several reasons why I think that's the case. But before I do, let's consider the post-production success The Lucy Show did have, which I think is pretty impressive. Shortly after The Lucy Show went out of production in 1968, CBS began rerunning it every weekday morning at 10:00 AM. It stayed on their weekday morning schedule for four consecutive years, 1968 to 1972. In addition, The Lucy Show also aired as a summer replacement series for Here's Lucy for three summers: 1969, 1970 and 1971. So the fact that CBS kept The Lucy Show on its schedule for four years, both in morning reruns and in primetime, is quite impressive. How many series can you think of that have remained on a network schedule that long after ceasing production? I personally can't think of any, other than I Love Lucy, which remained on the CBS schedule for a full 10 years (1957 to 1967) after its original run.

So anyway, The Lucy Show spent its first four post-production years as a regular fixture on the CBS schedule. Then it went into syndication in 1972. I was a kid at the time and remember seeing a lot of The Lucy Show in afternoon reruns during the early and mid 1970s. It was around 1977 that it began to fade from a lot of local stations (though I still remember seeing it in some areas between 1978 and 1981). But that was after a strong five years in syndication, which came on the heels of those four years on CBS morning TV. So in all, that's nine years of pretty strong rotation before it started to fade. But that still wasn't the end of it. Around the time we were seeing less of The Lucy Show on local stations in the late '70s, cable TV was spreading throughout the country. And in those early days of cable, there weren't a zillion channels like there are today. Pretty much what you got when you got cable was all your local stations, plus HBO, maybe Showtime, Nickelodeon, maybe Chicago superstation WGN, and most definitely Atlanta superstation WTBS (now known just as TBS). And The Lucy Show was a staple on the WTBS schedule for years. So if you got cable back in those days -- we got ours in 1981 -- you were guaranteed to have WTBS, and with the small number of offerings on cable at that time, you would likely spend a lot of time watching WTBS, which meant there was a good chance you would have seen The Lucy Show. For awhile, I think TBS ran The Lucy Show on both its morning and afternoon schedule. In the early '80s, I think it was just on in the morning. But it remained on their regular morning schedule until about 1986, a full 18 years after it went out of production in 1968. TBS continued airing it irregularly for another couple years in late night and early morning. Then in 1992, it reemerged on Nick-at-Nite, where it remained on their schedule until 1996. So all in all, that's not a bad run!

Now why didn't it do even better? Well, because only true classics can do that much better. As funny as it is, it is not an equal to I Love Lucy. (And what show is?) The hilarious bickering between Fred and Ethel was replaced with bickering between Chris and Jerry, which is not quite the same thing. The classic Lucy/Ethel pairing continued with the Lucy/Viv pairing, which brought us many more classic scenes, which usually would come towards the end of an episode -- the climax. And a The Lucy Show Lucy/Viv climax could be on par with an I Love Lucy climax, but it's those moments leading up to that climactic scene where The Lucy Show falls short, compared to I Love Lucy: all that build-up to those scenes -- the Fred and Ethel moments, the Lucy and Ricky battles -- were gone. Bringing in Mr. Mooney in the second season helped fill in some of those gaps, but not completely.

The other thing, lets face it, most of the best episodes were from the first season. And many local TV stations didn't think viewers wanted to watch Lucy in black and white, which is odd given that every single episode if I Love Lucy is in black and white. But with The Lucy Show, many stations just wouldn't air those 30 episodes, which is a shame because most of the best are from that season. So after deducting those 30 episodes from the total 156, you're left with 54 Lucy/Viv/Danfield episodes, and 72 California episodes. While there are some wonderful episodes here and there from the California era, there are too many that are just mediocre. So when you cut out the 30 first season episodes, that leaves you with a six-in-ten chance of catching one of those sub-par California episodes which, chances are, will leave you unsatisfied. Some of the appeal of those episodes at the time was the guest stars, but as time passed, many of those guest stars became somewhat forgotten and not necessarily a draw. At the end of the day, someone tuning in to a Lucy episode does so to watch her, not her guest star.

Incidentally, a couple months after 9/11, a Washington, DC station brought back The Lucy Show to its morning schedule thinking after that horrific event, people would find comfort in this show. But as was typical, they started with the first color episode from the second season. From there, they ran episodes up until about the end of the fourth season before pulling it from their schedule. If they had started with the first season, I think they might have hooked more viewers.

thanks for the post