Why Did Mama's Family air on NBC instead of CBS?

[Jamey Greek]

It would have made a lot of sense for Mama's Family to be on CBS instead of NBC. Since Carol Burnett was on NBC and they taped at CBS Television City.

[Jamey Greek]

Mama's Family would have been perfect on CBS's Monday Night Lineup!

[TV_on_the_Porch]

The series sprang from the success of the 'Eunice' special which aired on Monday, March 15th 1982 on CBS.

CBS passed on the series as proposed. The fact that the special had so recently established that the character of Mama was dead may have been a factor, who knows. As it was even NBC delayed the show's premiere from October '82 to January '83.

And even at that I was under the distinct impression that the Alistair Quince introductions served as flashbacks to a time when Mama was still living. After a while it was forgotten that she was supposed to have ever died.

[quincywagstaff]

Originally Posted by TV_on_the_Porch

The series sprang from the success of the 'Eunice' special which aired on Monday, March 15th 1982 on CBS.

CBS passed on the series as proposed. The fact that the special had so recently established that the character of Mama was dead may have been a factor, who knows. As it was even NBC delayed the show's premiere from October '82 to January '83.

And even at that I was under the distinct impression that the Alistair Quince introductions served as flashbacks to a time when Mama was still living. After a while it was forgotten that she was supposed to have ever died.

In the Vicky/Carol interview bonus feature, Carol mentioned that the Eunice special was sat on by CBS for some time before it finally aired. Shortly after the show aired, Joe Hamilton and Grant Tinker (who was married to Mary Tyler Moore and was the new CEO of NBC) were playing golf together and Joe pitched a show built around the Mama character. Tinker gave him a 13 episode commitment without a pilot being filmed and the show was put on NBC's fall schedule. When production began that summer, Vicki asked to shut down production because after filming the first two episodes (Mama's Silver and Alien Marriage), she thought that the show and especially Mama wasn't funny. She asked for Harvey Korman to be brought in as a director and he was responsible for Mama becoming much funnier. Because of the temporary shut down in production, NBC delayed the premiere of MF until the following January.

The Alistair Quince introductions were created as a spoof on the host of PBS's Masterpiece Theater, Alistair Cooke, who would open the show by sitting in an armchair with a book on his lap and introduce the show. When MF debuted on NBC, the first two episode filmed (in which Vint hadn't married Naomi yet) were buried until much later in the first season. When they finally did air, the Alistair Quince intro was used to explain the fact that Vint was single again because those two episodes were flashbacks to before he and Naomi married. Mama's "death" on the Eunice special was never referenced on the show so I doubt that these intros were meant to be anything but a spoof.

[Frump]

I often hear the syndicated episodes refered to as the CBS episodes for some reason.

[quincywagstaff]

The NBC episodes were filmed at CBS Television City in the same studio that was used for the Carol Burnett Show. The syndicated episodes were filmed at the Fox Television Center. In both cases, neither CBS or Fox had anything to do with show, apart from renting studio facilities to Joe Hamilton Productions.