Why did viewership continuously decline after Season 1

[TMC]

In its first season (1963-64), Petticoat Junction was the fourth highest rated show on American television, only behind The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bonanza, and The Beverly Hillbillies. But then for its second season, it fell down to 15th place in the Nielsens.

And it just continued to get worse and worse from there. For the final three seasons (1967-70), Petticoat Junction wasn't even ranked in the top 30 in the Nielsens.

[Duster76]

Originally Posted by TMC

In its first season (1963-64), Petticoat Junction was the fourth highest rated show on American television, only behind The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bonanza, and The Beverly Hillbillies. But then for its second season, it fell down to 15th place in the Nielsens.

And it just continued to get worse and worse from there. For the final three seasons (1967-70), Petticoat Junction wasn't even ranked in the top 30 in the Nielsens.

The first season was a bit of a mirage, Junction actually outperformed the lead-in series the hugely popular Red Skelton Show which finished at number 11. The series benefitted from weak competition on ABC and NBC, up against two one and done series, The Greatest Show on Earth (ABC) a poorly received drama about life in the circus, and a pretentious anthology series, The Richard Boone Show (NBC). The competition picked up in season 2 as Junction was up against top 20 hit Peyton Place which explains the drop to 15.

Seasons three and four are interesting, the show was clearly underperforming based on the lead-in audience and the compatibility of the two shows, season 3 the Skelton show was number 4 and Junction was number 21, season 4 Skelton was number 2 while Junction was number 23. There appears to have been some concern after season 3, and changes were made, Gunilla Hutton was out as Billie Jo number 2 replaced by Meredith MacRae, in addition Mike Minor was added to the cast. MacRae had a successful run on My Three Sons and pairing her with Minor may have been an attempt to build a similar story arc to the Mike and Sally romance featured on My Three Sons. CBS might have moved the show after season 3 based on the series losing so much of the lead-in audience, but low rated pubic affairs programming (CBS Reports) followed Junction so the damage was inconsequential to the network’s overall performance. When the series failed to perform any better during season 4 it was off to Saturday night for season 5.

Rating continued to drop in season 5 although the show was performing a bit better than the lead-in (Hogan’s Heroes) and that remained the case in season 6. The show of course was challenged by the lose of the star right at the beginning of season 6, Benaderet was the heart and soul of the series, but even with that tragedy the series held it’s own again outperforming Hogan’s Heroes. The show’s rating declined in season 7 but by that point it was a surprise the show was still on the air, the cast and crew expected the series to end after season 6.