When CBS Attempted to Air Sitcoms After Murder, She Wrote

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From 1986-2005 CBS had 20 straight years of Sunday night movies at 9:00 on the fall lineup, 2 full decades. They were copying NBC who had their own 20 year streak from 1981-2000. ABC often aired Sunday night movies as well, but not as long consecutively.

But midseason is a different story, at least in 1987. All four weeks in February Designing Women moved over from Mondays to air Sundays at 9:00 after Murder, She Wrote. This was to make room for new sitcom The Cavanaughs airing after Newhart. It was an hourlong Designing Women on the 1st, then on the 8th and 15th Together We Stand aired at 9:30, also a Monday transplant. Journalism drama Hard Copy aired at 10:00. Cast of Hard Copy included Dean Devlin who would later create Leverage. On February 22 Together We Stand was preempted with some sports overrun. This was a short-lived experiment, movies returned to Sundays in March and Designing Women moved back to Mondays.

Together We Stand had its third night of the season getting banished to Fridays. It also had a stupid sounding revamp, where lead actor Elliot Gould's character was killed off making his wife a widow. It aired 6 episodes as Together We Stand in 1986, then 7 episodes as Nothing is Easy in 1987 for both Sundays and Fridays. TV Tango lists them all as Together We Stand, though. The revamp probably made it even less popular, 6 unaired episodes total. 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter had to kill off their main character, widowing his wife because John Ritter died. Together We Stand/Nothing is Easy did not.

This was not the first season Murder, She Wrote led into a sitcom that didn't work out. The Jeffersons season 11 remained on Sundays with Alice remaining at 9:30 for fall 1984 after the very first season of Murder, She Wrote, but they fared better when it was a 2 hour sitcom block. One Day at a Time ending the previous season changed things. The Jeffersons and Alice hour was moved to Tuesdays midseason. Final shortened season of Alice continued through March. In April The Jeffersons moved out of the Tuesday leadoff slot to 8:30 making way for The Lucie Arnaz Show (not her mother's appeal was a 6 episode flop), and had its unceremonious cancellation without being able to make a proper series finale.