Are Sitcoms Bad Lead-Outs for "60 Minutes"?

[James28]

A spinoff of the "WKRP is the Most Unjustifiably Cancelled Show of All Time!" thread.

Throughout its four-year run, Archie Bunker's Place's year-end average Nielsen rating was four to six points lower than 60 Minutes, and all of the other sitcoms in CBS's early-1980s Sunday lineup (One Day at a Time, Alice, and The Jeffersons) always had higher such averages than ABP. Not having any idea as to why the three other sitcoms' ratings are in the Year-End Top 10 and ABP's just couldn't gave me the idea to ask if sitcoms are just bad lead-outs for 60 Minutes in general.

What other options CBS would have had for the post-60 Minutes half-hour at the time besides ABP? Let's expand the conversation of ABP never existing at all. I did previously state that WKRP in Cincinnati would have benefitted hugely from a 60 Minutes lead-in, and then its original run would have definitely been extended past 1982, with its ratings being better than they were in real life. A 20.7 average just wouldn't have cut it.

I wouldn't have minded the original One Day at a Time directly leading out of 60 Minutes instead of ABP, either. Murder, She Wrote was a lead out for 60 Minutes for eleven out of its twelve seasons, even beating 60 Minutes's average rating during MSW's second and third seasons. During MSW's final season (after it moved to Thursdays), CBS tried airing sitcoms after 60 Minutes again (one of which was Cybill, which only ranked at #50 during the 1996-97 season, far lower than the CBS Sunday Movie). The last time CBS aired sitcoms after 60 Minutes was during the 2002-03 broadcast season with Becker and the seven-episode run of My Big Fat Greek Life.