Memorable TV Line-Up’s:ABC Tuesday Night (Fall 1978)

Back when I talked about TGIF I noted that as great a line up as that was, ABC had even better line up’s in its history. Let’s go back about ten years earlier to look at one of them.

 

While sitcoms were starting to wane in the late 70’s, there was definitely something special about the Tuesday night line up on ABC. They had spent the 70’s trying to make Tuesday a solid night, but never quite got it right. The Harvey Korman Show?? Then in 1978 they finally nailed it. The awesome lineup featured some monster shows starting with this one known as :

8:00
Happy Days

Is there really anything else I can say about this show that hasn’t been said? This show was one of the best lead in’s for any night because EVERYONE watched this show. Even when it wasn’t worth watching. Ayyyyy!

8:30
Laverne & Shirley

It’s always impressive when the spin-off matches up to the original show so well that they can both be #1 and #2 in the TV ratings. In fact Laverne and Shirley surpassed Happy Days which is simply amazing. Mork and Mindy was up there too but that show was on another night.  This show was the kind of show that should never have been that successful, but when you have Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams as your lead you gonna have pure gold.

9:00
Three’s Company

So if Happy Days, Mork and Mindy and Laverne and Shirley were the top shows in 1978, where did this one come in? Would you believe it was also in the top 4? Yeah that’s how amazing this lineup was that the three shows in it were in the top four highest rated shows of the entire year. The other amazing thing is that this show lasted as long as it did. The behind the scenes turmoil has been well documented, and while the show wasn’t quite teh same without Suzanne Somers it did keep going successfully. That was the power of John Ritter. Probably why they tried to spin the character off when the series finally ended in a show that was…not that good.

9:30
Taxi

Taxi was in the top 10 but not as high, maybe people didn’t gravitate to that show as fast. It could be that the show was around at a time when the gritty 70’s were starting to transition into the squeaky clean 80’s. I  talked before about how the early 80’s became so squeaky clean that it almost killed the sitcom. Until 1984 anyway. This was the last show which felt “gritty”. It also had one of the best casts ever seen on any show. I watched as  a kid and I can tell you, this show was hysterical.

10:00
Well during the fall we had this little gem:

Then ABC tried to put comedies at that slot, which is risky at 10:00, and thus we had this little spin-off:

While a nice try didn’t quite have the success that Laverne & Shirley had, which is no surprise going by taht awful opening.

What a great line-up, NBC may have owned Thursday but ABC owned Tuesday’s and would right through the 80’s. When I was a kid in 1986 if it was Tuesday you watched ABC. Though by then the shows I watched were:
 

and
 

ABC Tuesday night’s would continue to reign right through the 90’s, but that’s a subject for another day.