Fred Silverman is one of the most famous (and infamous, depending on your point of view) television executives in history. During his runs at CBS and ABC, he was responsible for bringing us such classics as "All in the Family," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", "Cannon", "The Bob Newhart Show", "M*A*S*H", "Maude", "The Waltons," "Barnaby Jones", "Kojak," "The Sonny & Cher Hour," "Good Times," "Happy Days," "Laverne & Shirley," "Family," "Charlie's Angels," "Donny & Marie," "Eight is Enough," "Three's Company," "The Love Boat," "Soap," "Fantasy Island," "Good Morning America," and the award-winning miniseries "Roots." However, he's also indirectly responsible for nearly destroying the NBC television network during his run there from 1978 to 1981. True, there were some good shows such as "Diff'rent Strokes," "Real People," "The Facts of Life," and "Hill Street Blues," but the flops, especially the super-flops, outnumbered the hits. In fact, Silverman's time at NBC was so notorious that the same company that made the "Proud as a Peacock" campain also made a parody version of the same campaign entitled "We're Loud!" But I'm getting a bit off-track here.
There were definitely some dark times in the daytime department, as the once-mighty lineup of NBC crashed and burned during his run. And some of the things I mention here may get their own entries in this blog. Yeah, they're THAT notorious.
Let's begin with "America Live," a one-hour talk show hosted by Jack Linkletter (son of Art). Debuting on July 24, 1978, the show was soundly beaten by "The $20,000 Pyramid" & "Ryan's Hope" on ABC, and "The Young and the Restless" & "Search for Tomorrow" on CBS, and as a result, the show ended at the end of the first week of January.
"The All-New Jeopardy!" debuted on October 3, 1978, and as a result of its debut, the long-running "Hollywood Squares" was bumped to 1:00 p.m. (Squares had been bumped from it's long-time time slot of 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. two years earlier). This version of J! was infamous for eliminating the lowest-scoring player after the "Jeopardy!" round, and replacing the "Final Jeopardy!" round with a "Super Jeopardy!" (no connection to the 1990 tournament that aired on ABC primetime) bonus round. This version was canceled on March 2, 1979.
January 8, 1979 brought two new game shows to replace the departing "America Alive"--"All Star Secrets," hosted by Bob Eubanks, which had contestants guessing which of five guest celebrities had a particular secret, and "Password Plus," the revamped revival of "Password" hosted by Allen Ludden. Secrets lasted until August, while Password lasted until 1982 (Ludden would be forced to leave the show in October of 1980 due to illness, and passed away on June 9, 1981; Bill Cullen subbed for Ludden for a four-week period in 1980, and Tom Kennedy became the permanent host after Ludden's departure {both from the show and from life}).
March 5, 1979 brings us to the first of the most notorious moments to happen during this period of NBC daytime--the expansion of "Another World" to 90 minutes. This caused three shows to be bumped back 30 minutes as a result ("Hollywood Squares" to 12:30 p.m., "Days of our Lives" to 1:00 p.m., and "The Doctors" to 2:00 p.m.), and had a long-term affect on most of NBC's shows.
"All-Star Secrets" would be replaced by "Mindreaders," an ESP game (ESP was popular during the 70s). Hosted by Dick Martin, the show only lasted 23 weeks, being replaced by "Chain Reaction," hosted by Bill Cullen, on January 14, 1980. Chain only lasted until June 20, 1980, bringing down two other game shows with it (we'll get to that moment eventually).
"The David Letterman Show" debuted on June 23, 1980, and was such a flop that on August 4, it was shrunk from 90 minutes to 60 minutes, and canceled altogether on October 24. During this time, the first hour-long soap opera from inception, "Texas" debuted on August 4, bumping "Another World" back to 60 minutes in the process.
The shows that replaced Letterman in the morning was "Las Vegas Gambit," a revival of the CBS game show hosted by Wink Martindale, and "Blockbusters," a Bill Cullen-hosted show which had a solo player playing against a family pair to see if two heads were really better than one.
"Card Sharks" ended its 3-and-a-half year run on October 23, 1981, replaced the following Monday by "Battlestars," a Hollywood Squares-clone produced by Merrill Heatter (one of the co-producers of "Hollywood Squares"), and hosted by Alex Trebek (hosting his first show since the cancellation of "High Rollers"). Battlestars only lasted 26 weeks, being canceled along with Blockbusters on April 23, 1982. "Las Vegas Gambit" had ended on November 27, 1981, replaced the following Monday by "The Regis Philbin Show," which was then canceled on April 9, 1982. I already mentioned in a previous post that "Search for Tomorrow" moved to NBC in March of 1982. "Password Plus" was the victim of this move, and "The Doctors" (which had moved to 12:30 when "Texas" debuted) was bumped to 12:00 noon. "Texas," meanwhile, moved to 11:00 a.m. in a desperate attempt for ratings, but found none, and both "The Doctors" and "Texas" ended their runs on New Year's Eve, 1982. Thankfully, NBC would start to recover shortly afterwards.
I know Silverman left NBC in 1981, but I just had to mention some of the stuff that happened in late-1981 and 1982 as well. Trust me, you'll be hearing much more about some of the aforementioned stuff very soon.
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