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Soap opera The Edge of Night was unique in soapland. It was reportedly viewed by the largest segment of male viewers of any soap, likely due to its mystery/crime focus rather than romantic melodrama. It aired at 3:30pm eastern, a pretty late slot for a "daytime" soap (thus the name) but perfect for men returning home from work to "pick it up". It had gangbusters ratings, usually #2 among over a dozen soaps. In 1972 Edge got moved to a much earlier time slot (I think it was 1:30) by CBS and was sandwiched between more "conventional" soaps. It lost a lot of its male audience that had been watching it after work. The darker tone also didn't "fit" with the surrounding shows very well, either. The ratings dropped noticeably, but rather than trying to correct the mistake, CBS let the show slide so badly that Edge ultimately left CBS entirely in late 1975, moving to ABC to run for another nine years but never regaining its top-rated status.
Thank you For the life of me I could not remember the name of the soap opera I used to watch at 4pm after General Hospital:Edge of Night. Thanks to you this won't be eating at me all night
A&E pulled the plug on Longmire because the viewing audience was "to old" for them. The age group they are trying to target with TV shows are the ones with the least amount of disposable income.
A lot of people feel Murder, She Wrote was sabotaged by CBS in its final season. Yes, the show was 12 years old and a bit repetitive, but it still had great ratings and a loyal following until CBS changed the time slot in the final year from Sunday to Thursday and it's ratings dropped out of the top ten and it was cancelled at the end of that year.
Many but one that comes to mind is the Partridge Family. For the first three seasons it was on Friday nights after the Brady Bunch. In my mind they were very compatible and drew the same audience. For some reason ABC decided to place it directly against All In The Family which was the number 1 show. The Partridge Family (along with the Brady Bunch)were both cancelled that spring.
Gee, 2 pages in & I'm suprised no one has mentiioned the most obvious hit job on a network's own show: The Smother's Brothers Comedy Hour. They were one of many shows that CBS had put in that slot to try & stop the multi-year ratings colossus that was Bonanza over on NBC. Bonanza had trounced them all including pros like Jack Benny & Judy Garland.
The Smothers came in & tried for the younger demographic & it took off. As they became more topical they featured performers that had not been allowed on TV before including Pete Seeger who had been banned by the networks since 1950. This worked & suddenly Bonanza was no longer #1 in the ratings & the Smothers are taking off... but the powers that be apparently didn't like giving Seeger, Harry Belafonte, David Steinberg, The Who & people who spoke out against the Vietnam War a prime time presence. So they came up with a patently bogus lie about scripts being late & cancelled the show.
I suppose it's not incidental that Bill Paley, the head of CBS at the time, wanted to be appointed to a diplomatic post by Nixon...
Many but one that comes to mind is the Partridge Family.
I can't see the Partridge Family lasting more than a few years even if it were the most popular show in its time slot. Teen idols are a nine-days' wonder under the best of circumstances. The network didn't kill the Partridge Family; the fickle nature of preteen girls did.
Well, maybe not everything, but back in the 90's, I learned that FOX would give the audience a taste of a show and then yank it away. Briscoe County and Sliders for example. They would lie about what they did with the show. Models, Inc. and Wonderfalls for example. They would misadvertise their shows, such as Medicine Ball.
So around 1996 I guess, I stopped watching any new shows on FOX. Why bother? They weren't going to stay around. Wonderfalls, a few years later, was another pass at FOX to see if they had changed their tune but no, they were even worse in not even bothering to advertise it.
So I quit watching FOX altogether.
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For the life of me I could not remember the name of the soap opera I used to watch at 4pm after General Hospital:Edge of Night. Thanks to you this won't be eating at me all night
The age group they are trying to target with TV shows are the ones with the least amount of disposable income.
