My Journey Through 1970s TV: Wednesday Nights, 1975

Continuing our journey through the prime-time schedules of the 1970s, and we’re now halfway through the decade, and halfway through the week in 1975. How many of these new hits, returning favorites and forgotten misfires do you remember? 

ABC

When Things Were Rotten
That’s My Mama
Baretta
Starsky & Hutch

ABC continues its trek toward late 1970s ratings dominance, introducing two new shows that both found an audience. Starsky & Hutch cracked the Nielsen top 20, finishing the season at #16, and spawned the same merchandising blitz that most of their hit shows produced. It was a standard maverick cop series that coasted largely on the chemistry of stars Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul. 

As I wrote in this blog in 2023, “Good scripts help, but there are only so many urban crime stories and criminal investigations to dramatize. Viewers watch to see characters they like inserted into narratives no matter how familiar. And when there are two or more leads, camaraderie is another essential. We want to believe the friendships between the characters, to the point that we’re sure they would enjoy each other’s company after work as well.” That’s what the show got right, and that’s why it lasted four seasons. 

Baretta, a reworking of the Toma series starring Robert Blake, finished the season at #22. It paired well with Starsky & Hutch, keeping the “guys who play by their own rules” vibe going for another hour. Unfortunately, Blake played by his own rules away from the show a little too often as well. 

I’m sure ABC thought it had a third hit in When Things Were Rotten, given Mel Brooks’ name among the creators. But this spoof of Robin Hood was nowhere near as clever as the James Bond spoof created by Brooks and Buck Henry a decade earlier. 

Fifty years later Get Smart remains a classic, while When Things Were Rotten faded quickly after a highly rated pilot. Still, it’s an interesting curio now with its cast of familiar TV faces – Dick Gauthier, Misty Rowe, Bernie Kopell, Dick Van Patten – and if you were about eight years old at the time, it was probably your favorite show. 

That’s My Mama was the only holdover from the previous year, but casting changes were not enough to save it from an abbreviated second season. 

CBS

Tony Orlando & Dawn
Cannon
Kate McShane

As with other variety series back then, Tony Orlando & Dawn was introduced over the summer and proved popular enough to earn a spot on the fall schedule. The music, provided by the trio of hosts and guest stars like Dr. Hook, Freddy Fender, Steve Lawrence, Tanya Tucker, Johnny Cash and many others, was wonderful. The comedy skits were lame, as they were on most of these shows. But there was a segment in every episode in which Orlando would hop off the stage and interact with the audience, and my mother, bless her soul, always loved those sweet moments and concluded that Tony must be a pretty wonderful guy. 

This would be the final season for Cannon after five solid years, and the first and final season for Kate McShane after just nine episodes. I wish I could offer something nice to say about the latter series, but this was a real dud of a legal drama with a poorly miscast Anne Meara in the title role. 

Charles Haid, so good on Hill Street Blues, did not fare any better as her brother, a priest who seemed to know more about the law than she did. Not the best way to strike a blow for feminism, CBS. 

NBC

Little House on the Prairie
Doctors’ Hospital
Petrocelli

It wasn’t yet the ratings powerhouse it would become, but in its second season Little House on the Prairie drew enough viewers to insure a bright future. There would be nine total seasons and more than 200 episodes.

That solid lead-in did nothing to help Doctors’ Hospital, a new medical drama that focused more on the staff at Lowell Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles than on the patients they treated. There were 15 regular and recurring cast members, enough perhaps to outnumber the audience for some episodes. You’ll recognize some of the names – George Peppard is top billed, and supported by Zohra Lampert, Albert Paulsen and John Larroquette among others. 

There’s one episode on YouTube that didn’t do much for me – Peppard as a surgical chief was still in arrogant Banacek mode, without the underlying Polish charm. 

Petrocelli entered its second season with good but not great ratings, so someone decided what this courtroom drama needed was more action. Suddenly our crusading attorney (Barry Newman) now found himself being chased by helicopters, having his camper run off the road, getting shot at and getting jumped in biker bars. But that was not enough to stave off cancelation. 

And despite some obscure and short-lived series on this night, no new additions to my “missed shows” list. Let’s see if my luck holds out when we get to Thursday.  

Shows Missed:

The Don Knotts Show (1970)
San Francisco International Airport (1970)
Nancy (1970)
The Headmaster (1970)
The Man and the City (1971)
Search (1972)
Assignment: Vienna (1972)
The Delphi Bureau (1972)
Jigsaw (1972)
The Little People (1972)
The Sixth Sense (1972)
Tenafly (1973)
Faraday & Company (1973)
Kodiak (1974)
The New Land (1974)
McCoy (1975)
Joe and Sons (1975)
Beacon Hill (1975)