My Journey Through 1970s TV: Wednesday Nights, 1976

How do you follow up a night when your network features the season’s two highest-rated shows? If you’re ABC, you do it with three more hits to dominate yet another evening. Give credit to CBS for at least hanging in there with a mostly successful mix of new shows and returning favorites. As for NBC…well, better luck on Thursday.

ABC
The Bionic Woman
Baretta
Charlie’s Angels

After being introduced on two popular episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, Jaime Sommers was spun off into her own series and was an immediate hit, finishing the season at #14. 

If I’m in the mood for some bionic action these days I will almost always opt for this series over its predecessor, thanks to consistently better and more grounded stories (at least until season 3) and the captivating presence of Lindsay Wagner.

Baretta (#8) was still a top ten hit in its third season, but it was quickly surpassed in popularity by a new show featuring three little girls who went to the police academy. Charlie’s Angels (#5) was the breakout hit of the season, destroying its competition and landing its three stars on the cover of Time magazine. 

Sadly, its first season would be the only one with the original lineup of Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith. Farrah’s quick departure, largely engineered by husband Lee Majors, would put the series’ future in jeopardy, but the network need not have worried, as we’ll see when we get to 1977.

CBS
Good Times
Ball Four
All in the Family
Alice
The Blue Knight

In its fourth season Good Times finished at #26, as audiences (not to mention his fellow cast members) began to tire about every episode being about J.J. (Jimmie Walker). The season opened with a shocking two-part episode in which family patriarch James Evans is killed in a car accident.

Jim Bouton’s Ball Four is still considered one of the best books every written about life in the Major League. It figured to be a challenging book to adapt for television, with its frank depictions of what goes on in baseball locker rooms, but from what I’ve read about it they tried their best. I’ve never seen it (maybe because it disappeared after just five episodes) so on the list of “missed shows” it goes.

All In the Family was CBS’s highest-rated show of the night, finishing at #12 – not bad for a series in its seventh season. Next up, a new show based on the film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Alice (#30) became a popular long-running show, but it never did anything for me. My grits remain un-kissed.

In 1973 CBS aired The Blue Knight, based on a book by Joseph Wambaugh about a police officer nearing retirement. William Holden starred, but wasn’t interested in reprising the role in a series, so George Kennedy stepped in. 

It drew enough viewers in its first season to return in the fall of 1976 but was then canceled after ten episodes. George Kennedy was always cool, but he was no match for Farrah Fawcett.


NBC
The Practice
NBC Movie of the Week
The Quest

Pity the poor programming wizards at the Peacock network in 1976. If it weren’t for bad luck, they would have no luck at all.

The Practice (not the one with Willam Shatner as Denny Crane), was as close as they got to a show anyone cared about, coasting through two undistinguished seasons on viewer affection for stars Danny Thomas and Shelley Fabares. Thomas played a lovable but grumpy old doctor, Shelley played his daughter, and his nurse was played by Dena (“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature") Dietrich.

The Quest tried unsuccessfully to bring westerns back to prime time. Kurt Russell and Tim Matheson played brothers who hit the trail searching for their sister Patricia, who like Russell’s character was abducted by Indians. Each week they’d ride into a new town, get involved in some local trouble and then be on their way. The show was canceled before they could find Patricia - hopefully she's adjusted to her new life by now.

None of this was working so the network took bold action in December; it canceled the Movie of the Week and introduced three new sitcoms: CPO Sharkey, The McLean Stevenson Show and Sirota's Court.

Sometimes you just can’t win.


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)
Mobile One (1975)
Big Eddie (1975)
Executive Suite (1976)
Ball Four (1976)