My Journey Through 1970s TV: Wednesday Nights, 1977

Lather, rinse, repeat. Once again as we peruse another late ‘70s prime time schedule, we find ABC serving up a medley of hits, and two other networks struggling to keep up.

Having failed with The Practice and The Quest, NBC scrapped last year’s Wednesday night line-up and introduced three new shows. Only one caught on with the public, and it wasn’t even the best one. Let’s start there.

NBC
The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams
The Oregon Trail
Big Hawaii

Would an evening of adventures in the great outdoors lure enough viewers away from Angels and urban sitcoms? Not entirely, though America did take a liking to Grizzly Adams, whom they first met in a 1974 film that cost $140,000 and grossed more than $45 million at the box office. When the film aired on NBC two years later it drew a 32% share, enough to green light a series. It lasted just two years but made an unlikely star out of Dan Haggerty, who was then working as an animal trainer for Disney.

What I can’t figure out is why more viewers watching that show didn’t stick around for The Oregon Trail, which got destroyed in the ratings by Charlie’s Angels, the season’s fourth highest-rated series. And that’s a shame, because this was a first-rate western with a stellar cast.

Rod Taylor, star of such classic films as The Birds and The Time Machine, played Evan Thorpe, leader of a wagon train headed west to Oregon. He also cowrote the show’s fine theme song, “Oregon Bound,” with Charles Napier, who played his second-in-command. And how refreshing it was to see Napier finally playing a good guy.

Also featured were Andrew Stevens and Darleen Carr, two hard-luck TV lifers with several quickly canceled shows on their resumes. This is the show that should have stuck, but westerns weren’t in demand in 1977 unless Clint Eastwood was in them. Only 14 episodes were made and eight aired before the series was canceled. The remaining six played only on BBC television, but fans finally got to see them thanks to a 2010 DVD release which is highly recommended. 

If you’d like to sample it first, an episode called “The Scarlet Ribbon” is on YouTube, with guest stars William Shatner, Donna Mills and Bill Bixby (who also directed). Great stuff.

As for Big Hawaii, never watched it, never heard of it, so on the “missed” list it goes. According to The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, it was set on a sprawling Hawaiian ranch run by the wealthy Mitch Fears (John Dehner). Conflicts began when his ne’er do well son (Cliff Potts) returns home. Any of that sound familiar? Regardless, like The Oregon Trail it was gone by Thanksgiving.


ABC
Eight is Enough
Charlie’s Angels
Baretta

ABC’s winning streak continued with another new hit in Eight is Enough, which would run five seasons though sadly without original star Diana Hyland, who played the wife of Tom Bradford (Dick Van Patten) and died of cancer after filming just four episodes.

As I wrote about the series more than a decade ago, “I cannot recall any other series from that era that moved as easily from sitcom style humor, complete with laugh track, to serious moments, and then back again. That tonal switch is fraught with peril, and only the best television shows can pull it off without undermining the drama or overplaying the comedy. Eight is Enough gets it just right.”

There was casting uncertainty around Charlie’s Angels as well. Would a percentage of the audience leave with Farrah Fawcett? Instead, the show rose in the ratings in its sophomore season, with Cheryl Ladd proving to be an equally popular replacement.

As for Baretta, the once top ten show had dropped out of the top 30 and was canceled at the end of this season. It was time.


CBS
Good Times
Busting Loose
CBS Wednesday Night Move

Good Times bid farewell to Esther Rolle this season. Like the previously departed John Amos she was fed up with all the hoopla around Jimmie Walker. New to the cast was Janet Jackson as Penny, a little girl adopted by Willona.

I vaguely remembered Busting Loose (okay, mostly I remembered Barbara Rhoades on it) but was able to refresh my memory with several episodes on YouTube. 

As I watched the pilot again, which introduced ten cast members for a 30-minute show, I thought I wandered back into Too Many Cooks. But to its credit all ten were well-defined and beneficial to the series, each getting at least one moment to shine. Adam Arkin was an engaging lead in a show that tried to be a buddy comedy, a workplace comedy and a family comedy all at once – and mostly succeeded.



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)
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)
Young Dan’l Boone (1977)
Rafferty (1977)
Mulligan’s Stew (1977)
Big Hawaii (1977)