Schedule Rewind: A look back at the Prime Time schedule from seasons past and network decisions impacting sci fi and fantasy shows.
In 1977, Star Wars proved a major hit at the Box Office and revived interest in the sci fi and fantasy genre across the entertainment industry. The television networks got into the game and rushed big-budget productions Battlestar: Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century to their schedules in an attempt to ride the Star Wars wave of popularity to big ratings. But by the 1980-81 season, the former series was gone from the airways and the latter was on its way out. The brief flirtation with blockbuster sci fi on television was over and had soured network execs on the genre. That would lead to more than a decade with little to nothing in the way of genre offerings on the broadcast networks and sci fi TV would eventually have to move off-network to re-stake its claim to the airways.
ABC
The Greatest American Hero (Wednesdays 8:00 PM EST)
Mork and Mindy (Thursdays 8:00 PM EST)
Fantasy Island (Saturdays 10:00 PM EST)
Superhero parody The Greatest American Hero had its premiere on ABC midway through the season and it proved rather popular early on, even though it did not end the year ranked in the Top 30. Series creator Stephen J. Cannell battled with network execs throughout the show’s run, trying it make it more of a character-focused series and less of the action romp ABC wanted. And it would eventually get cancelled after its third season, but the show is well-remembered from its ’80s run and there have been recent attempts to reboot it on ABC.
Mork & Mindy was in its third season on the network, though viewership had dropped notably. ABC had made ill-advised changes to the show after its breakout first season, trying to tone down Robin Williams’ lunacy even though that’s what audiences loved. The third year reversed that to an extent, but the damage was already done and the show would be cancelled by the end of the next season.
Fantasy Island was in its fourth year and still proving popular for the network. But that show barely counts as a genre entry even though it did bring in some fantasy elements to its stories. Another series of note airing on the network that season was Soap. While not a true genre entry, that soap opera parody brought in demon possession and alien abduction to its many storylines and still counts as one of the funniest TV series ever to hit the airways. Sadly, the network gave up on that one and cancelled it at the end of the season on a major cliffhanger.
CBS
The Incredible Hulk (Fridays 8:00 PM EST)
The only genre entry on the CBS schedule was The Incredible Hulk, and this was the last season it would air in a regularly scheduled timeslot. The prior two seasons, the network also had The Amazing Spider-Man and Wonder Woman in its lineup and had aired pilots for Dr. Strange and Captain America. But CBS execs had decided that they did not want to be labeled the superhero network (more on that at this link), and only The Incredible Hulk survived into the 1980-81 season (you can read more about the series at this link). The next year only seven episodes were produced before the show was cancelled, and those were aired sporadically across the year. It ended with no resolution, though NBC later aired three Incredible Hulk revival films at the end of the decade.
NBC
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (Thursdays 8:00 PM EST)
NBC only had Buck Rogers in the 25th Century on its schedule that year, and it would be gone by the end of the season. The show had not proved to be the hit network executives hoped for in its first year, and it only just barely made it into a second season. It went through a major retooling that took it away from the tongue-in-cheek approach of its first year, opting for a more serious tone as it turned into a mash-up of Star Trek and Battlestar: Galactica. The scripts were no better, though, and the change in direction only made that more apparent (you can read more about the series at this link). Not helping matters was the fact that it got off to a late start due to an actors’ strike, which was yet another factor leading to a decline in viewership. It was cancelled by the end of the season, ending the brief attempt by the networks to bring big-budget sci fi to television.
Very little in the way of sci fi and fantasy television offerings would follow on the broadcast networks through the rest of the decade and into the ’90s. There was a brief attempt to revive the anthology format in the 1985-86 season with Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents reboots along with new series Amazing Stories (as I discuss in more detail at this link). But all three would be gone from the broadcast schedule after only a couple of years (though the first two would continue their runs off-network). It would take 1987’s Star Trek: The Next Generation to help spearhead a revival of sci fi and fantasy on television (you can read about that at this link), though that would occur in the syndication market and it would be years before the broadcast nets would show much interest in the genre again.
More Schedule Rewinds At This link
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Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and you can see the premieres for all the upcoming genre entries at this link.
It’s like current circumstances.
Agreed. The 1980’s — the early half — were especially grim for SciFi fans. It did get better in the latter half of the decade … but damn those early days were awful.