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Match Game 77's ill-fated move to 11 AM

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Ian Wallis:
We all know the story...Match Game 77 was buzzing along fine, but in November of that year, CBS expanded Guiding Light to an hour, which meant a schedule change.  Price is Right was moved back to 10 AM (Eastern), with Match Game following at 11.  I guess CBS figured since they did so well being back-to-back on the schedule in the afternoons from '73-75, maybe the magic would work again in the morning.

The experiment failed, and it started a downfall in the ratings for Match Game that it never fully recovered from.  After just six weeks, on December 19th the schedule was abruptly changed again, with Tattletales moving to 10 AM, Price back to 10:30, then Match Game in the afternoons but now at 4 PM.  The schedule change was so abrupt that I think TV Guide was even a week late in recognizing it.  Problem was a lot of CBS affiliates didn't air the 4 PM program, opting for syndicated shows instead.  The 4 PM slot for all the networks was an issue for a while.  Quite a number of them tape-delayed the show to the next morning, usually 9 or 9:30.

The show was a big hit with school kids who could watch the show after coming home from school.  By moving the show to the mornings, they lost most of those viewers and the move back gave it a lower audience than before because of network clearances in the new time slot.

My question:  finding ratings for daytime shows is very difficult.  Price is Right was still drawing a big audience and was one of the top-rated game shows at the time, and its audience was still increasing.  The network must have lost a lot of viewers who didn't stay with the next show - I guess it was mostly housewives at the time and maybe it wasn't their cup of tea(?)

Does anybody know the exact ratings for that period?  How far did Match Game fall?  It must have fallen off a cliff ratings-wise for CBS to change the schedule again that quickly.

aaron sica:
Did some google searches and found this:

Week of May 9-13, 1977 - MG77 had a 7.8 audience share from 3:30-3:45 and an 8.3 audience share from 3:45-4:00.
Week of November 7-11, 1977 - MG77 had a 4.2 audience share from 11:00-11:15 and a 4.5 audience share from 11:15-11:30.

tyshaun1:
Here's a snippet of daytime for November 1977...

steveleb:
Fascinating find. I remember those pocket pieces all too well.

Equally revealing was exactly how out of place Pyramid was as a stand alone game show amidst soaps on either side of it.  Those were significant declines for what was a de facto hammock time slot and it was a distinct third.  No surprise it was downgraded to noon soon after this.

Casey Buck:
I found a site that has scans of Nielsen Pocketpieces from 1978-June of 1988:

https://www.ratingsryan.com/p/nielsen-pocketpiece-archives.html

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