Fascinating article from Broadcasting Magazine\'s August 11, 1975 issue on the impact of the 60-minute soap opera on daytime tv. Lots of rating data is included with rationale for moving Price from 3PM back to mornings, the cancellation of Spin Off (which replaced Joker at 10AM) and references to the recently premiered \"Showoffs\" and \"Rhyme and Reason.\" I am sad that they called the beloved NBC version of \"Jackpot\" as \"tired!\"
Page 1
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/hd2/Archive-BC-IDX/75-OCR/1975-08-11-BC-OCR-Page-0029.pdf
Page 2
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/hd2/Archive-BC-IDX/75-OCR/1975-08-11-BC-OCR-Page-0030.pdf
Page 3
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/hd2/Archive-BC-IDX/75-OCR/1975-08-11-BC-OCR-Page-0031.pdf
Unfortunately all three links go to page 30 (obviously though easy to edit the link to see the other two pages).
Most interesting, however, and something I never knew was ABC wanting to strip \"Mary Tyler Moore\" for daytime reruns..
I am sad that they called the beloved NBC version of "Jackpot" as "tired!"Sad as it may have been, I'm not really surprised it was considered "tired" at this point -- this was over a month after Lin Bolen forced it to change from big-money riddles to low-budget Q&A, and Geoff felt the overhaul had removed all the fun of the show (source: Game Show Utopia (http://www.game-show-utopia.net/geoff/jackpot74/jackpot.htm)).
I guess when MTM wasn\'t available, that\'s when ABC decided to go with Happy Days instead. That was a bit of an unusual move too because it had only been on for a season and a half when it went into daytime. Most of the time you\'d need around four seasons worth of shows to make a good go of it. The episodes repeated mighty quickly.
I thought the same thing you did so I checked Wikipedia for ABC\'s daytime schedule around that time to see how long they had Happy Days as Ryan\'s Hope\'s lead-in. Turns out they realized that might not have been a great idea because they ended up pushing All My Children up to 12:30 instead of risking losing potential viewers for Ryan\'s Hope by burning through their Happy Days reruns so quickly.
Another surprising tidbit was that Tattletales was CBS\'s most profitable show. I guess that\'s because they didn\'t give away that much prize money to contestants, although paying six celebrities must have cost a bit.
Obviously, you\'re stretching the definition of celebrity a bit when you include spouses, but it does raise an interesting economic question. I\'d be curious to know how much the spouses were paid, or more precisely, how they arrived at a figure. I seem to recall that there was a set figure that most of the celebs were paid, which implies that a union played a part in determining that figure. The same agreement might have included a figure for spouses, or they might have thought that one show wasn\'t worth negotiating over. I don\'t imagine that most of the spouses belonged to a union such as SAG or AFTRA, even though they were functioning in a capacity that those unions represent. (I can think of two people here who might possibly have some knowledge on this question.)
I love this quote. Jiminy Christmas. Canceled because of a 4.4/24.
CBS has also announced this week that Spin -Off, which replaced Joker at 10, will be pinkslipped because its 4.4 rating and 24 share weren\'t making a dent in Celebrity Sweepstakes\'s season -to -date (i.e., 125 telecasts through July 13) 5.3 national Nielsen rating and 28 share (up to a 31 share in recent weeks).
I think the networks in \'75 were throwing any game show idea at the wall to see what sticks. Spin-Off was one of the shortest-lived daytime shows ever at 10 weeks. Maybe they could tell after a few weeks this wasn\'t going anywhere, but did they really think Give-N-Take would do better?