Great Years for New Hit Shows
Permit me a hockey analogy:
In just two draft years, 1979 and 1980, the Edmonton Oilers acquired some of the best ice hockey players in history, and the core of arguably the best team in history, drafting Kevin Lowe, Mark Messier, and Glenn Anderson and acquiring Wayne Gretzky in 1979, then drafting Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, and Andy Moog in 1980. For hockey-challenged readers, Gretzky is the highest scoring player of all time, Messier the second, Coffey the twelfth (second amongst defensemen), Kurri the nineteenth. Between them, these players have 34 Stanley Cup championships. So, 1979 and 1980 were good years for Edmonton.
Are there equivalents in television, years when a network’s crop of youngsters proves brilliant for them?
To get an initial answer to this question, I looked at the start dates of all the network shows currently on prime time.
The winner, it seems, is 2004 and 2005 at ABC, when the formerly struggling network debuted Lost, Desperate Housewives, Dancing with the Stars, Grey’s Anatomy, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, any one of which I’m sure NBC would sell Jay Leno and the first-borns of his family for fifteen generations for (that’s in contracts these days, right?).
Looking further back, 1970-1972 was a great time for CBS comedies, of course, as newbies M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, and Maude gave the network not only four hits, but four of the most highly touted shows in the medium’s history.
NBC’s comedy moment was 1983-1985, when they offered up Cheers, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Golden Girls, and Night Court (granted, neither FT nor NC are all that great, but they did very well in the ratings at the time).
Anyone out there know of other moments where one network just aced it? I know my comedy better than other stuff, so I’m sure I’m forgetting some storied years of drama.
Recent Comments