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SOME OF THE CLIPS ARE AUDIO ONLY! Most optimized for slower connections!  THE TOP TEN 1. All in the Family 2. Sanford and Son 3. Chico and the Man 4. Jeffersons 5. MASH 6. Rhoda 7. The Waltons 8. Good Times 9. Maude 10. Hawaii Five-0 (There were five Norman Lear sitcoms that finished the 1974-75 season in the top 10: All in the Family, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Maude and Sanford and Son.) ABC went up against NBC's venerable 'Today Show' with 'AM America', hosted by Bill Beutel and Stephanie Edwards. The attempt failed and the morning show was replaced the next fall by 'Good Morning, America' - which is still going strong. 
In Saturday morning programming, ABC had only moderate success with their new kiddie shows. CBS dominated the morning with Shazam!
 Merv, a talk/variety show hosted by Merv Griffin, was popular in afternoon syndication (heard in that clip are Henny Youngman and Steve Allen). Merv's bandleader was the great Mort Lindsey.
"That's My Mama: The first season of this show was, IMHO and IIRC, really pretty damn good. Clifton Davis played a straight hairdresser - a barber, I believe was the obsolete term - while Theo Wilson played his mailman pal Earl. "When the show was renewed, ABC forced some changes that, as in the case of Temperatures Rising, altered the focus of the show and shot the fair-but-not-spectacular ratings down the toilet. Earl went from being a postman to another barber in Clifton's shop, which eliminated a lot of the spontaneity of the gags that would occur when Earl walked in with the morning mail. "One episode stands out in my memory, and the anti-gun freaks would love it: After crime in the neighborhood goes up through the roof, Cliff buys a gun to protect him and Mama. But Mama, being Mama, won't have it in the house. Cliff stands up to Mama and hides the gun in his room. "After an episode of gun debates, a burglar breaks into the house, finds the gun, holds Cliff at gunpoint. Mama saves the day by coming down the stairs and in a mama-ly fashion takes the gun from the burglar's hand and chases him away away. Cliff tells Mama she shouldn't have risked her neck like that, but she turns the tables by explaining that she'd already found the gun and had removed all the bullets earlier that afternoon. "The punch line's still coming, tho: To demonstrate the gun is empty, she points the gun to the floor and pulls the trigger, blowing a hole in the floor. Seems Mama didn't know that a cocked semi retains a bullet in the chamber, which proves her character wouldn't last a week in the Watts of the 90's...- (OM) :ABC
MOVIES OF THE WEEK:
Connie Stevens starred in a memorable TV-movie called The Sex Symbol. In this messy melodrama, she played an insecure superstar whose past wretches up to her. Co-starring Shelly Winters, it's a cult classic. Here is a cluster of previews for the ABC Movie of the Week in 1974.
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The 1973-74 season had the worst new show success ratio of any season in television history. The three networks had only one series each that was renewed that year (Kojak, Police Story, Six Million Dollar Man). The 1974-75 rosters performed only slightly better.
The number-one show of 1974, All in the Family, began the season with a refusal to work from Archie Bunker himself, Carroll O'Connor. O'Connor was aggravated because producer Norman Lear wouldn't let the actor star in a lucrative beer commercial. After a few missed weeks, O'Connor returned to film five episodes - then refused to show up for work due to a mechanic's strike that his actor's union didn't support.
Friends and Lovers was every critic's favorite new show for fall 1974, with an exceptional cast that included Penny Marshall, Dick Wesson, Craig Richard Nelson, Steve Landesberg, Jack Gilford and others. Still, Friends and Lovers ended up a surprise first failure for the MTM studio, thought to be too highbrow for the lead-in audience. Jack Elam portrayed cantankerous old drunken perverts and crazed miners in countless westerns from the fifties through the seventies. "I've played all kinds of weirdos but I've never done the quiet, sick type," Elam once commented on his roles. "I never had a problem - other than the fact I was just bad." Typical Texas Wheelers plotline: eldest son goes out back to beat the sh*t out of daddy over all sorts of neglectful acts, while the rest of the family has a funeral for a dead baby duck. The duck was obviously a symbol for what this show became.
The story of reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin), a guy who just can't seem to avoid running into werewolves, witches, mummies and vampires (a sort of bare-bones X-files without the government involved).
The series was patterned after the wildly successful TV movies (The Night Stalker in 1972 and The Night Strangler in 1973) produced and directed by Dan Curtis (Dark Shadows). The TV-movies were true chillers, and The Night Stalker remains to this day one of the five top-rated television movies of all time. Unfortunately, Curtis wasn't involved in the new series, star Darren McGavin was the producer. The chill was gone and so was the show by the next fall. Sons and Daughters was an hour-long drama from CBS that took a little from Happy Days and a little from Family - then took a bath in the ratings. This series, the story of two young lovers trying to cope with life in Stockton, California in the Fifties, replaced The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour when the musical duo's divorce earlier in the year left a gaping hole in the 1974 CBS primetime schedule. Sons and Daughters flunked out before the end of the freshman year, replaced by Tony Orlando and Dawn. SAY
GOODNIGHT DICK:
President Nixon resigned in 1974. Soap Operas and game shows were interrupted when the announcement became official.
With lame promos like this one, it's not hard to see why The Sonny Comedy Review never got off the ground, despite the fact it started out as a pretty decent show. Sonny Bono said later that, as part owner, he lost a lot of money on his solo series. He expressed some (lighthearted) regrets in his monologue from the last show on December 29, 1974.
Blye and Bearde also produced a CBS Saturday morning show that debuted in 1974 called The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, a continuation of their successful 1974 summer variety series, featuring Sonny and Cher show writers, format and supporting players.
Every thirty-minute Saturday episode featured the same rotating skits - a monsters sketch, a desert island sketch, the 'Razzle-Dazzle Wrap-up', the bear, Knights of the Round Table sketch ("Do it for me- Lady Patricia!"), and a visit with Chuckie Margolis (the show's bright spot).
The edgy humor the brothers were known for was gone. "Yes, I did check my convictions at the studio door", Tommy Smothers admitted to TV Guide, "We had lost our platform. This was the only way we could get it back." The match of stars and producer (Carol Burnett Show's Joe Hamilton) was not a good one - Hamilton stripped them of controversy and spontaneity and as a result, the show lasted only 13 weeks.
Soon after The Smothers Brothers Show was cancelled in 1975, the Smothers hosted a reunion of the show's guests on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. On the stage that night were Hoyt Axton, Pat Paulsen, Minnie Riperton, George Carlin and Don Novello. :BASED
ON
Planet
of the Apes was an expensive flop for CBS. Ron Harper and James
Naughton were the astronauts who cracked the ape barrier, Roddy
McDowell and Mark Lenard were seen as apes. Ran only until December,
1974.
A
riff on the 'Blacksploitation' genre, Christie Love was TV's first black
policewoman, known for saying, "You're under arrest, sugah!" as she
slapped on the cuffs.
Born Free, starring Gary Collins and Diana
Muldaur, was based on the popular books by Joy Adamson and the hit movie
from 1966, concerning Kenyan game wardens and their friend Elsa the
Lioness. Gone by mid-season.
Based
not on a movie but a Broadway show - mid-season replacement Hot
L Baltimore was considered so racy that the opening episode
was banned in three cities. This Norman Lear flop was no match for The
Rockford Files on NBC.
:BONDING
WITH "If
we talk it out together
"I'm
a super-cop, baby!" Kojak returns on CBS for a second year. This
show lasted five seasons, and was revived for a short time in 1989 as
part of the ABC Mystery Movie.
Apple's
Way, from the producer/creator of The Waltons, debuted in
January, 1974 and ran only until January of 1975. Ronny Cox, Vincent
Van Patten, and Lee McCain starred in what was basically a modernized
version of the Walton family. Kristy McNichol joined the cast in fall,
1974. The
longest-running program in primetime was cancelled after the 1974-75
season - Gunsmoke ended a twenty-year run.
The pilot episode of Wheel of Fortune was shot in the fall of 1974 with host Edd 'Kookie' Byrnes (77 Sunset Strip). The show debuted mid-season (January, 1975) with host Chuck Woolery. Movin'
On starred Claude Akins and Frank Converse as cross country
truck drivers in one of the best dramatic series of the season.
Akins even did his own driving with side mounted cameras on an eighteen wheeler. The hardest part for the actor: "sayin' yer dialogue and tryin' to remember what gear you're in."
:MORE
1974
Manhunter, Amy Prentiss, The New Land, Nakia and Sierra all quickly came and went. At the end of the season, only freshmen Movin' On, That's My Mama, Petrocelli and Harry O (barely) got renewed and those were all cancelled over the next year. |
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Intended
to be a male counterpart to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, poker-faced
Paul Sand played a lonely bass violinist with the Boston Symphony - which
does seem an unlikely situation for laughs.
:PICKED
TO 
:THREE
FROM 
Also
this season from Blye and Bearde was That's My Mama starring
Clifton Davis (Amen), Theresa Merritt, Ted Lange (Love Boat)
and Theodore Wilson (Sanford Arms). This slapstick sitcom managed
to get renewed, but only ran until Christmas Eve, 1975.
:MISSED 
The
last four episodes of The Smothers Brothers Show were produced
by Tom Smothers and they stand as some of the most creative variety
hours ever broadcast.
"The
cop with soul! When
you need a cop that's no lady, you need Christie Love."
Teresa
Graves (Laugh-in) was cast in the title role for 
:RETURNING
The
final season for several long-running shows: Mannix (8 years),
Adam-12 (7 years), 
Kung
Fu was up against All In The Family in 1974 - it was
Archie Bunker's eastern philosophy that ultimately won out.
:HOT
GAME 
:1974's HITS:
When
the show returned for a second season, Rosey Grier and Art Metrano joined
the cast. The series was filmed all around the country ala Route
66.
Harry
O was based on a well-received CBS TV-movie from 1973 - starring
former
Fugitive David
Janssen as a low paid, big city private eye.
Good first season, lousy second season, no third season.
