Oct 26, 2015 5 min read

Do you recall, remember at all, that wonderful fall TV premiere season of 1975?

No?

You don’t remember “Bronk,” “Fay” or “Mobile One”? You didn’t tune in to “Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell,” “Three for the Road” or “When Things Were Rotten”? It may just be that things really were rotten on television that year – at least in terms of new series.

Just four of more than two dozen new shows on CBS, ABC and NBC made it to a second season, and many were canceled after just a few weeks.

To be sure, the networks were in a quandary that year. The once wildly popular Western was dead (“Gunsmoke” was axed in 1974), and equally popular variety shows were experiencing a quick fade. About the only sure thing in 1975 was to create a spinoff to a current hit, and CBS held that secret formula close to its vest.

Forty years ago this week, NBC was touting “Medical Story,” “Forrester” and “McCoy,” three of nine new series. It heavily pushed what it was calling “A Super Season” with promos such as these:

• “He’s not a scientist going berserk, but a man who believes in a cause.” – “The Invisible Man”

• “A place where human emotions can be observed on a most revealing level.” – “Doctor’s Hospital”

• “A woman in her 40s whose marriage has broken up trying to carve a new life for herself.” – “Fay”

• “The patriarch who loves ’til it hurts.” – “The Montefuscos”

• “A series that never runs out of thrills – or suspects.” – “Ellery Queen”

• “The father that every kid wants.” – “The Family Holvak”

If it was obvious that the promo department needed a new head writer, it quickly became apparent that the new shows needed new scriptwriters as well. Here’s a line from “Medical Story” as blurted out by its young, risk-taking doctor: “I’m fired, but I’m still going to be a doctor. And if I can’t do it here, I’ll do it at a hospital that isn’t as good.”

NBC’s other series were likewise overwrought, over-acted and noticeably peppered with “damns” (evidently one of the few profanities permitted at the time), and many shows were clearly copies of more successful series. “The Family Holvak” seemed to be a tossed out episode of “Little House of the Prairie,” “Doctor’s Hospital” and “Medical Story” were clunky variations on “Medical Center,” and the “Fay” set humorously copied that of the overtly similar “Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

For perhaps the first time in the history of the big three networks, all of NBC’s new shows were axed, along with two of its returning series, “Movin’ On” and “Petrocelli,” leaving not only a nine-hour hole for the 1976 season, but also a vacant spot on its rotating “Mystery Movie” and a totally vacant Thursday (all four shows were canceled).

While ABC had slightly better luck taking on CBS, its approach wasn’t particularly clever, either. Its tagline was “Welcome to the bright new world of ABC” as opposed to CBS’s “The brightest stars on CBS.” But ABC was nonetheless pushing its stars as well – and all proved to be shooting stars

That included Martin Milner’s “Swiss Family Robinson,” Doug McClure’s “Barbary Coast,” Jackie Cooper’s “Mobile One,” Anthony Franciosa’s “Matt Helm,” Tom Poston’s “On The Rocks” and Mel Brooks’ short-lived “When Things Were Rotten,” which was no doubt the most publicized new entity on any network that year. If you’re of a certain age, however, you may also remember ABC’s ill-fated “Funny Cops and Funny Robbers” promotion for its Thursday coupling of “Barney Miller” and “On the Rocks.”

Still, the most notable flop of the season was “Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell,” touted as the successor to “The Ed Sullivan Show.” The brash Cosell even attempted a Beatles reunion for the opening show, but John Lennon quickly nixed the idea.

By season’s end, just two freshmen series advanced: “Welcome Back Kotter” (positioned behind the wildly popular “Happy Days”) and “Starsky and Hutch.”

CBS, on the other hand, continued to sing its own praises. For its fall promotion, Tony Orlando, who had a hit variety show at the time, warbled about CBS’s wealth of hits. Indeed, the network in recent years had filled many of its scheduling holes with spinoffs (“Maude,” “Rhoda,” “Apple’s Way,” “The Jeffersons” and “Good Times”), and did so again in 1975 with “Phyllis” from “Mary Tyler Moore.” It also scored with that advertised star power as Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert hit a home run with “Switch.”

But, like NBC and ABC, CBS mostly struck out. Its flops included “Three for the Road,” “Bronk,” “Joe & Sons,” “Kate McShane,” “Big Eddie,” “Doc” and, most notably, its attempt to mimic PBS’s “Upstairs Downstairs” with “Beacon Hill.”

Still, TV viewing was relatively high thanks to some well-regarded returning series.

Yet the brightest star of the 1975-76 season went unheralded at the time – and it wasn’t even aired locally. “Chiller Theater,” after all, was a Pittsburgh institution, not one that something called “NBC’s Saturday Night” could replace. But 40 years later, it’s still around – as “Saturday Night Live.”