Remote PatrolBy Bruce Fretts / Entertainment Weekly / Posted Jan 22, 1999
(
Source)
Blame it on Mr. T. In January of 1983, NBC aired an episode of its new series
The A-Team after the Super Bowl. Prior to this, networks had stuck to their traditional Sunday programming (
60 Minutes;
Trapper John, M.D.) following the endless postgame coverage. But NBC realized the Super Bowl would provide a huge lead-in of intoxicated males who might really go for a mindless show with lots of explosions in it.
The A-Team became a huge hit, and ever since then, networks have been trying to figure out how to exploit the high-profile time period. [In 1999], Fox is launching its new animated series
Family Guy, followed by a special episode of The Simpsons guest-starring network chieftain Rupert Murdoch. Yet history shows that an after-Bowl bow doesn't always guarantee a ratings touchdown once the show moves to its regular slot.
Borrowing
The A-Team's battle plan, CBS detonated another action hour,
Airwolf, after the 1984 game. The helicopter drama with Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine hovered for two and a half seasons before landing on the USA Network. But that's a smash compared with the next three post-Bowl bombs: ABC's husband-and-wife cop show
MacGruder and Loud, NBC's
Police Academy clone
The Last Precinct, and CBS' newsroom drama
Hard Copy (costarring ID4 producer Dean Devlin!), none of which lasted a full season. In 1988, just when it looked like networks would give up on the idea, ABC gambled with a little dramedy called
The Wonder Years. Laced with baby-boomer nostalgia, it apparently appealed to football fans' sensitive sides -- you know how weepy drunk guys can get -- and kicked off an Emmy-winning six-year run.
NBC took a different approach the next season by airing the first part of the TV movie Brotherhood of the Rose, a Peter Strauss spy thriller that proved too confusing for such an impaired audience. CBS went back to
A-Team basics with 1990's
Grand Slam, starring John Schneider and Paul Rodriguez as bounty hunters, but the action comedy crashed after seven weeks. Despite the presence of Randy Quaid and Jonathan Winters, ABC's 1991 sitcom
Davis Rules didn't, even when it jumped to CBS a year later and added future Saving Private Ryan grunt Giovanni Ribisi to its roster.
In 1992, CBS scored with presidential candidate Bill Clinton's confession (''I have [caused] pain in my marriage...'') to Steve Kroft on a special
60 Minutes. The next year, NBC unveiled its acclaimed
Homicide: Life on the Street, unaware that the morally complex cop show was far too sophisticated for your average gridiron junkie.
The fast failure of NBC's 1994 farce
The Good Life (featuring unknown comic Drew Carey) and ABC's 1995 James Brolin adventure
Extreme persuaded NBC it was time to try something else. Instead of offering a new series, in '96 the net ordered an hour-long
Friends. Sadly, this was easily the show's worst episode ever, jammed with pointless celebrity cameos (Julia Roberts, Jean-Claude Van Damme). The next year, Fox aired a special episode of
The X-Files. NBC tried again in '98 with a supermodel-infested
3rd Rock From the Sun, but the stunt failed to halt that sitcom's ratings free fall.
Ignoring this spotty record, Fox has tapped
Family Guy for [1999]'s post-Bowl slot--and it just might work. Guy is what you'd get if you put Hank Hill, Homer Simpson, and Cartman in a blender. It bursts with crude humor, boasts strong male appeal, and best of all, it's a cartoon--just like
The A-Team.
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Super Bowling for big ratingsPosted 2/1/2007 9:08 PM ET
As the Super Bowl has grown, so have the networks' efforts to pass the game's huge audience on to a postgame special. USA TODAY's
Robert Bianco looks at after-Bowl highs and lows. (
Source)
The FirstLassie (CBS) and
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (NBC, 1967)
Hard as it may be to believe, the Super Bowl wasn't always so super. The first game was played in the afternoon. Shared rights put the game on both CBS and NBC — which just followed it with their regular Sunday programming. And who doesn't love Lassie?
The Highest-Rated60 Minutes (CBS, 1980)
Not only does CBS' newsmagazine hold the record for most post-Bowl appearances with four, but it also holds the mark as the highest-rated — a 33 rating after Super Bowl XIV. Apparently, something about the Steelers beating the Rams put America into a thoughtful mood, probably something Terry Bradshaw said in his MVP speech.
The Game-ChangerThe A-Team (NBC, 1983)
NBC was just sticking to its schedule when it aired the second episode of A-Team after Super Bowl XVII. But the show was the perfect, raucous match for the game, grabbing a huge audience that turned A-Team into a a pop-culture phenomenon. Other networks took notice.
The Best LaunchThe Wonder Years (ABC, 1988)
Following NBC's macho example, the networks spent the next few years using the game to promote silly, male-oriented shows such as
Airwolf. But ABC used the 1988 game to funnel an audience into a "special preview" of a series that both needed and deserved the push: the wonderful, offbeat Wonder Years.
The Worst LaunchGrand Slam (CBS, 1990)
Starring Paul Rodriguez and John Schneider, this instantly forgotten action/buddy comedy is the epitome of the wasted Super Bowl slot: A lot of people learned all at once that Slam was lousy. By March, it was slammed off the air.
The Most-WatchedFriends (NBC, 1996)
Because the population keeps growing, this special Super Friends, though slightly lower rated than 60 Minutes, was seen by far more people: close to 53 million. And what most of them remember is that "The One After the Super Bowl," a guest-packed two-parter with Julia Roberts, Brooke Shields, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Marcel the Monkey, was awful. It represented the show at its overhyped worst.
The Latest and Lowest-RatedAlias (ABC, 2003)
Using the game to try to bring a bigger audience to this terrific series was a good idea. Unfortunately, the game and the postgame chatter ran notoriously long, and Alias didn't air until after 11 p.m. in the East, the only Super show to start after prime time. Even Jennifer Garner in a bustier wasn't enough to keep people up.
The Best BoostGrey's Anatomy (ABC, 2006)
So much for assuming the Super slot is best used for male-appeal shows. ABC turned it over to the female-favored Grey's, which was just beginning to emerge as a critical and popular success. This two-part bomb-in-the-stomach episode turned Grey's into the season's breakout hit, and it helped change ABC's ratings fortunes.
The Worst ChoiceCriminal Minds (CBS, Sunday, after the game)
Over the years, this slot has come to mean more than just numbers. It is, in a sense, a statement by the network that this is the show that means the most to us this season, the one on which we're stamping our imprimatur. The people at CBS want that show to be Minds? Are they out of theirs?
year net program hh rtg/share viewers 18-49/share
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1983 NBC The A-Team
1984 CBS Airwolf
1985 ABC MacGruder and Loud
1986 NBC The Last Precinct
1987 CBS Hard Copy
1988 ABC Wonder Years 17.9/31 28.98 15.1/35
1989 NBC Movie: Brotherhood of the Rose 20.9/36 31.97 14.0/34
part one
1990 CBS Grand Slam 18.6/30 30.77 13.9
1991 ABC Davis Rules 15.5/25 26.69 13.6
1992 CBS 60 Minutes (Clinton interview) 20.9/34 33.96 14.3
1993 NBC Homicide: Life on the Street 18.0/31 28.12 13.7/35
1994 NBC The Good Life 14.2/24 22.83 11.5/29
1995 ABC Extreme 14.2/25 22.59 10.8/28
1996 NBC Friends 29.6/46 52.93 28.2/60
1997 FOX The X-Files 17.2/29 29.10 15.3/36
1998 NBC 3rd Rock From the Sun 19.7/34 33.66 17.1/41
1999 FOX Family Guy 12.6/21 22.01 11.5/28
2000 ABC The Practice 15.3/27 23.84 10.2/27
2001 CBS Survivor: Australian Outback 24.5/39 45.37 21.8/48
2002 FOX Malcolm in the Middle 11.5/21 21.45 10.5/28
2003 ABC Alias 10.6/20 17.40 8.3
2004 CBS Survivor: All-Stars 17.9/32 33.54 14.9/37
2005 FOX The Simpsons 13.0/22 23.07 11.3/28
American Dad 15.1 7.5
2006 ABC Grey's Anatomy 21.0/34 37.88 16.5/38
2007 CBS Criminal Minds 15.1/26 26.31 10.0/25
2008 FOX House
