Besides Perry Mason, MTM, and The Golden Girls on Saturdays, and Trapper John, M.D., Murder, She Wrote, and Hardcastle and McCormick on Sundays, what other series do you know of that have been successful on weekends?
In addition to Mary Tyler Moore, I’d add the other shows CBS ran on Saturday evenings in the 1970s – The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show.
60 Minutes.
The Simpsons.
Good catches! Forgot about them.
Many of the cable network series are broadcast on Sundays: The Sopranos, Dexter, Game of Thrones, True Blood, etc.
Cops and America’s Most Wanted does (did) pretty good on Saturday nights.
Some of the most successful shows of all time were on Sunday, like “The Wonderful World of Disney” “The FBI,” and “60 Minutes” “NBC Mystery Movies”
Saturday used to get popular shows like “Gunsmoke” “The Love Boat” “Fantasy Island” “All in the Family” , “Mary Tyler Moore Show” etc.
Saturday Night Live. In 1975 NBC was showing reruns of Tonight. No one thought the time slot was worth anything, so the network decided to give Lorne Michaels a chance with what he pitched as an extremely cheap-to-produce way of finding and developing new talent.
Fantasy Island and The Love Boat did well on Saturday Nights. Dukes of Hazzard was on that night as well.
You left out Mad-Men (just 11 more days people :)).
As someone mentioned, The Simpsons. The show premiered in its Sunday 8pm time slot but once it was a mega-hit (which was pretty much immediately) the then still new FOX Network moved it to Thursdays at 8pm to directly compete with NBC’s The Cosby Show. When Cosby ended its run they moved it back to Sundays where it has remained.
Having *The Simpsons *on Sunday nights has sort of kept it Fox’s ‘animation show’ night ever since. Even before the current Seth McFarland block of shows, starting with King of The Hill in '97 then Futurama in '99 most all of Fox’s successful animated shows (as well as some of their unsuccessful ones) have been been anchored to Sunday night’s The Simpsons (a big reason Futurama ultimately failed for them was it was on at 7:30 Sunday and was constantly preempted by football).
Alias is one of the only shows I’ve watched that aired on the weekend(Sunday). It wasn’t hugely popular, but did last 5 seasons. It may have switched days, eventually, though.
Desperate Housewives. There will be a big hole in my Sunday nights soon…:(…
Brothers and Sisters? that used to be on Sunday nights, but was it successful?