Sci-fi night 1968-69?

[Drone]

Minor apocrypha though it may be, I find the uncertainty that seems to be accepted revolving the cancellation of Lost In Space's 4th season to be of compelling interest. Not so much that the show's still considerable audience, myself included, was denied the opportunity for a continuation and consequently proper finale sometime down the road, but because an interesting, though perhaps unlikely mechanism to accomplish this was apparently never considered.

LIS was cancelled in April 1968. From what I've read and understood, the actual rationale for the action is not clearly known or just hasn't been revealed by anyone directly involved. There are commonly accepted alternatives which are usually bandied about.

1. CBS wanted to cut the already considerable budget, one which been bumped up even more by virtue of increased cast salaries, if nothing else.
2. Irwin Allen wanted to increase the production budget. Space was still a respectable draw and it's possible that creative ideas Allen had for the fourth season would have argued for an increased price tag.
3. Certain CBS executives, especially the man in the big chair, loathed the show and had always done so. If declining ratings couldn't readily be used as the sticking point, folderol or misdirection about the reality of the budget as a driver would certainly have been convenient.
4. Not that I have encountered this being cited, but I wonder how much Allen was committed to actually keeping the production going. He was always thinking, always moving and had a history of multiple shows either in development or on-air simultaneously, but perhaps his attention was tightly drawn to his next project, the less said about the better, but one that was premiering in the fall.

What this well known speculation has led me to ponder is another direction Allen could have taken if he was genuinely serious about producing the 4th season. I have not seen anything mentioned along these lines, but couldn't Allen have pursued shopping Space to another network, specifically NBC? It had already been a few months since Trek's return had been made public. I'm either not well versed enough or have forgotten whether NBC claimed that there in fact, had never been any clear decision to have given the show the axe, either before or after the Trimble's remarkable campaign. Regardless, if Allen had approached the network, wouldn't it have been at least worthwhile for the execs there to consider the idea of programming a sci-fi block that might have had the chance of bolstering Trek's well thought of, but too small audience demographic, by having the considerably more highly rated Space as a lead-in? I'd have to think that Allen would have forcefully argued for that as a novel and winning strategy.

However disdainful and loathsome the wide majority of ST fans might have seen any association with LIS, I think there would have been some carryover of viewers that would have brought some pickup to the former's abysmal ratings, regardless of the Freiberger Effect. More significantly, the network might have thought that with a clever and catchy promotional campaign ("---day's are out of this world,etc"), this combo would have provided the opportunity to capture more of the eyes that were making sci-fi in films an increasingly popular genre, rather than their likely expectation/hope that Trek was something they were carrying but would almost certainly turn out to be DOA. This chance would have been further enhanced by having an appealing chaser like Night Gallery following the pair at 10 (yes, I know that didn't show up until the following year).

These are fanciful musings I know but a path that I don't think would have been out of bounds or dismissed out of hand, if for no other reason than the fact that even then there was a history of shows succeeding after changing ports of call. It would just be interesting to know what Irwin Allen's genuine thoughts about LIS were at this point. Maybe he would have at least broached the idea of a network move, but was concerned that the show's continued presence might take away some luster from his soon to arrive new project that I believe he thought was going to be a real winner. Or that catastrophe might occur if by some chance they wound up running against each other in the same time slot.

Finally though, such a pairing eventually might very well have not escaped the black hole of winding up on "Death Night" with the probable result that both would bid adieu in "69. Personally, I definitely wanted another year of Space, even though I've read of plans that sound like it would have resulted in a return to the silliness of Season 2. At least there would have been an actual closeout rather than the junk that we literally last saw. To say nothing of witnessing one more year of the maturation of Angela Cartwright!!! To my eyes, she had already put Marta Kristen in the shade.

Thoughts, criticisms, scorn????

 

[Christopher]

Minor apocrypha though it may be, I find the uncertainty that seems to be accepted revolving the cancellation of Lost In Space's 4th season to be of compelling interest. Not so much that the show's still considerable audience, myself included, was denied the opportunity for a continuation and consequently proper finale sometime down the road, but because an interesting, though perhaps unlikely mechanism to accomplish this was apparently never considered.

The idea of a "proper finale" is a modern one that's anachronistic in a discussion of '60s shows. Most of the time back then, a show would just continue on an open-ended basis until it got cancelled. Only a few '60s shows had special episodes for their endings -- Howdy Doody had an hourlong retrospective special, Leave it to Beaver ended with a clip-show retrospective as the Cleavers reminisced over a family album, Route 66 had a finale where the characters completed their journey and went their separate ways, and The Fugitive had Richard Kimble find the One-Armed Man and clear his name. Series finales were rare and noteworthy events when they did happen.

It had already been a few months since Trek's return had been made public. I'm either not well versed enough or have forgotten whether NBC claimed that there in fact, had never been any clear decision to have given the show the axe, either before or after the Trimble's remarkable campaign.

That campaign was exaggerated in fan lore. It was comparatively large, but nowhere near the million letters claimed (more like tens of thousands). And there's no proof that NBC was ever actually considering cancellation. At worst, the show was on the bubble, but it was never actually cancelled and there's no proof that the letter campaign actually influenced its renewal.

 

[Harvey]

Lost in Space was on the bubble due to declining ratings when it was cancelled. It also played to a younger demographic than Star Trek, and didn't come with any critical acclaim. I don't think it would have made sense for NBC to pair the series together, or even to pick up Lost in Space, for that matter, which would have been an expensive show after four seasons of contract escalations.

 

[Drone]

I've seen conflicting numbers from a couple of different sources that, while both reflect a ratings decline, seem on their face to characterize the drop at a different comparative level. One piece claims that the show varied only slightly over the three seasons, from 32nd in Season 1 to 35th in season 3. Generally, I believe that programs with such marks were certainly not regularly in danger of getting the axe in the absence of other mitigating factors.

The other source I perused, the LIS Wiki, had the fall in the last two seasons as a much more precipitous one, from 19.1 to 17.5, though they did not list the accompanying year end standing. Now, the former figure, at that time would likely indicate a finish in the 30's. However, I find it hard to believe that a 17.5 could come close to that range, given that the program at 30 for 67-68 (Lassie) had a rating of 19.9.

I thought it would be relatively easy to find complete year end standings going back to that era or further back by looking online. I do know there are some print editions that do offer such a comprehensive compilation and I may fall back on one of those sources, one of which I believe is in my possession somewhere, to get the undeniably accurate measure of the series' numbers, which I've always thought was pretty much characterized by the first example above

Minor apocrypha though it may be, I find the uncertainty that seems to be accepted revolving the cancellation of Lost In Space's 4th season to be of compelling interest. Not so much that the show's still considerable audience, myself included, was denied the opportunity for a continuation and consequently proper finale sometime down the road, but because an interesting, though perhaps unlikely mechanism to accomplish this was apparently never considered.

The idea of a "proper finale" is a modern one that's anachronistic in a discussion of '60s shows. Most of the time back then, a show would just continue on an open-ended basis until it got cancelled. Only a few '60s shows had special episodes for their endings -- Howdy Doody had an hourlong retrospective special, Leave it to Beaver ended with a clip-show retrospective as the Cleavers reminisced over a family album, Route 66 had a finale where the characters completed their journey and went their separate ways, and The Fugitive had Richard Kimble find the One-Armed Man and clear his name. Series finales were rare and noteworthy events when they did happen.

While you're citing finales as being generally limited to shows with some special appeal or circumstances, did the fact that a program reached the three year threshold required for syndication play any appreciable factor in a series ending episode being at least considered versus shows that had a shorter lifespan?

 

[Christopher]

While you're citing finales as being generally limited to shows with some special appeal or circumstances, did the fact that a program reached the three year threshold required for syndication play any appreciable factor in a series ending episode being at least considered versus shows that had a shorter lifespan?

Nope. For one thing, the "threshold" was typically 100 episodes; Star Trek was unusual in getting syndicated with only 79. And if anything, strip syndication would've made a special finale even less appealing, because the show would keep cycling back around from the last episode to the first, so it'd be a smoother transition if there weren't anything special about the last episode. (Or even the first -- while many series started out with origin episodes, others just started with routine stories where the status quo was already established.)

And all but the most successful TV series are pretty much living on borrowed time. As a rule, a show has to be really successful in order to have the luxury to choose when and how it ends, rather than simply being axed when the ratings fall too low. More shows get finales today because audiences have come to expect closure, but in earlier decades, finales were a luxury. And since shows back then were generally more episodic rather than arc-driven, there really wasn't as much need for a finale.

What we often got instead were reunion movies a decade or two later that picked up on the characters' lives as if they never ended, or else retconned an ending onto the series and had the characters reunite after years apart -- things like The Return of the Man from UNCLE, The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, Halloween With the Addams Family, Rescue from Gilligan's Island, and the like. Often they were backdoor pilots for revival series (like the second and third Gilligan movies, which had them open a resort on the island as a pilot for a Love Boat-style revival with celebrity guests, or the bionic movies that introduced new, younger bionic heroes -- one of whom was a pre-fame Sandra Bullock). Sometimes the revivals actually succeeded, as with Columbo and Perry Mason, but usually they didn't.

 

[Melakon]

I don't think finales really caught on until the 70s, but usually in comedies. Mary Tyler Moore's last episode got wide acclaim, and MTM used wrapups in some of their other shows.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Kung Fu resolved the arc of Caine looking for his brother in a multi-part episode towards the end of the last season, but left his fugitive status open.

 

[Harvey]

I've seen conflicting numbers from a couple of different sources that, while both reflect a ratings decline, seem on their face to characterize the drop at a different comparative level. One piece claims that the show varied only slightly over the three seasons, from 32nd in Season 1 to 35th in season 3. Generally, I believe that programs with such marks were certainly not regularly in danger of getting the axe in the absence of other mitigating factors.

The other source I perused, the LIS Wiki, had the fall in the last two seasons as a much more precipitous one, from 19.1 to 17.5, though they did not list the accompanying year end standing. Now, the former figure, at that time would likely indicate a finish in the 30's. However, I find it hard to believe that a 17.5 could come close to that range, given that the program at 30 for 67-68 (Lassie) had a rating of 19.9.

I thought it would be relatively easy to find complete year end standings going back to that era or further back by looking online. I do know there are some print editions that do offer such a comprehensive compilation and I may fall back on one of those sources, one of which I believe is in my possession somewhere, to get the undeniably accurate measure of the series' numbers, which I've always thought was pretty much characterized by the first example above

In general, all the print sources I've seen have only listed the top thirty shows of each year. If you know of a source that covers more than that, I'd love to see it.

Some figures that I do have: for the National Nielsens covering the two week period ending October 8, 1967, Lost in Space was ranked 51st with a 28.8 share.

For its January 31, 1968 issue, Variety listed the show as marginal (since it was less than 30), and asked, "What about 'Lost in Space' with a share of 29.0 in the early evening when the shares have to be big to justify keeping the show?"

In its second season, 1966-67, Lost in Space finished with a 30.9 share in 44th place.

Fox advertising materials promoting Lost in Space in the April 1, 1968 issue of Broadcasting show its NTI rating share going from 33 to 31 to 30 in the course of three seasons (these figures appear to have been rounded up; keep in mind Fox's obvious financial interest in the series here).

The January 18, 1968 issue of Variety shows Lost in Space a clear third place finisher in its time slot.