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Nine of the top ten shows for the 1973-1974 season were broadcast on CBS (and fourteen of the top twenty). Thus, CBS was in great shape going into the 1974-1975 season, which explains why the network only premiered five new shows in the fall. With programs like All in the Family, The Waltons, M*A*S*H and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, CBS had little need for new hits. Of those five new programs only one, a spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, was retained for the following season.

NOTE: No new Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday programming was introduced by CBS during the fall of 1974.

On Mondays, CBS added Rhoda, a spin-off of the highly successful The Mary Tyler Moore Show with Valerie Harper starring as Rhoda Morgenstern. The series premiere on Monday, September 9th, 1974 pulled a powerful 28.2/42 in the ratings, ranking first for the week, the first time in television history a new fall series ranked first in its first week [1]. It was obviously a hit and the only new CBS series to last the season.

Rhoda, like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, was produced by MTM Enterprises and it was placed between two solid performers. Airing after Maude and before Medical Center, the series was on opposite ABC Night Football until January, when it was up against movies on both ABC and NBC. At the start of the series, Rhoda moved from Minneapolis to New York City where she moved in with her overweight sister Brenda (Julie Kavner), met Joe Gerard (David Groh) and was constantly pestered by her mother Ida (Nancy Walker).

During the much-hyped Monday, October 28th episode, Rhoda and Joe were married. The episode drew a 51 share of the audience, surpassing the premiere [2]. For the 1974-1975 season, Rhoda ranked sixth, ahead of both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Maude. After four and a half seasons, Rhoda ended in December of 1978.

Sons and Daughters

Note: View the CBS fall preview for Sons and Daughters and read all about the series here.

CBS premiered two new shows on Wednesdays. The first, Sons and Daughters, aired at 8:00PM opposite That's My Mama and the first half-hour of The Wednesday Movie of the Week on ABC and Little House on the Prairie. The series premiered on September 11th, 1974 and was gone three months later.

Sons and Daughters explored the lives and relationships of a group of high school seniors attending Southwest High in Stockton, California during the 1950s. Gary Frank and Glynnis O'Connor starred as sweethearts Jeff Reed and Anita Cramer. Jeff's father had recently passed away and Anita's mother had up and left the family, moving in with someone else. These two events made the Jeff/Anita relationship somewhat unsteady.

The second new program, The Manhunter, was the story of a crime-fighting farmer who left the family farm every night to go after the bad guys. It aired from 10:00PM to 11:00PM against Get Christie Love! on ABC and Petrocelli on NBC. Set in the 1930s in Idaho (and filmed in Denver), The Manhunter starred Ken Howard as Dave Barret.

Dave was man who kept his car stocked with numerous side arms, all of which he used to track down wanted men week after week. The death of his best friend at the hand of bank robbers caused him to become a crime-fighting detective. Also appearing on the series were Hilary Thompson as Lizabeth Barret, Dave's sister, Ford Rainey as James, his father, and Claudia Bryar as Mary, his mother. Robert Hogan played Sheriff Paul Tate.

The pilot telefilm for the series aired on February 26th, 1974. The series premiere, which aired on September 11th, ranked nineteenth for the week [3]. A total of twenty-two episodes of the series were broadcast, with the last original installment being aired in early March of 1975. Repeats were shown until April.

Planet of the Apes

Although initially scheduled for Tuesdays, Planet of the Apes eventually became the only CBS offering on Fridays [4]. Based on the film series that began in 1968 and ended in 1972, Planet of the Apes was up against Sanford and Son and Chico and the Man on NBC and Kodiak and the first half of The Six Million Dollar Man on ABC (both Chico and the Man and Kodiak were also new series).

Ron Harper and James Naughton starred as Alan Virdon and Pete Burke, astronauts flung thousands of years into the future, a future where apes ruled the planet. Roddy McDowell, who appeared in many of the five films, appeared in the series as Galen, a friendly chimpanzee who befriended Virdon and Burke. Unlike the film series, all the humans in Planet of the Apes could talk.

Booth Colman played Zaius, the orangutan leader, while Mark Lenard played General Urko, the gorilla military leader who chased after the two astronauts. Week after week, Virdon, Burke and Galen traveled from ape settlement to ape settlement, helping humans and apes alike. The entire time they were trying to find a way to get home.

The series was put into production after the 1968 film Planet of the Apes was first aired on network television in September of 1973. It was seen in over 22 million homes and topped the Nielsen chart for CBS [5]. The network was impressed enough to order a television version for the 1974-1975 season.

20th Century Fox Television produced the series, which was overseen by Herbert Hirschman and Stan Hough. Originally, a full season of twenty-four episodes was planned but production was halted after only fourteen. Planet of the Apes fell victim to a problematic Friday timeslot and high production costs due to the intensive make-up procedures for the ape characters (three and a half hours in the make-up chair for each ape).

Planet of the Apes

Its competition on NBC was no help. For the 1974-1975 season as a whole, Sanford and Son ranked second, Chico and the Man third. With that much of the viewing audience tuned into NBC, there were only so many viewers left for ABC and CBS. By early October, Planet of the Apes was averaging a lowly 15.5/26 in the ratings [6].

With the ratings low and costs high CBS saw no reason to keep pouring cash into the series and pulled the plug, canceling Planet of the Apes in November. Its final broadcast was on December 27th, 1974; it was replaced by Khan on February 7th, 1975 [7]. A fourteenth episode, unaired in its network run, was released as part of a DVD box set in 2001.

Officially titled Paul Sand in Friends & Lovers, this sitcom was the only CBS offering on Saturdays. Like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, MTM Enterprises produced Friends & Lovers, which was situated between All In The Family at 8:00PM and The Mary Tyler Moore Show at 9:00PM.

Paul Sand starred as Robert Dreyfuss, a bass violinist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra (the series was set in Boston). Michael Pataki appeared as Robert's brother, Charlie Dreyfuss, and Penny Marshall played Charlie's wife, Janice. The couple was constantly fighting, meaning Robert had to play the middleman, all the while trying to get his own relationships to last longer than a few days. Steve Landesberg portrayed Fred Meyerbach, Robert's German friend and fellow violinist, who had a strained relationship with his father.

Friends & Lovers

Dick Wesson played Jack Riordan, the antagonistic manager and Craig Richard Nelson played the conductor, a young man by the name of Mason Woodruff. Henry Winkler guest-starred in the first episode while Teri Garr appeared in the October 4th episode.

The series premiered on September 14th and ranked fourteenth for the week [8]. Although the ratings were good, they weren't as good as the programs that surrounded the series. For example, in early October, Friends & Lovers pulled a 36 percent share of the audience, while lead-in All In The Family had a 51 share and lead-out The Mary Tyler Moore Show had a 39 share [9]. Unable to retain All in the Family's ratings and hurting the ratings for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, CBS canned the series in early January, replacing it with The Jeffersons. For the 1974-1975 season as a whole, Friends & Lovers ranked 25th while The Jeffersons ranked 4th.

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