Week 15 of the 1973-1974 season started on Monday, December 17th, 1973 and ended on Sunday, December 23rd, 1973. The highest-rated program was All in the Family on CBS with a 31.0/52 Nielsen rating/share. Here are the 10 lowest-rated programs:
| ## | Program | Network | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| 54 | NBC Follies | NBC | 12.3/22 |
| 55 | Roll Out | CBS | 11.9/20 |
| 56 | ABC Sunday Movie (“A Doll’s House”) | ABC | 10.9/19 |
| 57 | Rock & Roll Years | ABC | 10.9/18 |
| 58 | ABC Saturday Movie (“Snatched”) | ABC | 10.2/18 |
| 59 | Temperatures Rising | ABC | 10.2/17 |
| 60 | Toma | ABC | 9.5/15 |
| 61 | Partridge Family | ABC | 8.3/17 |
| 62 | Calucci’s Dept. | CBS | 7.2/12 |
| 63 | ABC News Closeup | ABC | 6.5/12 |
A special ABC News Closeup on Food titled “Green Grow the Profits” aired from 10-11PM ET on Friday, December 21st, 1973.
This is will be my final weekly Bottom 10 post from the 1973-1974 season. I only have the full ratings charts for the first 15 weeks of the season. Either The Los Angeles Times stopped publishing them or I couldn’t find them years ago when I had access to historical issues of the newspaper through a library database.
Source:
“Top 10 in Nielsen List Dominated by CBS.” Los Angeles Times. 7 Jan. 1974: D18
Looks like Partridge Family was on its last legs.
Yes, but that was “ABCs fault”. They chose to break up their popular Friday night line up that had been sparking since about 1971. Not a wise move since CBSs powerful movie wouldn’t always choose to “share the night” and NBC couldn’t always be counted on to have a weak Friday lineup. Partridge, still strong, had been shifted to Saturday at 8, against All in the Family and Emergency. This to help facilitate the addition of a new “adult” sitcom on ABC Friday — “Adam s Rib”. CBS’s movie must have scored a powerful presence that fall — “Rib,” and veterans “Room 222” and “Love American Style” were dropped for January. “Partridge” labored on to finish the season on Saturday and ended it’s run there.
Replacing “Adams Rib” and “Room 222” was “The 6 Million Dollar Man, ” slightly revised as a weekly entry now after two appearances during fall 73 in an ABC Saturday made-for-TV timeslot (90 minutes) with Lee Majors being played as a Bond type hero. That persona disappeared with the Friday weekly arrival.
don’t laugh— THE PARTRIDGE CLAN STATISTICALLY HAD MORE SONGS PUBLISHED ( thru the scream gems production) than ANY VARIETY SHOW IN THIS HISTORY OF ANY tv series-**- go check** sort of an overcompensation for the COWSILL’s…. who went bankrupt by this time……..(.. I woke up in love this morning???…)
“Patrridge Family” had been moved from it’s longtime Friday-night timeslot to Saturdays (head-to-head against “All In The Family” and “Emergency!”) in the Fall of 1973.
Competing against those two hits, the Partridges didn’t have a chance!
I thought (but I’m not sure) that ABC moved “Partridge Family” back to Fridays at the start of 1974. But if they didn’t, it didn’t save the show.
“Rock And Roll Years” began as a one-shot hour-long special in September of 1973 which drew huge ratings.
Later that fall, ABC turned it into a weekly half-hour series, but it only lasted a few weeks.