The networks and ad buyers on Madison Avenue are deep in negotiations over the price of commercial time for next fall's prime-time schedule, and at least a third of their $9 billion take (that is, the networks hope it'll be that much) will be spent on Thursday night. That explains why so many good shows this fall will be airing on the same night. It's looking like one of the great network-scheduling steel-cage matches in history: Grey's Anatomy vs. CSI vs. Deal or No Deal all battling it out at 9 pm/ET.
ABC could have gotten higher ratings if it left
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Question: Do you remember a show with, I think, the guy from Highway to Heaven and a black actor that was sort of a comedy version of In the Heat of the Night? It's driving me nuts.
Answer: Yes.
Aaaah, you didn't really think I was gonna stop at being a wiseacre and answer your question with one word, did you? You'll never so easily curb my urge to babble, Joon.
Funny you use the word "nuts," since the show in question, ABC's Carter Country, bore the name of former peanut farmer Jimmy Carter, who was president at the time it debuted in September 1977. As you say, it bore a strong resemblance to In the Heat of the Night, which 10 years later would be a hit TV series itself.
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Question: A friend and I were talking about, of all people, Barbara Eden. Was Harper Valley PTA really her first show after I Dream of Jeannie? If so, what happened to her during the time in between?
Answer: Good question, Brian, and Ms. Eden herself didn't have an answer for you when interviewed in 1981. "I don't know," she said when asked why 10 years went by before she again starred in a series. (Jeannie was canceled in 1970 and Harper Valley debuted on NBC in 1981.) "It wasn't a question of not being wanted. The shows they found just didn't work."
No, they didn't. In fact, three networks and at least a dozen of TV's most creative types tried to come up with a series for her, while she earned high ratings doing variety specials, singing appeara
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