SCHEDULES OF THE PAST: 1993-1994 Tuesdays

On Mondays, I take a look at schedules from yesteryear. Here's a look at Tuesdays in the 1993-94 season!

ABC	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00
Sep	Full House	Phenom	Roseanne	Coach	NYPD Blue
Oct
Nov
Dec
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May

ABC Tuesdays continued to be their crown jewel night, but they had some troubles at 9:30pm and 10pm the previous season and things cleaned up quite a bit in those slots in 1993-94. Full House and Roseanne continued to be high rated anchors at 8pm and 9pm. The 9:30pm slot was Coach for a full season. ABC kept trying to find different things to air after Roseanne and kept going back to Coach when other shows failed. In 1993-94, Coach got to keep the slot that whole year and it resulted in a 6th place finish for Coach in the ratings. At 10pm was NYPD Blue, a cop show from Steven Bochco that generated a ton of buzz before it premiered. There was a lot of chatter in the Summer of 1993 about how much violence and sex was in the show. That led to at least 30 affiliates choosing not to air the pilot. The controversy seemed to be based a lot on outrage from people who had not even seen the show and it died down very quickly when the glowing reviews and big ratings came in. Starring David Caruso and Dennis Franz as well as an acclaimed ensemble, the show was hailed as the next big thing as far as cop dramas go. Most affiliates quickly relented and put the show on, but it was a factor in the establishment of the Parents Television Council. The only failure (and it's hard to really call it that) on the night was Phenom at 8:30pm. The series was about a tennis prodigy and marked the return of Judith Light and William Devane to TV not long after Who's the Boss? and Knots Landing ended. Although the show held on to much of Full House's lead-in, it was cancelled after one season. Check back Wednesday for a One Season Wonder post on Phenom!

CBS	8:00	9:00	10:00
Sep	Rescue: 911	Tuesday Night Movie
Oct
Nov
Dec
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May

CBS had the status quo on Tuesday nights with Rescue: 911 and a movie. Both were decently rated and allowed CBS to focus on other nights though they were not as successful as the previous season. It might be worth mentioning here that the Fall of 1993 marked David Letterman's arrival on CBS in late night in a media frenzy. He won the ratings war against Jay Leno the first two years before ceding to NBC for much of the rest of his run.

NBC	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00
Sep	Saved by the Bell: The College Years	Getting By	The John Larroquette Show	The Second Half	Dateline NBC
Oct
Nov
Dec
Jan		The Good Life		Café Americain
Feb	Various Programs			Various Programs
Mar	The Good Life	The Second Half		The John Larroquette Show
Apr
May	Tuesday Night Movie

NBC went in a completely different direction on Tuesday nights in 1993-94 with a comedy block that included three brand new series and a transplant from ABC. It was a gusty move by NBC going against ABC's highly successful comedy block and it did not pay off for them. At 8pm was Saved by the Bell: The College Years. The series was a primetime spinoff of the hugely successful Saturday morning show but it appeared it should have stayed out of primetime. Set at the fictional California University, the series brought back Bell stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Mario Lopez, Dustin Diamond and Tiffani Amber-Theissen. The series only lasted 19 episodes but NBC had much more success on the Saturday morning sequel Saved by the Bell: The New Class which premiered the same fall but lasted until 2000. At 8:30pm was Getting By, which had been cancelled by ABC in the Spring of 1993. The Cindy Williams-Telma Hopkins comedy didn't do any better on NBC. The only comedy to see a second season from this Tuesday night experiment was The John Larroquette Show, which marked the return of Night Court's four time Emmy winner to NBC. The titular star played a recovering alcoholic working at a bus terminal in St. Louis. The ratings weren't great despite it getting the coveted post-Super Bowl slot, but they were the best of the bunch and the series got a second season. Larroquette openly campaigned for NBC to move his show away from direct competition with Roseanne and got his wish for the second season. At 9:30pm was The Second Half, a Chicago-set sitcom starring stand-up comedian John Mendoza as a divorced sports columnist. It was one of the stand-up vehicles that didn't work. After a rough fall, NBC changed some things up, pulling Getting By and The Second Half. Cafe Americain came over from Saturday and briefly aired at 9:30pm. At 8:30pm was The Good Life, a new series that had its fifth episode air directly after John Larroquette on Super Bowl Sunday. The family comedy starred John Caponera, Eve Gordon and a young Drew Carey among others. Nothing was working on the night and shows aired scattershot on the night through the rest of the season. That included the return of The Second Half to 8:30pm briefly and doubling pumping Larroquette in the 9pm hour before finally giving way to a movie and a realization they were back to the drawing board. Throughout the season, Dateline NBC aired at 10pm and was easily NBC's highest rated show on the night.

FOX	8:00	8:30	9:00
Sep	Roc	Bakersfield P.D.	America’s Most Wanted
Oct
Nov
Dec
Jan	Monty	Roc
Feb			The Front Page
Mar	Various Programs
Apr	South Central	Roc
May			Tales from the Crypt

FOX only expanded to Tuesday nights in January 1993 so they were still figuring out the night. Their first attempt was dramas and that didn't work so they tried a comedy block followed by unscripted in 1993-94. At 8pm was Roc, moving over from Sundays for its third season. The show had aired live during its second season but went back to a taped format for season three. While it always had a loyal audience, it never had a large audience and it dropped quite a bit in the ratings in its move to Tuesday. It was moved to 8:30pm and then cancelled at the end of the season after 72 episodes. At 8:30pm in the fall was Bakersfield P.D., a police comedy that counted Giancarlo Esposito and Ron Eldard among its cast. The series was pulled at midseason with some of the lowest ratings of any show and while it has occasionally turned up on "Cancelled Too Soon," it didn't really turn into a cult classic. When Roc moved to 8:30pm, the new entry at 8pm was Monty, a sitcom starring Henry Winkler as a Rush Limbaugh-type commentator and David Schwimmer (just months before Friends) as his son. The series was blasted by critics with Winkler not the type to play an Archie Bunker role and it was gone by mid-February. After a month of not really airing anything regular in the 8pm hour, the last new comedy to join the night was South Central, a series centered in South Central Los Angeles and starring Tina Lifford and Larenz Tate among others. The show attempted to portray serious issues in the inner cities in the early 1990s. The series had its supporters but only lasted a couple months. FOX's cancellation of this show along with Roc and Thursday comedies The Sinbad Show and In Living Color drew the ire of Jesse Jackson and others with most shows with predominantly black casts getting the ax in the same month. Meanwhile at 9pm, America's Most Wanted aired for awhile before moving to Saturdays. It was replaced by The Front Page, which was cancelled after two seasons and then FOX aired reruns of HBO's Tales from the Crypt in the hour over the summer.

Top Rated Tuesday Show of 1993-94: Roseanne (#4)

Lowest Rated Tuesday Show of 1993-94: Bakersfield P.D. (#103)

What would I have watched on Tuesdays in 1993-94?

Roseanne, Coach and NYPD Blue. I might have checked out Phenom. On NBC, I would have probably at least sampled The John Larroquette Show and The Second Half but their lineup wouldn't have interested me as much as ABC. I would have probably sampled Roc too but I don't think I would have liked it.

Tomorrow: Top 10 The Sopranos Characters!

Next Monday: A look at Wednesdays in the 1993-94 season!