What Else Aired?

[grapeshot]

I've been watching season 7 and 8 on the WGN broadcasts, and am stunned to realize that I've never seen these episodes. I started to think about why that might have been, and found THIS website that shows what else aired on primetime during the years that Magnum aired:
1980's Prime Time Schedule
(Note that there wasn't even a Fox network until the fall of 1987, when it debuted with 5 hours of programming on the weekends.)

After looking at the network schedules for Magnum's final two seasons, I realized that I simply didn't like most of what was on Wednesday nights, so I didn't watch any TV on that night at all.

If you weren't watching Magnum, what were you watching?

[SelleckLover]

I clicked on your link grapeshot, and that sure was a blast from the past!! I am proud to say that I never missed an episode of Magnum. (I even watched them in reruns during the summer.) So up until 3 years ago I had seen each episode at least 2 times. Two years ago I became disabled and started watching daytime TV. In the Los Angeles area in 2004, Magnum was on 3 times a day! Now it's only on 2 times a day. So now I've seen each episode many times over, and still only own Season 2 on DVD. I bought it because it has some of my favorite episodes, my favorite of all time being "Tropical Madness".


_____________

You're clad only in your undershorts Magnum. Even for you, don't you think that attire is a trifle casual?

[J.J. Walters]

If you weren't watching Magnum, what were you watching?

The only other shows I watched with any kind of regularity in the 80s, besides Magnum, was Simon and Simon, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting and The Equalizer. Oh, and Tales of the Gold Monkey, but that was only on for one season.

I occasionally would catch St. Elsewhere, Remington Steele, Murder, She Wrote, Fall Guy, Cheers, Family Ties and MacGyver. I refuse to admit that I watched The A-Team. It never happened. Nope.

[Waltstasz]

I didn't watch all that much TV, but I loved MacGyver. I still debate picking up those DVDs sometime, but that's a lot of $$. Maybe after I have all of the Magnum DVDs (eventually) I can start.

[IslandHopper]

Grapeshot, that was a nice stroll down memory lane. I haven't thought about most of those other TV shows in years. I don't watch much network TV these days, but to me the programming now doesn't compare to what was on in the 80's. Look how many of those 80's shows are still shown in re-runs, i.e., M*A*S*H, Cheers, Alice, Simon & Simon, Miami Vice, Three's Company, and I'm sure many more, including Magnum P.I. One thing I will say about the shows today, is that they seem to be made with larger production budgets, and are well done. They don't seem to take as many short-cuts as they did in the past.

[Vanity]

Well see, in France, and most of Europe, the problem was not to know what else we were watching.

Compared to the US, in those years, we merely had 3 to 4 TV channels per country.

So if you were not watching Magnum PI when it was running, chances are you were not watching TV at all.
Moreover, be it in France or in Germany, TV series were dubbed.
Luckily, in both countries, they had picked good voices that not only gave credit to Magnum, but could also render that humour of his.

So throughout the 80’s, besides our very favourite, it was Starsky & Hutch, McGyver, The Fall-guy, Simon & Simon…..later, closer to the 90’s new TV channel arrived, together with Miami Vice and more.

Unfortunately Magnum did not run for 8 years in a row. It was aired every Sunday around 2.45PM.

Man, going down memory lane sure does not make me feel any younger…

[higgybaby1]

I noticed your from wisconsin, sim from fond du lac and was curious to your location if your willing to reveal

[grapeshot]

Look how many of those 80's shows are still shown in re-runs, i.e., M*A*S*H, Cheers, Alice, Simon & Simon, Miami Vice, Three's Company, and I'm sure many more, including Magnum P.I.

Well, there was plenty of great programming in the 90's, and some good stuff in the 00's, too. And the same could be said of the 70's and 60's, too. Each era had its classics (I Love Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, The Bob Newhart Show, MASH, Rockford, Seinfeld, Friends) and also some unspeakably bad stuff (Facts of Life, anyone?) Some shows were made extremely cheaply but were very good (WKRP in Cincinnati) and some shows had huge budgets and were pretty bad (Battlestar Galactica - the original).

A LOT of the stuff from the late 90's and early 00's didn't go immediately into reruns, but first got rerun on the media conglomerate's sister cable channels. Note how F/X would rerun Fox's Buffy and only THEN would it get sold into general syndication, and ABC Family would rerun Alias first before selling it into syndication, and even now, SciFi is rerunning Heroes, even while it is still airing on NBC in primetime. With the huge media conglomerates that own both broadcast networks and several cable channels, and new broadcast networks appearing within the past decade or so (and the corresponding disappearance of independent TV stations), the syndicated rerun market has changed considerably from what it was even a decade ago.

What's interesting and startling to see is how much stuff from the 80's still holds up. It is not a decade that I personally would've considered any sort of a golden age of television, or an age that pushed many boundaries. I guess looking at the entire decade's worth of primetime scheduling, it sort of refutes that.

Compared to the US, in those years, we merely had 3 to 4 TV channels per country.

Ah, but we also only had three "channels". That is to say, there were three networks, and each had local stations that were affiliated with them, which broadcast the programming provided by the network headquarters. In larger cities, there might by one, two, or even three independant channels, that were unaffiliated with any network, and that broadcast a hodgepodge of old movies, old television show, and ad-hoc local talk shows or children's shows, but in many cities there were only three channels to chose from. By using networks of affiliated television stations throughout all the States, everybody more or less watched the same programs.

The difference between what you saw and what we saw was due to how large the US is. In 1980 there were 226+ million people. In contrast, consider that each country in Europe is about the size of one of our larger states. The UK, for example, is physically about the size of Michigan, with a population comparable to say, California or New York (the state, not the city). In the States, at that time, virtually all television programming was financed by advertising. That was the power of having 226 million eyeballs to advertise to. And that advertising paid for original and unique progamming on all three networks, during daytime hours, the primetime hours (8 pm to 11 pm 7 days a week), network nightly newscasts, weekend sportscasts, and the occasional late night show. Buying a tv show from a place other than the US, even one made in Britain or Canada, was almost unheard of then, and is still extremely rare in this country.

The dynamics of the television industry has shifted slightly since cable appeared, and since DVD sales of television shows, but advertising to 300 (estimated in 2006) million eyeballs is still the main driving force in the industry.


I can see why I skipped many episodes in the first season of Magnum: it aired between the soapy Waltons and the soapy Knots Landing. I spent Thursday nights that season watching the comedies on ABC: Mork and Mindy, Bosom Buddies (I knew Tom Hanks was a star even then), and Barney Miller.

higgybaby1: I live in Appleton.