Eldergays: TV Ratings for the 74-75 Season

God help me, I watched 36 of them regularly.

I plead extreme youth.

I'm pretty sure I saw ALL of them. How is that possible?

Mary Tyler Moore. It was intelligent in a field of crap.

I hardly recognize any of the titles outside the top 30, though I think my great grandmother liked the Six Million Dollar Man.

I'm intrigued by NFL Football not even being top 30, let alone top 10. Did the straights watch a lot less football back then? Now it absolutely dominates the ratings.

This makes me realize that my taste was pretty gay even as a little kid. The only shows I liked that season, in ratings order, were Maude, MTM, Bob Newhart, Cher, Carol Burnett, Apple's Way, Sons and Daughters, and Get Christie Love! (the exclamation point was part of the title, missing on OP's list). I was sad to see the last three didn't even make it to the end of the season.

Rotten as some of those shows were, they were a helluva lot better than what's on today.

Kind of amazing that in 1975, 4 of the top 10 shows (and 3 of the top 5) were about people of color.

Feels like we’ve gone backwards as a society.

And 4 of the top 10 spun from All in the Family. What a juggernaut it was.

Notice all the made-for-TV movies "of the week"? They were a staple of the period. Many were surprisingly good -adaptations of novels and original screenplays. Many were pilots for series that were never picked up. A few, like The Homecoming (A Christmas Story) did become TV shows (The Waltons).

The #84 show would be a runaway hit with those ratings today.

It must've been confusing to have "Kojak" and "Kolchak" in the same season.

Other TV shows based on made-for-TV movies include The Rookies, Alias Smith and Jones, Owen Marshall Counselor at Law, Cannon, The Snoop Sisters, The Night Stalker, Kung Fu, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Swiss Family Robinson, Salvage, and the mother of them all: The Love Boat,

It was much easier for a show low in the ratings on ABC to survive (Barney Miller) than a CBS show. CBS shows were dominant and notice how ABC has so many shows at the bottom of the pack. Even Happy Days was only in the 40s.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show...the best television show ever.

Loved 'Maude, Cher, Bob Newhart, Rhoda and a few others.

Most of them. "Born free, free as the wind blows . . . "

Practically all of them but you have to remember, the television was the only 'device' we had then and there wasn't much outside of the top 3 networks. In our house the antennae couldn't get ABC due to our rural location so I had to watch ABC shows at my friend's home... and only when it was being broadcast since there was no way to record and play later. All of that said, I still strongly believe it was a better time to grow up than now since we had to be creative to fill our time.