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AfterMASH
1983 · TV series · 30 min episodes · 2 seasons
Created by Larry Gelbart
AfterMASH is an American situation comedy that aired on CBS from September 26, 1983, to December 11, 1984. A spin-off of the series M*A*S*H, the show takes place immediately following the end of the Korean War and chronicles the adventures of three characters from the original series: Colonel Potter, Klinger and Father Mulcahy. M*A*S*H supporting cast-member Kellye Nakahara joined them, albeit off-camera, as the voice of the hospital's public address system. Rosalind Chao rounded out the starring cast as Soon-Lee Klinger, a Korean refugee whom Klinger met, fell in love with and married in the M*A*S*H series finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen." AfterMASH premiered in the fall of 1983 in the same Monday night 9:00 P.M. EST. time slot as its predecessor M*A*S*H. It finished 10th out of all network shows for the 1983-1984 season according to Nielsen Media Research television ratings. For its second season CBS moved the show to Tuesday nights at 8:00 EST., opposite NBC's top ten hit The A-Team, and launched a marketing campaign featuring illustrations by Sanford Kossin of Max Klinger in a nurse's uniform, shaving off Mr. T's signature mohawk, theorizing that AfterMASH would take a large portion of The A-Team's audience. The theory, however, was proven wrong. In fact, the exact opposite occurred, as AfterMASH's ratings plummeted to near the bottom of the television rankings and the show was canceled nine episodes into its second season, while The A-Team continued until 1987, with 97 episodes.
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1 comment on Hacker News
This looks like statistics being wielded poorly to arrive at the opposite conclusion from reality.
Consider if the whole of media were an iceberg: It seems to me that in 1977, almost the entire iceburg was poking up out of the water. Today on the other hand, while there is a much larger visible chunk sticking out of the water, it's just a tiny insignificant prick compared to what's going on underneath. The number you actually want is the size of the rest of the berg in 1977 vs today.
Because it seems to me that as popular as the things I watch are, if I went and asked random people on the street about them, 99% of them would have no idea what I'm talking about. But if I were to do the same thing 50 years ago, more people would be familiar with the same smaller set of shows and movies and books.
To me this is most evident based on the viewership of tv show finales. To this day, the most watched tv finale of all time is MASH at over 100 million viewers. Modern shows, even GoT don't even come close. I believe this is because there is so much content out there being produced that our attention is much more spread out. The "top 20" means less and less as the proportion of people who actually consume that stuff goes lower and lower.