RIP Gary David Goldberg

In other words, he was a great guy and even greater person. RIP.

 

Yeah, most of those shows on Disney don't hold much appeal to adults. I do laugh my ass off at Crash and Bernstein though... What can I say, muppets never fail to crack me up...

Good Luck Charlie isn't terrible.

My kids watch those two shows as well as Jesse (meh), Kickin it (harmless) and Lab Rats (harmless).

But on the networks there is nothing at all that people can sit down and watch as a family. There's nothing resembling Home Improvement or Family Ties or Cosby Show or any of the tons of shows that were on in the 80s and 90s.

 

Ironic, given the direction this thread has taken, that Goldberg's daughter was a writer and later executive producer on "Friends."

 

It's not like Friends was a bad show on any level, I don't think anybody here is saying that, it's just that it's not the family-friendly fare that so many of us grew up with in the 1980s and 1990s.

 

Yeah, that's what I meant. Goldberg's "family-friendly" TV philosophy doesn't seem to have had much influence on his daughter.

 

At least she didn't go on to make 2 1/2 Men.

 

Nobody has mentioned Brooklyn Bridge but for an old-timer like me, I thought it was an incredibly enjoyable show, and I'd love to see it shown in reruns somewhere. And Mizzou is correct about family friendly shows not being shown very often by any network because young folks today wouldn't be interested. Too bad.

 

Brooklyn Bridge is one of those shows I never saw but after hearing people talk about it, I wished I had.

 

I don't know why people think "family shows" wouldn't do well on the networks. Those shows put up pretty big numbers on Disney Channel and I don't know why, if you used the old 80s formula that that wouldn't work again... If I was a head of a network, I'd sign Jim Gaffigan today, get him a hot wife and three kids and go from there... I get that (most) reality shows are cheaper to produce, but I would think there would be a couple family-friendly sitcoms on each of the networks. By my count there are none.

 

Family Ties was a good show, but it barely registered until it got the sweet spot behind The Cosby Show. It went from #49 and #34 in its first two years on Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. to #5, #2 and #2 behind Cosby. Moved to Sunday at 8 p.m. it fell to #17 and #36.

Scary thinking about how many careers Cosby helped launch just with NBC's Thursday success. The network's ratings on that night before his show launched were mediocre at best. The year before Cosby, Cheers was the #35 show - moved to #12. Throw in LA Law, Friends, Seinfeld and ER and that's a lot of TV and movie careers launched because of one guy.

 

All of that is true, but networks need to let shows build a following. Cheers and Family Ties both did well enough on their own after Cosby was gone, but there's no question they owe some of their success to The Cosby Show.

These days, Cheers, All in the Family and Seinfeld never would have gotten a second season.

 

Just don't make Gaffigan a sportswriter that never leaves the house.