TV Week listings for Friday, October 6, 1973.

 

In 1927, the New York Yankees were the dominant baseball sportsball team, winning 110 regular season games (in a 154 game season) and winning the myopically named World Series.

The first six batters in the 1927 Yankees lineup were known as Murderer's Row.  Over the season, they had 1141 hits, collective batting average of 0.337, on base percentage of 0.411, 142 home runs, and an unbelievable 670 RBI - an average of 4.4 runs per game from just 2/3rds of the lineup.  All six ended up in the baseball Hall of Fame.  I'm not a big sports dude so I only recognize the names of two of them: Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.

In 1973, actually from 1971 - 1975, CBS had the ultimate TV version of Murderer's Row on Saturday night:

All in the Family
M*A*S*H
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Bob Newhart Show
The Carol Burnett Show

Television  is different today; networks and even most cable channels don't bother with first-run programs on Saturday nights anymore but in 1973, the three most highly-watched evenings were Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  And CBS's Saturday night lineup was one of the highest rated, most critically acclaimed, cash cow blocks in TV history.  Each program is legendary to this day, each for a different reason.  Some of us TV geeks lived through it and that's why - sometimes - baby boomers scoff at what TV - network and cable - has become today.

Despite the dominance of CBS, the other networks still had to broadcast something.  At 7:00 PM, NBC had the long-running "Emergency," kind of a dose of adrenalin and warm fuzzies to counter-program the CBS comedies.  ABC had "The Partridge Family," which was a hit on Fridays from 1970-1973, but was getting stale, so they sacrificed it on Saturdays while they burned off the final season.

And that is our dive into TV listings from exactly 50 years ago thanks to the Minneapolis Tribune's TV Week and my pack rat ways.