Blast from the Past: NBC "Classic" TV Themes

I was a pop-culture junkie long before the Internet. Back when you had to work for it! In the 70s, TV was all about ABC, with Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, Charlie's Angels, Happy Days, and the rest. CBS was for old folks, and NBC was. . .well NBC was loser land.

Their one big hit was Saturday Night Live, but everything else they tried was either a disaster, or slightly above a disaster. Even so, a few shows sort of broke through. They weren't exactly hits, but they were the closest thing that NBC had to it. That all changed a little later with Cheers, The Cosby Show, and Family Ties, but in the late 70s and early 80s, these were the gems NBC had to offer. Enjoy.

#1 - BJ and the Bear - A cute truck driver and his pet chimp. Not a classic by any stretch, but it managed a spin-off (The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo), if you can believe it.

#2 - Supertrain - A train wreck. Almost literally. This show will live in infamy as one of TVs worst shows. It was an attempt to duplicate the success of The Love Boat (and that's pretty lame, right there), and it failed spectacularly.

#3 - CHiPs - Probably the longest-running of NBC's non-hits, this one actually made a dent in the pop-culture consciousness. It had Erik Estrada in tight pants, and. . .that other guy. Plus it had a nifty discofied theme song, and is soon going to be a movie.

#4 - Hello, Larry - There is lame, and then there is lame. McLean Stevenson left M*A*S*H for this? There was some interplay between this and another of NBC's non-hits, Diff'rent Strokes (a show that managed to spin off a genuine hit in The Facts of Life). Still, for some reason, it still sticks in my head. And can you believe there was ever a Frasier after this stink-bomb?