The Best TV Show in the 1980s!

TV in the '80s wasn't like it is today. There was no reality television. The very concept of reality television wouldn't pop up until MTV's The Real World debuted in 1992. Television in the 80s was comprised primarily of very popular primetime dramas (occasionally referred to as A-budget soap operas) such as Dallas, Falcon Crest, Dynasty, Knots Landing, Little House on the Prairie, Hills Street Blues, L.A. Law, thirtysomething, Remington Steele, Moonlighting, and St. Elsewhere, a proliferation of game shows during the morning and early day. The decade began with one great daily talk show in the form of Donahue, and debuted a second with the Sally Jesse Raphael Show (later to become just Sally), and followed a few years later with a third in The Oprah Winfrey Show (also later shortened to Oprah)

On a Friday night in the early eighties you and your friends would plan events around the can't miss Friday night thrillers of The Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team or Knight Rider. You didn't want to oversleep on Saturday morning because you might miss the Saturday morning cartoons which were a fixture for most of Generation X.

This was a time when you only had three channels to schedule your entertainment time around. Sure there was cable in the early eighties, but not everyone had it, and even if they did you still wanted to be up to speed on all of the most current happenings as they occurred on channel ABC, CBS, or NBC.

The '80s represented the last great decade for situational comedies on broadcast television. The Great comedies of the '70s like (M*A*S*H, Happy Days, The Love Boat, Laverne and Shirley, Three's Company, Mork and Mindy, The Jeffersons, Taxi, All in the Family, CHiPs and One Day at a Time ended in the '80s. Many of the best sit-coms debuted and ran through the eighties including the outrageously funny sitcoms such as Family Ties, Growing Pains, The Golden Girls, Night Court, The Facts of Life, The Cosby Show, Gimme a Break, Different Strokes, Newhart, and Silver Spoons. In 1989, the best sitcoms of the 90s, Roseanne, Seinfeld and The Simpsons would also make their debut. It was arguably the moment when the all of the best comedy writers worked at the apex just before talent became diluted by the increased offerings of channels on cable and satellite.

In 1982, the best TV show of the 80s debuted and the pilot was promptly ranked 77^th in the ratings out of 77 shows. That's right, dead last! The rest of the series was nearly canceled because of the poor ratings, but the show found an audience quickly, and it became a place where everybody knew your name. That show of course was CHEERS, starring Ted Danson, Shelley Long, George Wendt, John Ratzenberger, and Rhea Perlman.

CHEERS ran for 11 years from 1982-1993. It garnered 72 awards and 146 nominations. The series was so popular that when the show's run had come to a close it had launched the successful movie careers of Ted Danson, Shelley Long, Kirstie Alley, and Woody Harrelson, as well as earning the distinction of being the first series in American television broadcast history to launch a character portrayed by the same actor that was nominated for an Emmy on three different television series (Cheers, Wings, and Frasier).

It became a cultural phenomenon, everything from the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern conversations of Norm and Cliff, the Lothario ways of Sam Malone, the erudite ways of Diane Chambers, the absentmindedness of Coach, and even the childlike innocence of Woody. The show's song "Everybody Knows Your Name" became iconic. Go to any bar and sing the first chorus and watch how many people join in with you! If going to bars were only as fun as 24 minutes spent at CHEERS.

NBC was clearly the most dominant network in the 80s. Brandon Tartikoff was network executive with Steve Jobs prescience for what America wanted to watch on television. It wouldn't be until Home Improvement arrived in the 1990s and after Brandon Tartikoff's untimely death that a show would finally supplant NBC from the top of the ratings, and even then it was only after CHEERS had gone off the air in 1993.What a long, enjoyable journey those 250+ episodes were.

Here's raising a toast to the old gang one last time!