- Awards
- 21
GUNSMOKE dipped to something like 35th place in Season 12 (high enough to keep most shows on the air, but notably low for GUNSMOKE) and the show was canceled for the second time in 1967; the cancellation decision was reversed (for the second time) and the show was moved from Saturday to Monday (thus causing the cancellation of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND to make way for GUNSMOKE).
GUNSMOKE rebounded almost immediately, despite being against LAUGH IN.
After Season 19, Miss Kitty left and the show survived it at first -- but when Leonard Katzman left midway through Season 20, ratings tumbled because the tone of the show shifted (i.e., too dark and ponderous, too much of the time) and the third and final cancellation happened in '75... Once again, the ratings were high enough to stay on the air. But CBS execs were after it because of aging demographics. ("Horsefeathers!," huffed James Arness).
- Awards
- 11
For a show with a twenty-year run on primetime network television, GUNSMOKE retained solid Nielsen ratings practically all the way through. Thirteen of those seasons were spent inside the Top 10, nine of those were in the Top 5, and from 1957 until 1961, it was the #1 show on the air. Even when it fell to #34 in 1967, that still wasn't that bad for a show twelve years old, and it quickly rebounded and regained a large percentage of its audience when CBS shook-up its schedule and moved GUNSMOKE from Saturdays to Mondays for the 1967-68 season.
- Awards
- 21
Even when it was in its 20th season, the first half of the year saw GUNSMOKE appear in the Top 5 for the week occasionally, the ratings drooping in the last half of the season when Leonard Katzman left midway through, and show's tone changed... When it was cancelled in 1975, James Arness attributed it to "demographic horsefeathers" (i.e., the audience was getting grey around the temples). So the team went over to ABC and did HOW THE WEST WAS WON, which was a hit... GUNSMOKE could have run another 5 years.
When it ended, it was the longest-running live-action scripted series in American primetime history. And when that record was tied or surpassed decades later, it was in an era where you needed only one-tenth the audience to be regarded as "a hit" and be easily renewed.
