In 1979, NBC was stuck in third place among the three major American networks and desperate for a hit. Executive Fred Silverman decided to gamble on an idea that seemed wildly ambitious: turning the success of “The Love Boat” into a high-speed train journey. The result was “Supertrain,” a two-story, nuclear-powered train meant to carry passengers from New York to Los Angeles in what was supposed to be the most luxurious television experience ever seen. The production quickly became a nightmare.
NBC spent $5 million building three different scale models of the train. The largest was used for station scenes, while smaller ones were used for special effects. The models were prone to breakdowns, with one famously derailing during a press demonstration. Each episode cost about $1 million to produce, making it the most expensive television show of its time.
The show followed the standard formula of mystery and romance stories, but neither connected with audiences. Viewers struggled to care about the characters, and the high-tech settings did not help. The train itself looked more like a giant plastic toy than the futuristic machine NBC promised. Ratings dropped quickly after the premiere and never recovered.
The financial damage was severe enough to force a major corporate restructuring at NBC, changing how the network operated for years afterward. While NBC dealt with the financial disaster of its atomic train, another network faced a different kind of problem involving America’s favorite family. “The Brady Bunch Hour” aired from 1976 to 1977. After the original series became a massive hit, ABC reassembled the cast.
Instead of keeping the simple family feel that made the original popular, the network turned the family into stars of an over-the-top musical variety show. Producers Sid and Marty Krofft were known for their wild, colorful, and almost surreal productions. They brought that same style to “The Brady Bunch Hour,” and it fit poorly with a realistic family show. The cast wore tight, shiny disco outfits and performed precisely choreographed dance routines.
They also had to perform strange comedy skits. In one moment, the entire family was thrown into a giant studio swimming pool to dance with a professional swimming troupe called The Water Follies. Behind the scenes, the show was already falling apart. Eve Plumb, who played Jan, decided not to return.
The producers brought in a lookalike, Geri Reichel, to play Jan instead. Viewers noticed the change almost immediately and started calling her “Fake Jan,” making things worse. Robert Reed, who played Mike Brady, hated the show. He was bound by his contract, so he had little choice but to show up, smile, and perform songs he had no interest in singing.
ABC eventually canceled the show after just nine episodes. As if forcing the Brady family to dance with show swimmers was not strange enough, one television executive came up with an even crazier idea: making a wild animal the star of a sitcom. “Me and the Chimp” premiered in 1972 and followed a dentist played by Ted Bessell, whose life is turned upside down when his family takes in a stray chimpanzee named Buttons. Creator Garry Marshall developed the show long before he became a television icon with “Happy Days.
” The humor was extremely basic, relying on jokes about Buttons tearing wallpaper or pressing random buttons while a laugh track did most of the work. Actors did not have a great time either. Working with an unpredictable chimpanzee on set turned what should have been a normal day of filming into a constant headache. Things became even more absurd when writers added a science fiction element.
Suddenly, Buttons was not just an ordinary chimp but a genius animal that had escaped from a top-secret military space program. Critics savaged the show, describing it as an insult to viewers. CBS canceled it after only 13 episodes, and TV Guide later listed it among the worst shows ever produced. At least “Me and the Chimp” lasted a full season.
The next show did not even get that far. “Turn-On” premiered in 1969 as ABC’s attempt to offer something completely different in the variety comedy category. The show moved at a frantic pace and relied heavily on early computer-generated visual effects. Because George Schlatter had already created the successful “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” ABC gave him considerable freedom.
That decision came back to haunt them. The show had no host or recurring characters, and the jokes were often hard to find. Viewers were instead confronted with flashing lights, electronic sounds, and strange visual tricks. The show pushed political satire and sexual jokes far beyond what audiences were used to at the time.
Local station managers across the country began to worry. WJW-TV in Cleveland, an ABC affiliate, refused to broadcast the rest of the episode after the first commercial break. “Turn-On” was effectively canceled while its first episode was still airing. Viewers on the West Coast never even got to see it.
By the next morning, ABC executives had pulled the series entirely. Tim Conway, who hosted the first episode, later told a story about how the crew attended the big premiere party only to discover the show had already been canceled before they could finish celebrating. It remains one of the fastest cancellations in television history. NBC thought the best way to win viewers was to bring in a foreign pop group that did not even speak English.
“Pink Lady and Jeff” aired in 1980, pairing American comedian Jeff Altman with Pink Lady, a Japanese pop duo consisting of singers Mitsuyo Nemoto and Keiko Masuda. They were huge stars in Japan, but the network had no real plan to translate that fame into American television success. The problem was obvious from the start. The singers did not speak English, so they had to memorize every line and comedy bit by sound alone.
They were essentially repeating words they did not understand, making performances awkward and unnatural. Timing was often off, and it showed. Fred Silverman, eager to capitalize on the late-1970s disco wave, rushed the show into production before anyone truly understood what they were doing. The production quickly became chaos.
The network tried to keep viewers interested by booking big stars like Blondie and Sid Caesar. They also forced Jeff Altman to jump into a giant hot tub at the end of every episode for reasons no one could explain. Critics attacked the show, some even accusing producers of exploiting the singers. NBC ended the show after just six episodes.
The next show featured a crime-fighting duo where one partner literally printed his thoughts on paper. “Holmes & Yoyo” was a mess from its start in 1976. ABC decided to combine the popularity of police shows with growing public interest in science fiction. They paired a clumsy, accident-prone human detective named Alexander Holmes with a top-secret robotic partner named Yoyo.
Most of the comedy relied on low-cost physical gags and Yoyo’s constant malfunctions. By the second episode, writers were clearly running out of ideas. Yoyo was supposed to be a sophisticated robot, but he was always breaking down. Sometimes he picked up random Swedish radio broadcasts through his teeth.
Other times, his magnets attracted flying frying pans. Whenever he wanted to say something, he had to print it on paper that came out of his chest. The cheap production did not help. Even by mid-1970s standards, the special effects were disappointing.
You could see the wires moving props, and Yoyo’s robot suit looked stiff and awkward. ABC tried changing the show’s time slot, but ratings continued to fall. The network gave up and canceled the show after just 13 episodes. In 1978, after “Animal House” became a huge hit, every network wanted their own raucous college comedy.
CBS pinned its hopes on a show set at fictional Brewster College. “Co-Ed Fever” followed a group of students living in a newly mixed-gender dormitory. The problem was that most jokes felt forced, relying on the same college and sitcom cliches that did not really work. Characters were loud and chaotic, which made them hard to like rather than fun to watch.
CBS was so confident that it aired the pilot as a special Monday night preview, expecting that buzz around college comedies would guarantee a huge audience. That plan went badly. Viewer reaction was immediate and negative. Ratings were so low that the network canceled the show after just one episode.
Six additional episodes had already been filmed and paid for, but none of them ever aired. They were simply locked in a studio vault, making the show one of the shortest-lived experiments in television history. “A Year at the Top” aired on CBS in 1977 and was produced by the legendary Norman Lear. The story followed two traditional-minded rock musicians from Idaho who move to Hollywood.
To reach the top of the charts, they literally sign a contract with the devil’s son. The show mixed dark themes about black magic with cheesy pop-rock songs and typical laugh-track comedy. In the 1970s, networks were eager to profit from the rock and roll craze, but this idea never worked. Trying to blend trendy music with popular prime-time sitcom style just did not connect.
The show featured a young Paul Shaffer, who later became famous as David Letterman’s musical director. The pilot was reshot several times with different actors, including veteran star Mickey Rooney at one point. Viewers did not know how to react to a show about people selling their souls to the devil. It was not funny enough to work as a comedy and not serious enough to be taken as musical drama.
CBS pulled the show after only five episodes. “Dusty’s Trail” aired in 1973 and centered on a small group of pioneers separated from their main wagon train while traveling west. If the plot sounded familiar, that is because it was an unashamed copy of “Gilligan’s Island. ” Sherwood Schwartz was behind both shows and tried to recreate his earlier success.
He even brought back Bob Denver, who played the main character Dusty. Dusty was a bumbling scout whose outfit looked just like the one Denver wore as Gilligan. The rest of the cast was also basically a copy of the original show, including a wealthy snobbish couple, a genius scientist, a charming saloon girl, and a sweet country girl. Even the jokes were the same.
Viewers noticed quickly and rejected the show almost immediately. After 26 episodes, the network gave up on it. “The San Pedro Beach Bums” aired in 1977 and followed five unemployed, aimless young men living on a messy houseboat in California. Produced by Aaron Spelling, who was already known for successes like “Charlie’s Angels” and “The Love Boat,” the show stood out for entirely wrong reasons.
Dialogue was weak, comedy felt forced, and critics were quick to attack. They argued the show was a hollow attempt to make laziness and poor hygiene look cool. Before the show even aired, the network heavily promoted the unknown cast as the next big stars. When the show finally premiered, ratings dropped almost immediately.
Spelling tried to keep it alive with a big crossover event, bringing in “Charlie’s Angels” stars to help the Beach Bums solve a mystery. Even that did not save it. ABC canceled the show after just 10 episodes. “Far Out Space Nuts” was a children’s show that aired Saturday mornings starting in 1975.
Bob Denver and Chuck McCann played two foolish NASA food service workers who accidentally launch themselves into space in a rocket. Produced by Sid and Marty Krofft on a limited budget, the show’s quality showed it. Spaceship sets looked like cardboard, props looked like cheap plastic toys, and stunt actors played aliens wearing sweaty rubber masks that barely fit. The show was canceled by ABC after 15 episodes.
“Hello, Larry” premiered on NBC in 1979, starring McLean Stevenson as a divorced radio talk show host in Portland trying to raise his two teenage daughters. Stevenson had just finished his run on the hugely successful “M*A*S*H” and hoped this show would make him a solo star. Instead, it began a legendary string of career disappointments. The writing was painfully dry, performances felt stiff, and the slow pacing made watching the show a chore.
Ratings were weak from the start, so NBC brought in characters from the successful sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes” for crossover episodes. Even sending Gary Coleman’s Arnold Jackson to Portland did not help. Johnny Carson regularly mocked the show on “The Tonight Show,” and soon everyone knew it was a joke. NBC kept it for two seasons, not because it was successful, but because the network had no better options at the time.
“Quark” aired in 1978 and starred Richard Benjamin as Adam Quark, a frustrated commander whose main job is collecting space garbage for the United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol. NBC rushed the show into production hoping to capitalize on the success of “Star Wars. ” The idea was to combine clever space parody with the kind of bawdy comedy expected from sitcoms. Instead, it confused everyone.
Hardcore science fiction fans thought the jokes were too silly, while regular viewers did not understand the strange space references. The supporting cast made things weirder. Quark’s co-pilot was a cowardly plant-like humanoid named F’loop, the engineer had multiple personalities, and there were identical blonde twins who turned out to be clones of each other. Building futuristic sets and creating new alien creatures every week was expensive.
For a sitcom, production costs were unusually high. With ratings falling and costs piling up, NBC canceled it after just eight episodes. “Kahn” aired on CBS in 1975 and focused on an elderly Chinese-American private detective solving mysteries in San Francisco’s Chinatown. CBS hoped to replicate the huge success other networks had with shows like “Columbo” or “The Rockford Files.
” The pacing was far too slow, and scripts followed such a predictable formula that crime stories lost all excitement. Casting was also a problem. The network gave the lead role to actor Khigh Dhiegh, who was of Anglo-Egyptian descent. Audiences already knew him as Wo Fat, the Chinese villain from “Hawaii Five-O.
” That casting choice made the show’s attempt at authentic representation feel outdated before it even began. Ratings fell almost immediately after the premiere. CBS pulled the show after only four episodes aired. Two additional episodes had been completed but never broadcast.
“The Ugliest Girl in Town” aired from 1968 to 1969 with a bizarre plot following a young Hollywood talent agent who falls in love with a British girl. To follow her to London and stay close to her, he decides to disguise himself as a woman, posing as a hip model named Timmy. The entire show was built around one basic trick: each episode showed the lead actor in a wig and women’s clothing, trying to keep everyone around him from realizing he was actually a man. The idea came from Hollywood’s fascination with the London fashion scene at the time.
British audiences and critics were not impressed either, seeing the show’s exaggerated portrayal of the fashion world as cheap stereotyping. American viewers tired of the same joke quickly, and ratings dropped. ABC canceled the show after 17 episodes, leaving the final three episodes unaired even though they had already been filmed and paid for.
Years later, in 2002, TV Guide ranked the show at number 18 on its list of the 50 worst TV shows of all time.
