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The final week of April leading into the May sweeps and regular series finales offers very little in the way of new programming. In fact, there are only two obscure series that premiered this week in two different decades. Let’s see if you remember either of them.
1950
- No new series premiered this week in 1950.
1960
- No new series premiered this week in 1960.
1970
- No new series premiered this week in 1970.
1980
- No new series premiered this week in 1980.
1990
- May 1 — Game show Clash! premieres on Ha! Hosted by Billy Kimball, the absurdist quiz show featured two teams of three who were selected based on criteria such as occupation, ethnicity, religion, etc. and each team would represent one half of a rivalry, such as Nudists vs Fashion Designers, Librarians vs Noisy People, or Vegetarians vs Butchers. Some of the rivlaries were altered for comedic effects such as Cowboys vs Indians where the Indians were people from India. The game was played in three rounds. The first round had four categories with four questions and no penalty for a wrong answer. The second round had one question replaced with a ‘Grudge Match’ which pitted one member from each team in a bizarre stunt. The third round had three questions with points deducted for wrong answers. The team with the highest score at the end advanced to the ‘Oval of Odds’ bonus round. The contestant who scored the most points for the team spun a six-spaced wheel and had to answer the question in which space the wheel landed. Five spaces had extremely difficult questions like ‘What is the third word on the thirty-third page of the third book from the right on the third shelf of the third cabinet from the left in the Clash library?’ while the sixth space had an extremely easy question like ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ When Ha! merged with rival comedy network The Comedy Channel (owned by HBO) on April 1, 1991 to become CTV: The Comedy Channel before rebranding as Comedy Central to prevent issues wtih Canadian broadcaster CTV, the series carried over and ran until December 28, 1991.
2000
- No new series premiered this week in 2000.
2010
- April 28 — Drama series Happy Town premieres on ABC. Set in the small town of Haplin, Minnesota, the series is set during a period of peace following a series of unsolved kidnappings. That peace is cut short when a new crime has everyone in town talking, convinced the crime has been committed by the ‘Magic Man’, a person described as having ‘an ability to make people disappear that bordered on the mystical.’ With seven people missing, the disappearances seem related to an old German film titled Die Blaue Tür (The Blue Door). The series was filmed in several Ontario communities doubling for Minnesota, with street level shots filmed in Newman, Georgia. After the pilot episode was shot, Ben Schnetzer replaced John Patrick Amedori, and Steven Weber replaced Dean Winters. The rest of the regular cast included Geoff Stults, Lauren German, Amy Acker, Robert Wisdom, Sarah Gadon, Sam Neill, Peter Outerbridge, Jay Paulson, Warren Christie and Lynne Griffin. Recurring cast members included M.C. Gainey, Frances Conroy, Abraham Benrubi, Stephen McHattie, Dee Wallace and David Cronenberg. The series debut scored poorly in the ratings and ABC pulled the show from the schedule after the third episode on May 12. To minimize the damage done during May sweeps (a period where network ratings determine how much they can charge for ads in the coming season), ABC planned to air the last five of the eight produced episodes beginning June 2 while unofficially confirming on May 17 that the show was among the cancelled series of the 2009-2010 season. The sixth episode aired on June 16 and ABC made the cancellation official on June 18 by pulling the last two episodes from the schedule. On July 1, 2010, those last two episodes were made available on ABC.com.
Did you or do you watch any of these show? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!
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