After a healthy run hosting a Saturday night variety show for ABC that complemented American Bandstand, Dick Clark was back in primetime in 1978, recruited by NBC to try to shore up their hit-depleted lineup.
However, Dick Clark's Live Wednesday was a colossal dud. Didn't even make it to Christmas.
It wasn't for a lack of trying. However, the variety show, as we knew it, was dying. Carol Burnett had ended her CBS show earlier in 1978, after 11 seasons. Donny & Marie, over on ABC, had morphed into The Osmond Family Show, and shifted from Fridays, where it thrived in its first three seasons, to Sundays, where ABC variety shows went to die, as Sonny Bono, Bill Cosby, & The Brady Bunch had all famously flopped in a losing battle against 60 Minutes and The Wonderful World of Disney.
So what happened?
Clark, with two series on ABC (Bandstand & the then-$20,000 Pyramid), was being asked to perform a miracle for NBC. But on a Wednesday night?? Viewers said no. What NBC was hoping for was something akin to Ed Sullivan's old CBS series (1948-71), since a lot of the guests had done his show back in the day, but it was on the wrong night of the week.
I never saw the show. I was attending mid-week Bible studies at the time, a few months before moving into my current abode. We'll close this piece with a choice clip of comedy legend Rodney Dangerfield.....
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