When Sonny & Cher split in 1974, it seems as though the divorce agreement allowed Sonny Bono to retain the writers from their CBS variety hour as he moved to ABC. Unfortunately, Cher got the last laugh, as The Sonny Comedy Revue was gone before New Year's Eve.
ABC was searching for something to fill the 7 pm hour on Sundays for much of the 70's. After Land of The Giants was cancelled in 1970, it was one failure after another, as the black hole of ratings that had formed claimed Bono, Bill Cosby, Swiss Family Robinson, and, finally, Donny & Marie, after the latter series had been rechristened, The Osmond Family Show.
The only videos available actually have just the audio, as the video footage, save for commercials, appears to have been wiped, per the practices of the day, or held by Bono's estate. Hence, all we have is the above screencap.
No rating. My folks & I watched Disney on Sundays.
2 comments:
As a lifelong Chicagoan, I am compelled to point out that the S&C company was led by Ted Zeigler, who my family knew as "Uncle Bucky" from WGN's Lunchtime Little Theater in the late '50s-early '60s; we all missed him when he decamped to Canada.
Came the '70s, and we were all stunned when he turned up as Sonny & Cher's answer to Harvey Korman on CBS.
After the S&C split, Uncle Ted went with Sonny and ABC (his was the first face we saw on the Comedy Revue); after that cancellation, Cher (in a miraculous coincidence) came back on CBS, with a "new show", which staggered about for a year or so,until CBS set up that bogus "reunion" with Sonny, which in its turn knocked out Ellery Queen on NBC - and that's another story ...
... for which I blame Cher to the present day ...
TIL. Thanks, Mike.
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