After producing four seasons of first run episodes over the first seven years (1972-9), Fat Albert & The Cosby Kids went back into production as The New Fat Albert Show, adding the show-within-a-show, The Brown Hornet, which gave the gang an object lesson to use during the rest of the show.
In "Spare The Rod", Fat Albert (Bill Cosby) becomes concerned when a classmate has bruises on her arms, which leads to the suspicion that her mother or father has been abusing her.
Only three seasons were produced during this period (1979-82) before going back to reruns for the rest of the CBS run, 24 episodes total. New episodes didn't resume until the series entered syndication in 1984.
Rating: A.
4 comments:
It's interesting they made 8 episodes per season that way, though I suppose the way CBS liked to run the show, they probably padded it out with earlier episodes anyway.
That's the way they did things back then, to save money. Remember, back in the 70's, while cartoons were prevalent, they still weren't a priority at the networks.
Personally, I'd have gone with 16-20 the first year, 13 the 2nd, 10 for years 3-4, then 8 each year after, but that's just me.
That sounds reasonable. I would also have tried to pimp new episodes a bit by spacing out when a new episode shows up in the later seasons just so I wasn't playing the same cycle over and over (as I noticed that trend, I think Fox Kids used to mix the episodes out of order during the 90's so that was a neat approach).
If necessary, they could "pimp" them by saving them for the ratings sweeps periods (November, February, May), but did they think of that back then? Nope.
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