Beyond The Baseball TV Grave is a sub-series of Beyond The TV Grave, taking a look at short-lived baseball-themed TV shows. This second edition focuses on CBS’s The Bad News Bears, based on the movie franchise of the same name. The Bad News Bears was renewed for a second season, in which it was pulled from the schedule twice.
Background
In fall 1978, CBS’s Saturday prime time schedule featured a surprising number of recognizable series: Rhoda, the first spinoff of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, aired at 8 pm; Good Times followed it at 8:30; and Dallas closed out the night at 10 pm. There was one problem: none of those shows were the hits they are remembered as in the 1978-79 TV season. Rhoda and Good Times were both canceled that season due to abysmally low ratings, with Rhoda being pulled from the schedule. Dallas, in its first full season, did a bit better than the sitcoms but was also far from the juggernaut it would become the following year. Combine all that with new drama The American Girls flopping at 9 pm, and CBS needed a change to their Saturday night lineup.
At first, CBS opted to air a movie at 9 pm and moved new drama The White Shadow to fill in the 8 pm time slot. By late March, The White Shadow was moved back to its previous Monday night time slot, leaving the new Monday night sitcoms Billy and Flatbush in need of new time slots three weeks into their runs. Billy settled into Saturdays at 8:30, while Flatbush was never heard from again.
Instead of transporting Flatbush to Saturdays alongside Billy, CBS premiered The Bad News Bears at 8 pm on March 24, 1979. The baseball sitcom premiered in the family-friendly time slot three years after the successful movie of the same name, a little under two years after the less-successful sequel, and, perhaps most importantly, less than one year after the poorly-received second sequel.
Synopsis
The Bad News Bears stars Jack Warden as Morris Buttermaker, a former minor league baseball player who had since given up on life and gone into debt. He reluctantly agrees to coach the Hoover Junior High Bears as a favor for no pay, not fully aware of the extent of their lack of playing abilities. It is decisively tamer in tone than the original movie, having to fit in with FCC standards for network television. Whereas the 1976 theatrical release included swearing and alcoholic beverages, the 1979 TV series was comparatively more suitable for family viewing.
In Season 1, The Bad News Bears follows the baseball team as they transform from a group of misfits to a team headed to the championship at Dodger Stadium. Viewers never find out if the Bears indeed win the championship, as the baseball plot is dropped almost entirely in Season 2. While the Bears hang out together a group in the second season and interact heavily with Warden’s Buttermaker, they are no longer playing baseball.
Ratings & Cancellation
Only the first three episodes of The Bad News Bears aired squarely within the 1978-79 TV season for the purposes of seasonal averages. Of those airings, The Bad News Bears averaged an 18.4 Household rating, enough to tie for CBS’s highest-rated Saturday program of the 1978-79 TV season. It tied for 40th in a season where 114 shows aired, and tied for 14th on CBS. It ranked 7th in the comedy department for CBS out of 14 shows. For a show that premiered in late March on a struggling night, that’s about the best one could expect. It was a vast improvement over fall time slot occupant and veteran sitcom Rhoda, which only averaged a 12.7 Household rating. Looking at this alone, it’s no wonder The Bad News Bears was renewed for a second season.
While the promise The Bad News Bears initially showed, its late premiere and 12-episode order led to it airing well past the traditional 1978-79 TV season cutoff date, airing nine episodes between April 21 and June 23. Ratings for those episodes are hard to come by, but one can imagine they weren’t at the same level as the earliest episodes.
The Bad News Bears landed a fall time slot in its second season, with less than three months passing between its Season 1 finale and Season 2 premiere. It stayed on Saturdays, but shifted to 8:30 pm behind new sitcom Working Stiffs. Both were pulled from the schedule after airing just four episodes. The Bad News Bears made a reappearance in the summer, first airing in its old 8 pm time slot before being moved back to 8:30 pm midway through its summer run. It was pulled from the schedule yet again 11 episodes into the season, leaving the remaining three produced episodes unaired.
Aftermath
Adapting The Bad News Bears for network television was a challenge that arguably contributed to the show’s quick demise. Avid fans of the movie likely expected something on the edgier side, which would not have flown on CBS, especially Saturdays at 8 pm. They also would have been disappointed by the show’s shift in tone away from the group as a baseball team in its second season. Meanwhile, critics of the movie were likely unwilling to sample the series to begin with. It didn’t help that the movie had two sequels to tamper with its reputation. The second, the abysmally-reviewed The Bad News Bears Go To Japan, came out in between the time when the TV show was ordered to series and when it premiered on CBS’s schedule.
For a Bad News Bears TV series to work, it likely would have had to premiere closer to the launch of the original movie, before the sequels were released. It would have needed to keep at least some of the edge of the movie, which would have involved a time slot in the 9 pm hour. A true-to-the-movie adaptation would be more fit for cable, had that been a feasible option. Meanwhile, this relatively family-friendly adaptation would have been a better fit for when Nickelodeon began producing original series in the late 1980s.
The Bad News Bears’ occasional reappearances as an IP make this short-lived series a recognizable name. A remake of the film gained a theatrical release in 2005, getting mixed reviews and failing to recoup its budget. CBS ordered a script to a female-led Bad News Bears sitcom in 2022, something that presumably stalled in early development as there has been no further news on the series. Paramount seems keen to keep the IP alive, even as subsequent creations struggle to recreate the success of the original movie. Unlike with the vast majority of shows that get pulled from the schedule twice, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if another Bad News Bears TV show is made eventually.