ABC's "American Dream" (1981)

Here comes AMERICAN DREAM! For years, I had only read about this show, thanks to a chapter on its rocky development process in the 1983 Todd Gitlin book "Inside Prime Time." It was set in Chicago, starred Stephen Macht (a great 70s/80s character actor) and Hans Conried (supporting) and was developed by the team who went on to create "Cagney & Lacey" (Barbara Corday and Barney Rosenzweig)... but if memory serves, ABC was uncomfortable with their "realistic" work on the 90-minute pilot, and dumped them for William Blinn when series production began.

There were seven episodes made after the pilot (which was nominated for two Emmys). Three of those episodes never aired. So here's what the show was up against on the other networks. Wikipedia says that ABC was planning to give "American Dream" a regular slot for the 1981-82 season, but that never happened. The first regular episode aired the night after the pilot, then episode two over a week later. Then there was a month gap (May sweeps) and two episodes were burned off in the summer against weak competition. You'd think, with a writer's strike at the time, they would WANT new programming at that time?!

1-Pilot (April 26, 1981): aired on a Sunday at 9:30pm against reruns of "The Jeffersons Go to Hawaii" (part 2) and "Trapper John, M.D." on CBS, and 1976's "The Cassandra Crossing" on NBC. Here's a pretty lame promo for this film.

2-Crossing Patterns (April 27, 1981): up against reruns of "MASH" and "House Calls" on CBS, but also the NBC special "Live From Studio 8H: 100 Years of America's Popular Music"... this was likely due to the writer's strike, too, while 8H was sitting unused due to the early termination of SNL's horrific sixth season.

3-Casey's Romance (May 6, 1981): now on Wednesdays, CBS aired 1981's "The Gentleman Bandit" at 9pm against this episode, while NBC had a new "Diff'rent Strokes" and a rerun "Facts of Life." This is the only episode I've seen, and it's online here. A promo is here and it's billed as the "premiere." So the previous week's Sunday/Monday I guess was considered a "launch" or "preview"? The same strategy was tried earlier in this year with "Hill Street Blues," which also had horrible ratings (but on a much lower-rated network). Not smart.

For the weeks of May 13 and 20, the 9pm Wednesday slot on ABC was filled with movies: "California Suite" and then "She's In the Army Now." An episode of "American Dream" may have aired on May 27, but records from that era aren't available at the moment... and that seems unlikely during a sweeps period.

4-The Robbery (June 3, 1981): a month after the previous installment, "American Dream" aired against NBC's reruns of Strokes/Facts, while CBS aired the 1979 film "Willa"

5-Winners (June 10, 1981): NBC still had reruns of its two shows while CBS aired the 1974 film "Uptown Saturday Night." Oddly, when I Googled "American Dream ABC 1981," one of the first photos that came up was a still of Big Percy from "Uptown Saturday Night."

UNAIRED:

6-A Blessing from Berlowitz

7-The Bottom Line

8-California Dreaming