Retitled TV Shows, or A Show by Any Other Name

This week, I'm pleased to welcome back Bill Griffiths, who's graced our website several times in the past, with another fascinating essay. It's a look at something that I've been interested in ever since I was a little tyke and wondered why Dragnet was sometimes called Badge 714: the abondoned custom of giving a successful TV series an alternate title when it went into syndication. See how many of these you can remember! 

by Bill Griffiths

Remember the exciting detective series The Raymond Burr Show? Or that riveting medical drama Robert Young, Family Doctor? Chances are you have seen them by their real names: Ironside and Marcus Welby, M.D. Yet for a brief period in the 1970’s while still in production, these classics were presented under the aforementioned alternate titles. It was once a common practice to rename programs that entered off-network syndication while new episodes were still being aired each week. Perhaps the earliest example came in 1953 when Jack Webb and the NBC Film Division sold the initial 48 episodes of Dragnet to individual stations as Badge 714. This was a logical move for a couple of reasons: Dragnet was still highly rated each week in its respective NBC radio and television versions. In addition, the reruns were generally scheduled weekly in prime time slots. Thus, viewers would not be confused between what was new and what was an encore showing. Even after Dragnet ended its first television run in 1959, the Badge 714 name would continue to turn up on rerun prints. Even now, some episodes that have fallen into the public domain still retain that title. 

Based on the success of Dragnet/Badge 714, other shows entering rerun syndication would have their names changed. Another radio classic with a TV counterpart Gang Busters became Captured. The Millionaire was known in repeats for a time as If You Had a Million. Ann Sothern’s Private Secretary was Susie (her character’s name Susan "Susie" McNamara). Lassie became Jeff’s Collie, with later episodes separately syndicated as Timmy and Lassie. Just to name a few. 

The process of renaming shows also extended to the networks. On NBC, selected episodes of Groucho Marx’s quiz show You Bet Your Life were shown in the summer months under the secondary title The Best of Groucho. Both names would turn up in the opening sequence after the series was sold into syndication in 1961. That same year, CBS’s Gunsmoke (another radio favorite) expanded to one hour. Given the increased budget to film episodes—and the success of the new length uncertain—the network would continue to rerun the 1955-61 episodes as Marshal Dillon each week for a few more years. Up until fairly recently, those 30-minute shows would still turn up under the altered title. Notably, even the theme music was changed, a method used occasionally when other shows had their names changed for repeats. 

Then there were numerous episodes from filmed anthology programs being re-aired under completely "new" names (and theme songs), both in network prime time or on local stations. One excellent example was the 1963-67 series Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre. After concluding its highly-rated run, NBC repeated episodes between 1968 and 1972 during the summer months under Chrysler-less titles such as NBC Comedy Playhouse, NBC Adventure Theatre, and NBC Action Playhouse. Hope’s introductions were replaced by other hosts depending on the genre: Ed McMahon, Peter Marshall, Art Fleming, Monty Hall, and Jack Kelly. Later in syndication, the generic names Universal Star Time and Theatre of the Stars were used, although it was also likely these episodes were scheduled as individual "movies." Another long-running series that followed a similar trajectory was the first-run syndicated western anthology Death Valley Days (1952-70), which had previously enjoyed success on radio from 1930 to 1945. Originally hosted on television by actor Stanley Andrews as "The Old Ranger," later hosts as themselves included Robert Taylor, Dale Robertson, and Ronald Reagan, who left the series to pursue his greatest career success in politics—first as California’s Governor from 1967 to 1975, and then President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Again, while the series was still producing new stories, re-broadcasts of earlier episodes were released under several different names, including Trails West hosted by Ray Milland, Western Star Theater with Rory Calhoun, Call of the West introduced by John Payne, The Pioneers with Will Rogers Jr, and even Dale Robertson, who filmed updated host segments for Frontier Adventure. 

One of the most successful and beloved comedies in TV history enjoyed encore network airings under different names. While still airing new episodes on Monday nights in 1955, CBS scheduled reruns of I Love Lucy (1951-57) as The Sunday Lucy Show. When that version moved to Saturdays, the name changed to simply The Lucy Show (which, of course, was the title of Lucille Ball’s hit 1962-68 sitcom). Yet another package of I Love Lucy reruns appeared on that network as The Top Ten Lucy Shows… which apparently ran for 13 weeks. In 1960, the Connecticut-based episodes appeared as Lucy in Connecticut. Finally, the hour-long special adventures (1957-60) of Lucy & Ricky and Fred & Ethel enjoyed summer evening runs between 1962 and 1967 as The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, which is still used to this day. 

Rerunning current or recently concluded sitcoms and dramas during the daylight hours became an effective programming strategy for the networks from the mid-1950s through the early 1990s. One of the earliest hits in this regard was The Bob Cummings Show being re-aired on ABC as Love That Bob between 1959 and 1961. But also in 1959, CBS added repeats of I Love Lucy under its actual name following two years of nighttime encores. This would become a five-day-a-week morning favorite through 1966, with additional airings on Saturdays or Sundays from time to time. At that point, CBS finally sold the series to local stations, but there would be a brief return of I Love Lucy to CBS middays during the April 1967 strike of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which sidelined live and taped programming. As the 1960s progressed, more reruns of popular series were added to network daytime schedules, complementing and competing against the fare of game shows, soap operas, and talk shows. Sometimes the real titles were retained even if new shows were still being made. Others went by different names. How creative the branding was varied widely. There was Make Room For Daddy (the original name for The Danny Thomas Show), Trailmaster/ Major Adams, Trailmaster (Wagon Train), The Loretta Young Theater (The Loretta Young Show), Andy of Mayberry (The Andy Griffith Show), The McCoys (The Real McCoys), Mornin’ Beverly Hillbillies, The Dick Van Dyke Daytime Show, The Jack Benny Daytime Show and Sunday with Jack Benny (The Jack Benny Program). If only to add to viewer confusion, TV Guide issues of the era had the rerun listings as "Andy Griffith", "Lucille Ball", "Jack Benny", "Dick Van Dyke", etc. 

Eventually, network daytime reruns of hit shows went almost entirely by their actual names. Favorites such as Father Knows Best, Ben Casey, The Fugitive, The Donna Reed Show, Bewitched, That Girl, Love, American Style, The Brady Bunch, All In The Family—cleverly promoted as "daytime editions" when CBS began afternoon reruns in 1975—Sanford and Son, M*A*S*H, The Jeffersons, The Love Boat, Three’s Company, Diff’rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, Family Ties, The Golden Girls, Full House and others (whew!) never went by changed names. Eventually, the process of keeping the real titles intact crept into syndication as well, no matter if a series was still being produced or not. Most producers and distributors came to the revelation that audiences could tell the difference between a repeat every day and what was new weekly in prime time. But it did continue to happen on occasion into the 1980s. Viewers got to see Ponderosa (Bonanza), Emergency One (Emergency!), Carol Burnett and Friends (30 minute re-edits of 1972-77 Carol Burnett Show episodes), Jim Rockford, Private Investigator (The Rockford Files), McGarrett (season 12 airings of Hawaii Five-O on The CBS Late Movie), More Real People (Real People, of course, and another case of a half-hour show being edited from one-hour shows), Carson’s Comedy Classics (segments culled from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson) and CHiPs Patrol, which when you know that CHP stands for California Highway Patrol turns out to be redundantly redundant. More incredibly, this modification occurred in September 1982, days after NBC ended afternoon showings of the series as… CHiPs. A similar example happened a few years earlier. Although ABC aired daytime reruns of Happy Days from 1975 to 1979 and Laverne & Shirley from 1979 to 1980, they were initially changed in syndication to Happy Days Again in 1979 and Laverne & Shirley and Company in 1981. 

Perhaps the most notorious case of name alteration both in network and syndication was the Valerie Harper sitcom Valerie (NBC 1986-90, CBS 1990-91). When Harper was fired from her own series after season two, the show became Valerie’s Family: The Hogans. After another year, there was one more name change to The Hogan Family, which kept that title in reruns. 

Naturally, I can’t provide examples of every TV series that had its title changed for reruns, let alone even tweaked during first-run showings, although it seems I’ve named a lot in the course of this essay! Besides, I know you can think of some more that have not been mentioned here. So I look forward to reading your remembrances in the Comments section. Thank you again to Mitchell for allowing me to contribute to It’s About TV and focus on another of the fascinating nuggets of television history. TV

Thanks again to Bill for another great look back at the good old days. (And let's all wish him a speedy recovery from his recent surgery; his rehab time included working on this piece!) It's funny how some shows are great no matter what they're called, while others don't even work under one title. Perhaps it has less to do with the title and more to do with the content. You think?

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