TV Shows that changed their names

[roadman65]

I was wondering just how many TV shows started out with one name and ended up with another.

Examples are the 1986 sitcom Vallerie that was changed after its second season to Valleries Family and then renamed a second time to the Hogan Family.  This was due to the main star Vallerie Harper who was fired from the show, where afterwards the name would not apply being that there was no more Vallerie in the show.

Too Close For Comfort was renamed The Ted Knight Show in its final season because of the shows format being retooled.  It went from four (later five) family members crunched inside one small house into a larger house with later only three family members and a housekeeper.  This was due to the fact two of the shows cast members left the series before the final season took place.

All In The Family was renamed Archie Bunkers Place after actress Jean Stapleton quit the series only one year after Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers both left the show as well.  Thus being no more family the entire show had to be retooled where the focus was on the work life of main character Archie Bunker.  The main set went from the All In The Family Living Room to the saloon that Archie himself owned and story lines were then set up about what went on in the bar rather than at home.

Andy Griffith Show was renamed Mayberry RFD after both Andy Griffith and Ron Howard both left the show's eight year run and therefore the name Andy Griffith would not fit it anymore.

Any other shows renamed from their original title?

[Takumi]

Two Guys, A Girl, And A Pizza Place became Two Guys And A Girl.

[briantroutman]

Too Close For Comfort was renamed The Ted Knight Show in its final season...

That was the first one that came to mind when I read the thread title.

Along the lines of the other examples you described, the often-maligned Kate Mulgrew spinoff of Columbo began as Mrs. Columbo, then became Kate Columbo, then Kate the Detective and finally Kate Loves a Mystery–all in less than two years.

The Most Title Changes award might go to the Walt Disney anthology series, which had something like eight different titles over the course of 60 years (Disneyland, Disney's Wonderful World of Color, etc.), but since its run was spread across all three original broadcast networks with gaps in between runs and changes in host and format, I'm not sure it counts.

Another category would be shows that were retitled for rerun–sometimes to distinguish them from new episodes that were still being broadcast. I understand that episodes of I Love Lucy was rerun still in '50s under the tiles The Lucy Show (not to be confused with the later series) and Lucy in Connecticut. I read that NBC reran CHiPs episodes during the daytime under the title CHiPs Patrol.

[jp the roadgeek]

Reruns of Happy Days were packaged as Happy Days Again

ESPN Cold Pizza became ESPN First Take as it focused more on its First and 10 segment

Three's Company became Three's a Crowd when Jack Tripper got married.

Match Game changed its title every year from '73 - '79. 

Oh, and The Seinfeld Chronicles became just plain Seinfeld.

[Thing 342]

SNL was known as NBC's Saturday Night until 1977 due to a competing show on ABC hosted by Howard Cosell that held the title.

Good Morning Miss Bliss was retooled into Saved By The Bell after its first season.

The Real Ghostbusters cartoon had its name changed into Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters when it was retooled to become more kid-friendly after its third (?) season.

[LM117]

In the opening title of NCIS during it's 1st season (2003-2004), it was Navy NCIS before becoming just NCIS.

[roadman]

Reruns of Happy Days were packaged as Happy Days Again

In years past, such re-titling was a common practice for episodes of shows that went into syndication while new episodes were still being made for first run primetime airing.  Examples I remember include The Andy Griffith Show, which was re-titled Andy Of Mayberry; CHiPs, which was re-titled CHiPs Patrol, and Baa Baa Black Sheep, which was re-titled Black Sheep Squadron, although, with the second season, NBC changed the title of the series to Black Sheep Squadron for the first run episodes as well.  When M*A*S*H was first offered for syndication, CBS executives requested it be re-titled as "4077th M*A*S*H" The producers of the show strenuously objected to this change, which was subsequently dropped before the reruns aired.

Although there were some shows that were re-titled for syndication after the M*A*S*H producers refused to capitulate to CBS - the aforementioned Happy Days (Happy Days Again) and Laverne and Shirley (Laverne and Shirley and Friends) among them - the practice was all but dead by the early 1980s.

One reason I've heard for this practice is that, when in syndication, the show would often be shown on a station that was affiliated with a rival network.

[Ned Weasel]

The Norm Show was changed to just Norm.

[1995hoo]

What's Happening was cancelled but later returned as What's Happening Now. I recall the latter having a joke about one of the men not being able to get it up and, when one of the other guys laughed, the woman yelled at him to shut up because "this is very im-potent!" They'd never allow that today.

[lordsutch]

What's Happening was cancelled but later returned as What's Happening Now. I recall the latter having a joke about one of the men not being able to get it up and, when one of the other guys laughed, the woman yelled at him to shut up because "this is very im-potent!" They'd never allow that today.

Have you seen what they show on network TV now? That wouldn't even be a punchline on Two Broke Girls.

[lepidopteran]

"The Bugs Bunny / Road-Runner Hour" became "The Bugs Bunny / Road-Runner Show" when it was extended to 90 minutes.  As did the 30-minute version that briefly ran on prime time in the mid-70s.

"The Flintstones Comedy Hour" became "The Flintstones Comedy Show" when its time slot was halved.

Speaking of cartoons, "Partridge Family 2200 A.D." was also known as "The Partridge Family in Outer Space".  Not sure if that was a syndication thing.

"The Brady Bunch Variety Hour" was shortened to "The Brady Bunch Hour".

"The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour" became "The Sonny & Cher Show" after they reunited.

The Tonight Show has had several names, mostly based on the host.  "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" became "TTS With Jay Leno", and now "TTS Starring Jimmy Fallon".  At least during Carson's tenure, the full title was used even when there was a guest host.

Dinah Shore hosted "Dinah's Place", which became "Dinah!", and later "Dinah and Friends".  Technically, though, the first one was a different series.

"Captain Kangaroo" became "Wake Up with the Captain", when it was moved an hour earlier and halved in its run time.

[lepidopteran]

"Live with Regis and Kathie Lee" is now "Live with Kelly", along with other names according to coming and going of hosts.  It was originally called "The Morning Show".

"The Price is Right" was "The New Price is Right" for the first year or so after it premiered in 1972, to distinguish it from the old version hosted by Bill Cullen.  TNPiR would be reused in a short-lived, "modernized", prime-time version of the show in 1994, hosted by Doug Davidson.

[roadman65]

Live with Regis and Kathie Lee was originally called AM New York before it became nationally syndicated.  It aired on WABC TV in NYC as a local morning talk show before going nationwide.

Threes Company becoming Threes A Crowd after the Nicol Ross and Burditt fired Joyce DeWitt and Prisilla Barnes as well as Richard Kline and Don Knotts after the eighth season of the show, just so it can be retooled to give John Ritter the complete spotlight.   Of course that lasted only one complete season as many were pissed off that they pulled the plug on the 2 girls and the 1 guy sharing an apartment concept that worked for many years.  Even firing Suzanne Sommers did not get viewers as angry as this retooling did.

[Mr. Matté]

Another category would be shows that were retitled for rerun–sometimes to distinguish them from new episodes that were still being broadcast. I understand that episodes of I Love Lucy was rerun still in '50s under the tiles The Lucy Show (not to be confused with the later series) and Lucy in Connecticut. I read that NBC reran CHiPs episodes during the daytime under the title CHiPs Patrol.

Two examples of that I know of offhand:

• The Andy Griffith Show's daytime reruns known as Andy of Mayberry. You could tell Howard Stern only watched the daytime reruns when he was younger because that's the name of the show he mentioned when the Tradio calls with an instrumental of the theme would play.
• The 1980s CBS revival of a famous Bob Stewart game show went from The $25,000 Pyramid to The New $25,000 Pyramid after a few weeks to eliminate confusion between the brightly-lit Los Angeles-taped Dick Clark-hosted version of the show versus the dimmer New York Bill Cullen episodes taped in the previous decade. The old title returned after about a year. No word if the current ABC/Michael Strahan version of the show will be changed to The New $100,000 Pyramid.

[bing101]

Live with Regis and Kathie Lee was originally called AM New York before it became nationally syndicated.  It aired on WABC TV in NYC as a local morning talk show before going nationwide.

Threes Company becoming Threes A Crowd after the Nicol Ross and Burditt fired Joyce DeWitt and Prisilla Barnes as well as Richard Kline and Don Knotts after the eighth season of the show, just so it can be retooled to give John Ritter the complete spotlight.   Of course that lasted only one complete season as many were pissed off that they pulled the plug on the 2 girls and the 1 guy sharing an apartment concept that worked for many years.  Even firing Suzanne Sommers did not get viewers as angry as this retooling did.

Don't forget AM Chicago later became Oprah Winfrey show when that show became national.

Also Regis Philbin did AM Los Angeles on KABC Channel 7 in Los Angeles before ABC moved him to New York to do "The Morning Show".


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_with_Kelly  Interestingly This article cited AM Los Angeles as the show that the Live with Kelly got its ideas from.

[bing101]

The Late Show on CBS had a name change based on host changes.


"The Late Show with David Letterman" is now called "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" as of 2016.


The Daily Show have name changes based on host reasons


The Daily Show with Craig Kilborn, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and now in 2016 as The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

[akotchi]

Reruns of Happy Days were packaged as Happy Days Again

Similarly, Emergency! became Emergency One! in reruns.

The various editions of The Tonight Show varied in title based on who was hosting.  Specifically, also, I think Johnny Carson's show was called "Best of Carson" when rebroadcast in the same slot.

[Henry]

The Pyramid game show has had many name changes, mostly based on cash prizes ($10,000, $20,000, $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000). In addition, Donny Osmond's version was titled simply Pyramid in 2002, and Mike Richards' 2012 revival was called The Pyramid, with no money mentioned in the title.

[SteveG1988]

Press your luck became, Whammy: the all new press your luck

Second City TV, multiple names like "SCTV NETWORK 90" and stuff like that.

Battlestar Galactica became Galactica 1980 when the network retooled it just to kill it. The show was never meant to be a success.

Star Trek: Enterprise was originally just "Enterprise" took them three seasons to come up with that change, 55 episodes in.

And then you have the dream seasons of the bob newhart show, which were called Newhart

[SP Cook]

Battlestar Galactica became Galactica 1980 when the network retooled it just to kill it. The show was never meant to be a success.

Why would a network spend money on a show that was never meant to be a success?  The story that I heard is that the show was so expensive to produce that the only time slot where it could possibably have enough potential audience (in the 3 channel by-gone world of 1978) to make money was Sunday at 8.  While it got reasonable ratings, the other 2 networks (the ones that had the NFL as a lead in) counterprogrammed and that, plus the launch of the first sat. delivered channels that began to divide the audience, meant that it simply lost money and ABC realized it could toss up more cheaply made fare and make money.

The follow on Gallactia:1980 (which was far less special effects dependent) was so named so it could be a legally different show, thus cutting out several actors and writers that had profit sharing deals in the original.

[SteveG1988]

Battlestar Galactica became Galactica 1980 when the network retooled it just to kill it. The show was never meant to be a success.

Why would a network spend money on a show that was never meant to be a success?  The story that I heard is that the show was so expensive to produce that the only time slot where it could possibably have enough potential audience (in the 3 channel by-gone world of 1978) to make money was Sunday at 8.  While it got reasonable ratings, the other 2 networks (the ones that had the NFL as a lead in) counterprogrammed and that, plus the launch of the first sat. delivered channels that began to divide the audience, meant that it simply lost money and ABC realized it could toss up more cheaply made fare and make money.

The follow on Gallactia:1980 (which was far less special effects dependent) was so named so it could be a legally different show, thus cutting out several actors and writers that had profit sharing deals in the original.

They canned it after one season, and then brought it back as Galactica: 1980 with a slashed budget. The fans wrote in to keep it going, hoping that it would work like it mythically did for star trek. Star Trek got a third season not because of a letter writing campaign, but because RCA wanted to sell more color tvs, and star trek was a show that people bought tvs for.

[SP Cook]

Star Trek got a third season not because of a letter writing campaign, but because RCA wanted to sell more color tvs, and star trek was a show that people bought tvs for.

Yes.  The reason the Star Trek uniforms were those bright primary colors was to sell color TVs (remember RCA owned NBC at the time) .  RCA had discovered that many people really did not get that much more out of a typical sitcom or cop show in color and were happy to keep the B&W set. 

For the same reason the cast of Bonanza (which was rerun as "Ponderosa" during its first run) all wore those bightly colored outfits,with contrasting vests and hats, which nobody in the west dressed like that; and the series was set in the scenic Sierra Nevada mountains by the shores of Lake Tahoe, rather than a much more likely flat brown plains of cattle country.

[lordsutch]

And then you have the dream seasons of the bob newhart show, which were called Newhart

Newhart was a completely separate show, aired years later, with different creators and a completely different cast other than Bob Newhart himself (Tom Poston was a guest on a few episodes of The Bob Newhart Show but wasn't a regular cast member). The ending that retconned it as a "dream" was brilliant, though.

As for Battlestar Galactica, ABC wanted a series that would capture the surprisingly big audience that showed up for Star Wars and gave it a feature budget to match (the pilot was even released as a movie in theaters); you can also see it somewhat as an effort to head off the Star Trek relaunch series (Phase 2) that was being considered at the time by their competitors (the concept eventually was retooled into The Next Generation, while the pilot script and sets were used in ST: TMP). It wasn't sustainable even though most of the fx shots were reused in later episodes. Galactica 80 was a retool to try to attract a kiddie audience and save money by moving the show to Earth where they wouldn't to use as much fx, and the end result was... crap.

[SteveG1988]

And then you have the dream seasons of the bob newhart show, which were called Newhart

Newhart was a completely separate show, aired years later, with different creators and a completely different cast other than Bob Newhart himself (Tom Poston was a guest on a few episodes of The Bob Newhart Show but wasn't a regular cast member). The ending that retconned it as a "dream" was brilliant, though.

As for Battlestar Galactica, ABC wanted a series that would capture the surprisingly big audience that showed up for Star Wars and gave it a feature budget to match (the pilot was even released as a movie in theaters); you can also see it somewhat as an effort to head off the Star Trek relaunch series (Phase 2) that was being considered at the time by their competitors (the concept eventually was retooled into The Next Generation, while the pilot script and sets were used in ST: TMP). It wasn't sustainable even though most of the fx shots were reused in later episodes. Galactica 80 was a retool to try to attract a kiddie audience and save money by moving the show to Earth where they wouldn't to use as much fx, and the end result was... crap.

The newhart thing was a joke to see if anyone would get it.

[roadman]

Speaking of cartoons, "Partridge Family 2200 A.D." was also known as "The Partridge Family in Outer Space".  Not sure if that was a syndication thing.

I doubt this was the case.  I don't recall that any animated series were ever re-named when they went from Saturday morning to daytime syndication.  As I understand it, until the advent of basic cable channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, and the later networks like UPN and WB, cartoon producers like Hanna-Barbera were never directly affiliated with network executives like producers of prime time shows were.  Rather, they normally worked independently and shilled their cartoons to everyone.  Whomever gave them the best deal was allowed to air the show.

As a sidebar, I was a huge Partridge Family fan as a kid.  But I somehow managed to miss Partridge Family 2200 AD until I watched a couple episodes provided on the Season 1 DVD set.  Besides being a ripoff of the original Jetsons (still one of my favorite cartoons), I regard it as a classic example of the decline of Hanna-Barbera in the early 1970s - which began when they shifted from goofy, almost implausible human characters (like in Wacky Races) and tried to make them much more human in appearance and mannerisms (like Scooby-Doo, Josie and the Pussycats, and a handful of other forgettable offerings).  Perhaps if H-B had stuck to the animation techniques they were using when making Tom and Jerry years earlier, things might have been different.