Here’s to Cheers! The Show That Took Us off the Sofa and into the Pub

Thanks to The Cosby Show

“There were times when I thought we couldn’t possibly survive,” said Glen Charles. “But the reviews were great, and the audience we did have seemed to love the show.” The show was helped by the fact that NBC was in a desperate state in the early 1980s. With no hit shows, NBC figured it should hang onto the one show that was getting good ink.

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A still of the tv show The Cosby Show. Photo by NBC-Tv / Kobal / Shutterstock

By the time NBC started airing The Cosby Show, hordes of viewers had started tuning in on Thursday nights. Those viewers discovered Cheers on the way, and so the series shot upward in the ratings. The pub stayed open, so to speak, for 11 years, becoming the longest-running comedy ever on NBC.