Madman of the People

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Madman of the People was a short-lived sitcom broadcast on the American network NBC from 1994 to 1995. It had the Thursday 9:30 timeslot, part of Must See TV. It starred veteran character actor Dabney Coleman as Jack "Madman" Buckner, an outspoken newspaper columnist who had written a popular column, Madman of the People, for 30 years. The pilot was broadcast on September 22, 1994 and there were a total of 16 episodes. It was produced by Kreiscluesco Industries/Spelling Television.^[1]

The premise of the show involved his daughter, Meg, being brought in by the publisher to bring Buckner's column into the 1990s. Though it initially won favorable opinions from critics, and was a hit with audiences, ranking 12th for the season and averaging 14,214,600 households per episode, it was still cancelled after only one season, making it one of the highest rated shows ever to get cancelled, according to classictvhits.com. While the show did well in the ratings, it lost a huge percentage of its lead-in audience from Seinfeld and was also hindering the then-freshman hit drama ER. NBC noticed the early success of Friends and decided to re-shuffle its lineup to put that show in the 9:30 PM EST spot, leading to one of the most dominant programming blocs in TV history, while "Madman of the People" became a footnote in that history.