The Headmaster (TV series)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Headmaster was a half-hour television drama broadcast by CBS in the United States during the 1970-71 season.

The Headmaster marked the return to series television of Andy Griffith, whose previous eponymous show had been one of CBS's major hits of the 1960s prior to his voluntary departure and a program whose successful spinoff/continuation, Mayberry R.F.D., was still in production when The Headmaster was launched. With The Headmaster, Griffith fulfilled his desire to be cast as something other than a rural bumpkin dispensing folksy wisdom; here his character, Andy Thompson, was the headmaster of a prestigious California private school, the Concord School. His wife, Margaret (Claudette Nevins), was an English teacher; his best friend was the school's main athletic coach, Jerry Brownell (Jerry Van Dyke).

Despite being aired in the Friday night 8:30 Eastern time slot vacated by the popular Hogan's Heroes, a theme song sung by Linda Ronstadt, and featuring arguably the biggest CBS star of the 1960s, The Headmaster did not prove to be popular and was routinely beaten in the Nielsen ratings by both The Partridge Family on ABC and The Name of the Game on NBC. When this pattern became apparent, production of The Headmaster was terminated, with the last first-run show being broadcast January 1, 1971, and the program replaced by a new situation comedy starring Griffith, The New Andy Griffith Show. This replacement program met with little more success than The Headmaster, and was last broadcast on May 21, 1971. In June 1971, The Headmaster returned to the time slot in reruns, with the last repeat episode being aired on September 10, 1971.