I received many messages commenting on the clip I linked to of the "pitch" reel for The Muppet Show. Roy Currlin sent this one that I thought you'd like to read…
One of the CBS executives mentioned in the video (Lee Currlin), is my father. After his stint at the network, he was in charge of program acquisition for the CBS owned and operated stations. He bought The Muppet Show for the stations, so I guess the pitch kinda eventually did work? (Dad died over 15 years ago, so I can't ask him.)
And of course, the interesting thing here is that CBS may not have turned the project down because they didn't think it was any good. They may have said no because it didn't fit their programming needs at that moment…and then later, your father knew the perfect spot for it.
This one's from Craig Shemin, and I got this yesterday so the "tomorrow" he mentions is today…
As a former (and sometimes current) writer for the Muppets, and Vice President of The Jim Henson Legacy, I'm delighted you posted the Muppet Show pitch video, but I wanted to address what you said about it not being a good illustration of the content of the show. Actually, the video begins with "in conclusion" and as such, is really just the tail end of a longer pitch reel that included clips from various Muppet specials and television appearances that were similar in tone to what The Muppet Show became. The last couple of minutes was just a way to customize the pitch and end with a laugh — and to try to emphasize what many people were having trouble understanding since the success of Sesame Street — that the Muppets originally were made to entertain adults. (Jim Henson's first show, Sam & Friends aired twice a day in Washington, D.C. before the evening news and before Steve Allen's version of The Tonight Show).
Since this video of the pitch reel appears to be taken from the DVD release of The Muppet Show, it does not include the original tag which has Kermit in front of a CBS eye looking to camera and saying "What the hell was that all about?" I think Disney (owners of ABC) did not want to show (or could not show) the logo of a rival network.
Oh, and speaking of Sam & Friends, the original Kermit and the other members of the Sam and Friends cast will find a new home tomorrow, as they will be donated to the Smithsonian's Museum of American History.
You're probably right that they didn't want to show a CBS logo there. Some companies are very fussy about how their own logos are used and so they're extra courteous (shall we say…) with those of competitors. I'm still wondering if the direct references to CBS execs in the pitch hurt the show's chances more than helping them but I suppose we'll never know. I'm also wondering if they were angling the show for a specific time slot, which is how most development went in those days. There was a tendency for the networks to put out the word that they were looking for candidates to replace what they had on at, say, 8 PM on Thursday and not give a lot of consideration to putting the submission on in another spot. If so, it would be interesting to know what seemed more appealing than what Mssrs. Henson and Schlatter were offering.