Sam’s foil was a waitress named Diane Chambers, an intellectual snob stranded at the bar by a flyaway fiancé. Bar owner Sam Malone was an unapologetic Lothario who constantly was wooing not-so-bright women. Witty repartee among the show’s memorable characters kept viewers tuning in. Writing is a crucial bottleneck to quality television and was essential for Cheers’s success. Cheers stayed on prime-time television for eleven seasons, and forty million viewers watched its final episode. Cheers became a mainstay of NBC’s blockbuster Thursday-night programming, along with The Cosby Show and Family Ties. An undeterred NBC stuck with it, and the network’s faith paid dividends. The show sank to the bottom of TV ratings. When Cheers, set in a Boston bar “where everybody knows your name,” debuted in September 1982, the critics loved it, but ordinary viewers were not so enamored. Once upon a time, an amiable show called Cheers ruled television. Excerpted from "Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World"
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