‘Cheers’ Tried 1 Money Saving Trick That Ended up a Disaster
The NBC comedy Cheers proved a lucrative hit. Not only did it run for 11 seasons, but it launched the spinoff Frasier which ran for 11 more. But, it wasn’t always a hit. In fact, the first season, it was at the bottom of the ratings until summer reruns. During that dark period, the studio, Paramount, tried one way to save money on Cheers but it did not work.
Cheers writer Ken Levine shared the story of the show’s money saving mistake on his podcast, Hollywood and Levine. Be glad they didn’t go with this idea.
‘Cheers’ considered a different process to save money
Cheers announced “Cheers was filmed before a live studio audience” as a disclaimer to confirm real human beings were laughing, not a laugh track. But, in 1982, video tape was emerging as a less expensive option.
“How many of you knew that Cheers almost switched from film to tape?” Levine said on Hollywood & Levine. “You know at the beginning of each episode they say, ‘Cheers was filmed before a live studio audience?’ Well, it was almost ‘Cheers was taped before a live studio audience.’ The story behind that is this.”
The theory was that if Cheers cost less, NBC might be more inclined to keep them around despite low ratings.
“About halfway through the first season, remember Cheers had been doing terrible in the ratings,” Levine said. “So Paramount thought well, maybe to save the show, if we went from film to tape, it would be much cheaper. Maybe NBC would decide well, you know what, it’s cheap, what the hell. Let’s give it another 9 episodes.’”
‘Cheers’ actually taped one scene to demonstrate the difference
To see what Cheers might look like on tape, they actually recorded one scene with the entire cast.
“So they did a test on the stage one day,” Levine said. “They lit it differently, they brought in tape cameras, they got the whole cast to do a scene. Jim Burrows was the director and Jimmy had a lot of different angles so that you could see the set from all kinds of different locations. Put it together, it was edited and we brought it up to Les Charles’ office. Les and Glen Charles, Jim Burrows, me and David [Isaacs], the editor, the line producer, we all sat down and watched this test scene.”
The show did not look right on tape
Despite all that effort, tape did not do Cheers any favors. Thanks to the show’s look on film, the actual Bull & Finch bar in Boston became Cheers, modeled after the interior with a few changes.
“It was awful,” Levine said. “Just ghastly. Any charm that the bar had, any softness, any warmth, any real sense of color and fun, all was eliminated. It became just very stark and it looked ugly. Cheers went from looking beautiful to looking ugly. To the credit of the Charles brothers and Jimmy Burrows, that was the end of that experiment. So Cheers was never shot on tape.”
After 11 seasons on film and decades in syndication, Levine would be curious to see that old tape test again.
“I wonder if that exists,” Levine said. “Boy, that would really be fun to see on YouTube someday. It was truly, truly horrifying.”
