That same year, CBS was also considering a new comedy
show starring Mary Tyler Moore. It, too, was a departure for
television. The main character, Mary Richards, was a young,
single woman who was interested not in starting a family — as
practically every previous television heroine had been — but in
advancing her career. CBS ran the first show through the
Program Analyzer. The results were devastating. Mary was a
“loser.” Her neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern was “too abrasive,”
and another of the major female characters on the show, Phyllis
Lind-strom, was seen as “not believable.” The only reason The
Mary Tyler Moore Show survived was that by the time CBS
tested it, it was already scheduled for broadcast. “Had The MTM
been a mere pilot, such overwhelmingly negative comments
would have buried it,” Sally Bedell [Smith] writes in her
biography of Silverman, Up the Tube.
All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in other
words, were the television equivalents of the Aeron chair.
Viewers said they hated them. But, as quickly became clear
when these sitcoms became two of the most successful
programs in television history, viewers didn’t actually hate
them. They were just shocked by them. And all of the
ballyhooed techniques used by the armies of market researchers