has also passed." Bart Andrews, in his 1980 book The Worst TV Shows Ever, stated that Turn-On was actually quite close to the original concept for Laugh-In. "It wasn't that it was a bad show, it was that it was an awkward show," concluded author Harlan Ellison, a fan of counter-cultural comedy and a TV critic for the Los Angeles Free Press in 1969. On February 7, ABC announced that Turn-On would go on hiatus. Instead of the scheduled February 12 episode, the ABC Wednesday Night Movie (The Oscar, itself an infamous flop) would start 30 minutes early. This announcement came after the following week's TV Guide went to press; it published a listing for the scheduled February 12 episode, which would have starred Robert Culp and then-wife France Nuyen as hosts. Finally, on February 10, the show was formally canceled. By this time, WEWS, KBTV, and KATV all told ABC that they would not air the show again; with several other affiliates having already turned it down, it no longer made financial sense to air it. ABC received 369 calls of complaint during the show and 20 calls that supported it; by comparison, the network received 1,800 protest calls several weeks earlier after preempting the Wednesday Night Movie for an address by President Richard Nixon introducing his cabinet appointees. Network officials told sponsor Bristol-Myers that the show was unacceptable and Bristol-Myers ordered Schlatter and Friendly to end production. Many assumed the show's title was itself an implicit reference to Timothy Leary's pro-drug maxim, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". The network eventually replaced Turn On with a revival of The King Family Show. The controversy led ABC to reject a pilot written by Norman Lear, stating that the lead character was "foul-mouthed, and bigoted", out of fear that it might anger its affiliates again. CBS liked the pilot, picked it up as All in the Family, and began airing it during the 1970-71 midseason. In 2002, Turn-On was ranked number 27 on TV Guide's 50 Worst TV Shows of All Time. What Were They Thinking?: The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History'' ranked it at number 25. See also List of television series canceled after one episode List of television shows considered the worst References External links American Broadcasting Company original programming American television sketch shows Television series canceled after one episode Television controversies in the United States