p.m. Monday time slot for well over a year. Before Jim Sharky and Sean Haffner requested that time slot, many producers at WFAC-TV considered it to be one of the worst time slots on the station's programming schedule. Over the course of each year, any programs which broadcast in the 9 p.m. Monday time slot would be competing with Monday Night Football, Monday Night Baseball and Roseanne (when it was number 1 in the Nielsen ratings), just to name a few programs. It was the general consensus at WFAC-TV that only a very few viewers would ignore the ratings juggernauts on network television to watch a local talk show (or any other program, for that matter). Sharky and Haffner preferred the 9 p.m. Monday time slot, because it meant that they could produce The Lone Shark on a night when they would not usually have any personal obligations to attend to. That left the rest of the week open for their social lives, unlike time slots later in the week in which the program had been previously scheduled. This also meant that all preparation for The Lone Shark (what little there was) could be done during the weekend immediately preceding the Monday night broadcast. After only a few weeks in the 9 p.m. Monday time slot, The Lone Shark was receiving just as many—if not more—phone calls as the program had received in its other time slots. The Lone Shark was also being written about in local newspapers, as well as being mentioned on-air by local radio personalities. What had—at first—seemed to be a bad time slot to the new producers now seemed to be one of the WFAC-TV program schedule's best time slots. The new producers did not take into account that by this time, The Lone Shark was one of the longer-running programs on WFAC-TV, having produced episodes for more than five years. They also did not consider that fans of the program were very loyal and would forgo watching other programs to instead watch The Lone Shark. The new producers believed that the 9 p.m. Monday time slot was the reason for the program's popularity – and they wanted the time slot for their own programs. Having been in charge of The Lone Shark’s paperwork for more than five years (including the booking of studio and air time slots), producer Sean Haffner always made sure to immediately