This month our theme is “Variety is the Spice of Life.” If I mention the name Don Knotts, almost everyone probably pictures Barney Fife from Mayberry. You might also think about some of his well-known movies including The Ghost and Mr. Chicken or The Shakiest Gun in the West. However, you might be surprised to know that Don Knotts had his own variety show on NBC for a season in 1970.

Don had a few regulars in his cast including Gary Burghoff, Louis Nye, and Elaine Joyce. He had musical guests interspersed with skits. Joyce might have made the worse choice in her entire career when she agreed to join this show because to do it, she turned down a chance to be part of the cast of The Carol Burnett Show.

Two recurring skits were about the process it took to put a weekly television show together and another one was similar to one Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman did called “The Front Porch” with Don and a guest sitting on a rocking chair discussing life.

Knotts’ show did not attract viewers. After a few episodes, the network hired Bob Sweeney who had directed The Andy Griffith Show. Don said Sweeney “came in and made some changes in the writing staff. Then he made some changes in the show creatively. And he did a good job, He improved the show, I thought.” Sweeney also hired Burghoff for the show.

While Andy Williams debuted the Osmond Brothers, Don’s claim to fame for his variety show was debuting The Carpenters.

While there were a lot of variety shows on television, the schedulers didn’t do Knotts any favors. His show was up against The Mod Squad on ABC and The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres on CBS. That is some tough competition. And this was an era when a family typically had one television, and the entire family had to agree on what they were watching together.

During his Television Academy interview, Don discussed his show. “We did all kinds of things, but in the end, the show just couldn’t compete with shows like The Carol Burnett Show, Donny & Marie, or Sonny & Cher. There was tremendous competition that season for variety, because everybody and his brother had a variety show.”

I think Don was right about why his show failed, but even with so many variety shows, I think there were a few other problems with this one. There were 12 other variety shows on the air during this year, including Knotts’ friend Jim Nabors, but scheduling was a huge barrier to overcome.

Also, Knotts was introduced to America as a cast member of The Steve Allen Show, and he was great on that one. I think the country wasn’t ready to accept him as a host on a show though. He spent his entire career as Barney Fife, an over-confident sidekick who helped the sheriff in Mayberry. His movie characters were all nervous, timid people who found a surprising way to beat the bad guys. Suddenly he was the star of the show and it’s a tough typecasting role for fans to adjust to.

That said, I’m putting this failure on the network for having too many variety shows on the air and not scheduling them against each other so the most popular ones rose to the top. And this was in the early seventies. Think about the shows that were starting at the time, very different shows from the fifties and sixties hits. Knotts was not the only one to fail at this time, so he could chalk it up to a life lesson learned and quickly wipe it from his memory.