On this day in 1967, 78 million people tuned in to watch the finale of The Fugitive

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Created by Roy Huggins, the show began on Sept. 17, 1963, with one of the all-time greatest television premises: A doctor named Richard Kimble (David Janssen) has been convicted for the murder of his wife, although he claims to be innocent and that she was instead killed by a "one-armed man." But the train carrying him to be executed derails and he escapes. This allows him to clear his name by finding the One-Armed Man (Bill Raisch), but it also means that Kimble is relentlessly hunted by a police detective named Lt. Philip Gerard (Barry Morse), who wants to return him to death row.

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Goldberg explained that he fought hard to give the viewers the ending they deserved because they were so "deeply invested" in the show.

He won, but the network struck a hard bargain: The final episode – which would be split into two parts – would be allowed to air only in August, the deadest time of the TV calendar.

But despite this handicap, the finale triumphed. The first part of the episode, which aired on Aug. 22, did fine. But the second part smashed every record for TV viewership that existed at that point. Over 78 million viewers tuned into the show, which meant that 72% of people who were watching television that Tuesday night were watching The Fugitive. It was a record for regularly programmed television – beating out the Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show three years before – that would stand until the "Who Shot JR.?" episode of Dallas in 1980.

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How The Fugitive Proved TV Shows Could End Successfully (on ultimateclassicrock.com)

Found this article, while trying to find out what was on the other two channels at the same time.

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78 million people is a massive number for 1967.

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Indeed it was. The population of the United States in 1967 was just approaching 200 million so that was approximately 40% of the entire country. Pretty impressive

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The other networks must have known what they’d be up against; opposite part one of “The Judgment,”

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CBS aired a Harry Reasoner documentary on “The Hippie Temptation,”

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NBC showed a rerun of the movie The War of the Worlds

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Try this today:

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unlike other series finales, the conclusion to The Fugitive was aired in August, after the rerun season. As it was known that the fourth season of The Fugitive was to be the last, this allowed the suspense to build up throughout the summer; had that final episode aired in May or June, the reruns might have seemed ridiculous, but this way they were still relevant, still part of the chase, since Kimble was theoretically still running. Therefore, when the series ended, it really ended. It’s a brilliant idea, and I still wonder why more series don’t do it that way.

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I bet the 2nd to the last episodes was a big cliffhanger, that probably pissed a bunch of people off. Would be interesting to talk with a fan about this.

www.itsabouttv.com

PLUS --- you are forgetting the most important aspect of this, besides getting off the couch to change the channel

The majority of households in 1967 had:

Had only one television

My favorite episode is probably "Nightmare at North Oak," which is about as beautifully concocted a suspense piece as can be made. 1960s episodic television at its best.

Also often appreciated episodes like "Come Watch Me Die," which had Kimball unwittingly deputized into a posse of locals to help capture and transport a youthful man accused of a killing. Amidst the rowdy captors, and seeing his own innocent self a bit in the desperate prisoner, Kimble falters in his judgment and has to rectify things. I liked the way the writers didn't take the easy and common (back then) trope of making the young prisoner innocent. "The Fugitive" was good about avoiding such predictable takes. Ditto for "Naked City," another great 1960s series.

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78 million people is a massive number for 1967.

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How many households even had TVs in 1967? Wasn't it still a pretty big deal to have a TV set? I think a lot of people were still "watching" the radio back then