re: 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.