4. Timing is Everything
Photo: famousfix
Many wonder why Captain Kangaroo was canceled even though it had overwhelming support for more than 25 years. It turns out it all came down to a single time slot change. Peter Birch, who directed the show for 25 extremely successful years, suffered a massive heart attack in 1980 that ended up being fatal. Shortly thereafter, CBS decided to switch the show to a time slot at 6:30 AM. Which wasn’t that big of a deal for children because they would wake up to tune in. However, it was their parents that also woke up and wanted to watch either Good Morning America on ABC, or the Today Show on NBC, which aired at the same time. It proved to be too much for the show to compete with and eventually Keeshan had to admit defeat and the show was taken off air in 1993.