Tuesday, May 01, 1984

New York NY -- NEW YORK (AP) - Happy Days, ABC's top-rated series seven years ago and one of television's most successful and enduring situation comedies, has been cancelled, along with Fantasy Island and Hart to Hart, the network announced yesterday.


Second-rated ABC, the first network to announce its 1984-85 prime-time TV schedule, will have nine new series, including a spinoff of Three's Company, with John Ritter the only holdover from the old show. Instead of a platonic relationship with two female roommates, Jack Tripper (Ritter) will move in with his girl friend in Three's a Crowd.

Four of the new series are comedies, including another show that plays jokes on its subjects, People Do the Craziest Things. The others are dramas and light action-adventures.

Top-rated CBS's schedule will be announced Thursday, while No. 3 NBC waits until May 10.

Besides Happy Days, Fantasy Island and Hart to Hart, cancelled series from ABC's original 1983-84 season are That's Incredible, Oh Madeline, 9 to 5, Trauma Centre, Lottery, Just Our Luck and It's Not Easy. Of those shows that made their debut later in the season, six are being cancelled: a.k.a. Pablo, Norman Lear's first new comedy in recent years, Two Marriages, Masquerade, Automan, Shaping Up and Blue Thunder.

Aaron Spelling Productions will continue to program seven hours of ABC's 22-hour prime-time schedule, despite the cancellations of Spelling's Fantasy Island and Hart to Hart. His new series will be Glitter, a comedy- drama starring David Birney and Morgan Brittany, and Finder of Lost Loves.

Glitter is about a magazine that sends reporters to investigate glamorous people and places. In Finder of Lost Loves, Tony Franciosa, whose wife has just died, reunites couples who have lost track of each other.

Other new shows are: Streethawk, starring Rex Smith as a secret government crime-stopper; Paper Dolls, starring Morgan Fairchild, Lloyd Bridges and Brenda Vaccaro, about young fashion models and their families; Jessie, starring Lindsay Wagner as a big-city police psychiatrist who deals with violent criminals and their victims; Who's the Boss, starring Tony Danza as a former athlete who becomes a live-in housekeeper for a successful female advertising executive (Judith Light), and Honolulu Run, about two young Chicago cops who become plainclothes detectives in Hawaii.