Why did they cancel Gilligan's Island?

Answer 1

The series was doing well in the ratings and was scheduled to be picked up for a fourth season. The show's creator, Sherwood Schwartz, had already called the cast to tell them the show had been picked up. Schwartz later received a second call from the network telling him the show was canceled. This was because the wife ('Babe' Paley) of the president (William Paley) of the network, CBS, was upset when her favorite show on the network, Gunsmoke, was canceled. She demanded it be picked back up. The series was an hour show but the network only had a 30 minute block of air time open in the whole weekly line-up. Therefore CBS executives (who never liked Gilligan's Island in spite of the fact the public liked it and the series pulled in good ratings) decided to cancel it to open up another 30 minute block of time. This in turn gave Gunsmoke the one hour block in the Monday night time slot it needed. Interestingly enough Gunsmoke went on to run for a total of 20 years in prime time and became the longest running prime time drama in US television history!