In the mid-1970s, MTM Productions had achieved both critical and popular success with a range of programming. So it was an unexpected move when four of the company's finest writers and producers, James L. Brooks, Stan Daniels, David Davis, and Ed Wein­ Berger, jumped off the stable ship of MTM in 1978 to form their own production company, John Charles Walters Company. To launch their new venture, they looked back to an idea that Brooks and Davis had previously considered with MTM: the daily life of a New York City taxi company. From MTM head Grant Tinker, they purchased the rights to the newspaper article that had initiated the concept and began producing this new show at Paramount for ABC. They brought a few other MTM veterans along for the ride, including director James Burrows and writer/producers Glen and Les Charles.

     Although Taxi certainly bore many of the trademark signs of "quality television" as exemplified by MTM, other changes in style and focus distinguished this program from an MTM product. After working on the middle-class, female-centered worlds of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, and Phyllis for years, the group at John Charles Walters wanted to create a program focusing on blue-collar male experience. MTM programs all had clearly defined settings, but Taxi's creators wanted a show that was firmly rooted in a city's identity-Taxi's situations and mood were distinctly New York. Despite MTM Productions' innovations in creating ensemble character comedy, there was always one central star around which the ensemble revolved. In Taxi, Judd Hirsch's Alex Rieger was a main character, but his importance seemed secondary to the centrality of the ensemble and the Sunshine Cab Company itself . While The Mary Tyler Moore Show proudly proclaimed that "you're going to make it on your own," the destitute drivers of Taxi were doomed to perpetual failure; the closest any of them came to happiness was Rieger's content acceptance of his lot in life.

     Taxi debuted on September 12, 1978, amid a strong ABC Tuesday-night lineup . It followed Three's Company, a wildly successful example of the type of show against which MTM "quality" sitcoms reacted. Taxi used this strong position to end the season ninth in the ratings and garner its first of three straight Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series. The show's success was due to its excellent writing, Burrows's award-winning directing (using his innovative four-camera technique), and the largely unknown but talented cast. Danny DeVito's Louie DePalma soon became one of the most despised men on television, possibly the most unredeemable and worthless character ever to reside on the small screen. Andy Kaufman's foreign mechanic Latka Gravas provided over-the-top comedy within an ensemble emphasizing subtle character humor. But Kaufman sometimes also brought a demonic edge to the character, an echo of his infamous appearances on Saturday Night Live as a macho wrestler of women and Mighty Mouse lip-syncher . In the second season Christopher Lloyd's Reverend Jim Ignatowski was added to the group as television's first drugged­ out, 1960s-generation bum-out character. But Lloyd's Emmy-winning performance created in Jim more than just a storehouse of fried brain cells; he established a deep, complex humanity that moved far beyond mere caricature. The program launched successful movie careers for DeVito and Lloyd, as well as the fairly notable television careers of Tony Danza and Marilu Henner; Kaufman's controversial career would certainly have continued had he not died of cancer in 1984.

     In its third season, ABC moved Taxi from beneath Three's Company's protective wing to a more competitive Wednesday night slot; the ratings plummeted, and Taxi finished the next two years in 53rd place. ABC canceled the show in early 1982 as part of a larger network push away from "quality" and toward the Aaron Spelling-produced popular fare of Dynasty and The Love Boat. HBO bid for the show, looking for it to become the first ongoing sitcom for the pay channel, but it lost out to NBC, which scheduled the series for the 1982-83 season. Ironically, this reunited the show's executive producers with their former boss Tinker, who had taken over NBC. Tinker's reign at NBC was focused, not surprisingly, on "quality" programming, which he hoped would attract viewers to the perennially last-place network. Taxi was partnered with a very compatible show on Thursday night, Cheers, created by Taxi veterans Charles, Burrows, and Charles. Although this lineup featured some notably distinctive and successful programs (the comedies were sandwiched between the dramas Fame and Hill Street Blues) the ratings were dreadful, and Taxi finished the season in 73rd place. NBC was willing to give the low­ rated Cheers another chance, but the network felt Taxi had run its course and canceled it at the end of the season. Had Taxi been given another year or two in the same slot, it would have been part of one of the most successful nights on television, featuring The Cosby Show (co-created by Taxi creator Weinberger), Family Ties, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and eventual power­ house Cheers.

     Taxi lives on in syndication, and was recreated with original cast members in the 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic. Man on the Moon, but its most significant place in U.S. television history is as the middle generation between The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Cheers. It served as a transition between the star-driven, middle­ class character comedy of MTM programs and the location-centered, ensemble comedy inhabited by the losers of Cheers. Considered one of the great U.S. sitcoms of its era, Taxi stands as a prime example of the constant tension in television programming between standards of quality and reliance on high ratings to determine success.