CBS Was Certain Something Was Wrong With Gilligan’s Island Test Audiences

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The beloved CBS sitcom, “Gilligan’s Island,” famously followed a group of castaways who were stranded after their boat sank, but the series almost never left port. Network executives hated the concept, to the point where they couldn’t understand what test audiences liked about the pilot episode. As Russell Johnson, who played The Professor, explained in his book, “Here on Gilligan’s Isle,” dislike for the premise went all the way up to the top. CBS president, Jim Aubrey, supposedly hated the idea, and even though there were some executives who backed creator Sherwood Schwartz’s vision for the show, it was an uphill battle.

When Schwartz sent CBS the completed pilot, the network brass “hated it,” according to Johnson — though they didn’t give any actual notes to go with their rejection. Schwartz made some tweaks, including adding the theme song and recasting a few characters, and tried again. Test audiences loved it. CBS executives thought they were crazy, or that something was wrong. The network simply couldn’t understand why anybody would like “Gilligan’s Island,” so they showed it to new test audiences again and again, hoping that at least one crowd would confirm their disdain.

It never happened. Aubrey was eventually forced to give the audiences what they apparently wanted, and “Gilligan’s Island” got the green light. Although the classic ’60s show couldn’t be made today, the series ended up running for three seasons, premiering on September 26, 1964, and ending on April 17, 1967. Three TV films followed and the show is considered a classic. 

Before conceding that Sherwood Schwartz’s proposed series had audience appeal, Jim Aubrey and other skeptics at CBS kept making suggestions for changes to the show. 

One such idea was scrapping the castaway aspect — you know, the whole premise — and just having the S.S. Minnow go on a new cruise each week. Fun guest stars could come aboard every episode. As Russell Johnson noted in his book, this idea sounds a lot like “The Love Boat,” which premiered on ABC more than a decade later, so maybe it wasn’t that crazy of a suggestion. It just wouldn’t have been “Gilligan’s Island” (though it may have saved the cast from a pilot episode nobody was happy about).

Perhaps the wildest proposed change was one executive’s suggestion that Gilligan should become friends with a talking dinosaur who lives on the other side of the island. The final “Gilligan’s Island” wasn’t the most grounded, realistic show ever to air on American TV (a robot visited the island on one occasion), but a talking Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops would’ve been something else entirely.