The Rockford Files - Aftermath

Aftermath

Later in the 1980s, after he attempted to fulfill his Rockford contract with a 1981 Maverick revival titled Bret Maverick, Garner became engaged in a legal dispute with Universal regarding the profits from Rockford that lasted over a decade, causing (and reflecting) significant ill will on both sides. The dispute was settled out of court (for an undisclosed amount) in Garner's favor, but because of this conflict, the Rockford character would not re-emerge until 1994.

Universal began syndicating the show (initially under the name Jim Rockford, Private Investigator due to standard practices at that time for a show still running on a network) in 1979 and aggressively marketed it to local stations well into the early and middle 1980s. This almost certainly accounts for its near-ubiquity on afternoon and late-night schedules in those days. From those showings, Rockford developed a cult following among younger generations of fans, with the momentum continuing throughout the 1990s and 2000s (decade) on cable. The show was broadcast for a few months in 2006 on Superstation WGN, before the station cancelled it in favor of Matlock. In 2007, the Retro Television Network began broadcasting the program nationwide, as did the digital cable channel Sleuth and Chicago TV station WWME-CA. ION Television also has rights to the show and has it slated for future broadcast. In the fall of 2009, the show reappeared in Canada on Deja View. The series was also broadcast in the UK on BBC1 and has since been repeated on BBC2 and ITV (later named ITV1) and also on Granada +Plus, which later became ITV3, although none of these channels repeated the later seasons. In Australia, the series runs Monday - Friday on cable and satellite channel Fox Classics and on 7Mate. In September 2011, the MeTV Network in the U.S. began showing Rockford episodes Monday through Friday afternoons. In 2012 6 Seasons, 124 Episodes became availble for viewing on Netflix Instant Video.

Rockford's style was said to have influenced the creation of many other detective shows, including Magnum, P.I. and Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (the latter also created by Cannell). Tom Selleck made two guest appearances on Rockford in the comic role of private investigator Lance White, a character who was everything Rockford was not — wealthy, highly educated, debonair, irresistible to women, and ethical to a fault. Rockford's producers would tap Selleck in the TV season after the Rockford cancellation for Universal's Magnum, P.I., where he played a character similar in many ways to Rockford, although with wholesome, patriotic undertones in the context and plots. Several episodes of Magnum make reference to the character of Lance White.

In turn, Rockford was pencilled in to appear in the seventh season Magnum, P.I. episode "A.A.P.I." (1986; in which Cannell also guest starred), concerning a murder at a Private Investigator awards ceremony, but a dispute between Garner and Universal (Garner reportedly refused to even set foot on a single Universal film set until it was resolved) meant that the planned cameo had to be dropped.