Webster (TV Series) - Cancellation and Move To Syndication

Cancellation and Move To Syndication

Even though Webster had seen its overall ratings decline leading into its cancellation, the series had always drawn a large audience of younger viewers— in fact, Webster's largest audience was children.

At the time of the cancellation of Webster by ABC, there was a trend in syndication of seeing various television series that had been cancelled by the three major networks find new life as weekly syndicated series (examples including Mama's Family, Charles In Charge, and It's a Living). With that as well as its consciousness of its new target demographic, Paramount elected to keep Webster in production and its syndication arm began selling the series to local stations across the United States.

Webster's fifth season premiered in syndication on September 21, 1987, with a three-episode story arc which saw Webster, George, and Katherine head to San Francisco. Beginning with the fourth episode of the season, the Papadopolis household gained a new member in George's nephew Nicky (Corin Nemec), who moved in when his parents went off to work in Nigeria on assignment for the United Nations. Nicky provided Webster with a sort of "brother figure", and the two got along famously. However, Nicky was gone from the show at the start of season six (Nemec would later reach greater fame as the star of Fox's Parker Lewis Can't Lose). Although no longer a regular when the series moved to first-run syndication, Papa Papadopolis continued to make a few guest appearances during the fifth and sixth seasons.

While the lead character's plots continued to mature somewhat with Webster's onset of pre-teendom, the same "cutesy factor" remained, thanks in part to Lewis' timing and portrayal. However, this was something Lewis was slowly tiring of, despite the fact that he had more creative control over Webster at this point. Now 17 years old and about to complete his high school education (which was followed by his enrollment at Clark Atlanta University in 1989), Lewis did not have the desire to continue portraying a character roughly half his age. Ultimately, due to Lewis' height, the character of Webster Long was only depicted between the ages of 5 to 8 years old over the show's six seasons. Early in the 1988-89 season, with Lewis clearly outgrowing the title role, Karras and Clark also decided that the time was right to move on. Webster's sixth season was announced to be its last, with the finale airing on March 10, 1989. Instead of a typical series finale, the last episode— titled "Webtrek"— saw Webster, George and Katherine go on an adventure aboard the Starship Enterprise from the series' Paramount-produced sibling, Star Trek: The Next Generation. There, they interract with Lt. Worf (Michael Dorn) from TNG, whom Webster attempts to humanize, while a series of Webster flashbacks are shown that depict the concept of feelings.