History
The show started as an eight-episode summer replacement series on CBS in 1990. It returned for seven more episodes in spring 1991, then became a regular part of the network's schedule in 1991-92, where it was among the top 10 among 18 to 49-year-olds, as well as in 1992-93, and 1993-94. Its last season, 1994-95, included a gap during May 1995 sweeps when CBS broadcast other programming.
Northern Exposure began with a focus on Joel Fleischman as an audience-identification character for urban "lower 48" viewers, with storylines revolving around his fish-out-of-water difficulties adjusting to Alaska, and his hot-and-cold romantic involvements with Maggie O'Connell. As Northern Exposure continued, supporting characters such as Chris, Ed, Holling, Shelly, Maurice and Ruth-Anne (along with recurring characters such as Adam and Eve, Barbara Semanski and Bernard) received more development.
Rob Morrow (Joel Fleischman) and his representatives spent much of Seasons 4 and 5 lobbying for an improved contract, and intermittently threatened to leave the show. The producers responded by reducing Fleischman's role in the storylines, and introducing characters such as Mike Monroe (season 4) and Dr. Phil Capra (season 6) to partially compensate for the absence of Morrow.
Read more about this topic: Northern Exposure
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“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)