TLDR: The Addams Family premiered on ABC on September 18, 1964, six days before The Munsters arrived on CBS. The Munsters consistently drew higher ratings during their shared run. Yet sixty years later, it is the Addams Family that has produced a Broadway musical, multiple Hollywood films, and a Netflix series that broke viewing records. The reason comes down to the fundamental difference in what each show was actually about.
The comparison between The Addams Family and The Munsters has been a fixture of classic television conversation for six decades.
Most people who watched both shows in their original run remember them as virtually interchangeable: two black-and-white sitcoms about spooky families airing at the same time on competing networks. Most of those people are wrong, and John Astin spent years in interviews patiently explaining why.
Which One Came First
The Addams Family came first, premiering on ABC on September 18, 1964.
The Munsters arrived six days later on CBS, on September 24. The proximity was not a coincidence. According to one of The Munsters‘ own writers, Allan Burns, the show was essentially inspired by Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons.
Burns later said, “We sort of stole the idea from Charles Addams. Because Universal owned the Frankenstein and Dracula characters for movie rights, they decided to take their characters instead of the ones we had written.”
Charles Addams was reportedly not pleased.
Which One Had Better Ratings
During their shared run from 1964 to 1966, The Munsters consistently drew higher ratings.
In its debut season, The Munsters finished 18th nationally with a 24.7 Nielsen rating. The Addams Family finished in the lower twenties and was always the weaker performer of the two. This is an inconvenient fact for Addams Family partisans, but it is a fact.
Why Both Were Cancelled
Both shows ended in 1966, but for different reasons.
The Munsters was killed by Batman.
ABC launched the Adam West series at mid-season in January 1966, and it became a cultural phenomenon overnight. CBS had no counter-programming ready and watched The Munsters audience migrate directly to Batman.
By season’s end the ratings were unsalvageable, and CBS cancelled it. Butch Patrick, who played Eddie Munster, later said simply, “Batman just came along and took our ratings away.”
The Addams Family ended because its numbers had declined to the point where ABC no longer saw value in continuing it.
It was a quieter cancellation with less of a specific culprit, the kind that happens when a show simply runs out of momentum.
The Real Difference Between the Two Shows
John Astin has explained the distinction as clearly as anyone.
The Munsters, he argued, were physically monstrous but completely normal in every other respect.
Herman Munster looked like Frankenstein’s creation and had the interior life of a conventional working-class American husband. The comedy came from the gap between his terrifying appearance and his banal concerns.
The Addams family, by contrast, looked perfectly ordinary. Gomez was a dapper man in a suit. Morticia was a slender, elegant woman in a black dress. Nothing about their appearance announced that they were unusual.
Their eccentricity was entirely internal, a set of values and pleasures completely at odds with conventional suburban America. The comedy came from their absolute sincerity about those values.
That distinction is why the Addams Family has proved more durable as a cultural property. A family that looks different and acts normal runs out of comic possibilities relatively quickly.
A family that looks normal and is profoundly, cheerfully different from everyone around them can sustain almost any story the culture needs to tell.
The Addams Family vs The Munsters: Frequently Asked Questions
Which came first, The Addams Family or The Munsters?
The Addams Family premiered first, on September 18, 1964, on ABC. The Munsters followed six days later on September 24, 1964, on CBS.
Which show had better ratings, The Addams Family or The Munsters?
The Munsters consistently drew higher ratings during their shared run. In its debut season, The Munsters finished 18th nationally with a 24.7 Nielsen rating. The Addams Family was always the lower-rated of the two shows.
Why was The Munsters cancelled?
The Munsters was cancelled in 1966 primarily because ABC’s Batman debuted at mid-season and took its ratings away. CBS had no effective counter-programming and cancelled the show at season’s end.
