For the children reading this who might not remember such things, there was a time when TV networks broadcast willy-nilly throughout the day. In the early '70s, the FCC decided that more sources of TV programming were needed, and they instituted the "Prime Access Rule", which limited the networks to 3 hours of programming between 7 PM and 11 PM (eastern/pacific time), unless the fourth hour was educational or public affairs programming.

The networks played around with this structure for a couple of years, and eventually settled on the schedule that exists today: 8-11 PM during the week, and 7-11 PM Sundays. You may notice that the extra hour on Sunday is no longer limited to education or public affairs programming, but since the FCC has long since abandoned promoting those things, no one really pays attention.

This meant that starting in 1971, network affiliates were hungry for programming in the 7:30-8:00 slot, now abandoned by the networks. According to the FCC rule, they couldn't show off-network repeats from 7-8 PM (another rule that's often ignored now), so syndicators were flooding the market with original shows. It would seem that the new rule was having the desired effect.

Few of the new shows were any good. Some did manage to attain mediocrity. Many of the new series were game shows - everything from The Hollywood Squares to The $25,000 Pyramid started up a nighttime edition. A few of the new shows were scripted, and they were almost all terrible.
Hanna-Barbera, having ripped off The Honeymooners with The Flinstones back in the day, tried for another success by ripping off All in the Family with Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. It didn't work.
Another show, alternately called Dr. Simon Locke or Police Surgeon, had Jack Albertson in the cast. He quit the show when the extremely low budget forced him to change his costume in the bushes at a location shoot.

Another low budget show was Dusty's Trail. The new FCC rule inspired Sherwood Schwartz to dust off his Gilligan's Island concept and transplant it, intact, to the Old West.
Bob Denver reprised his role as Gilligan - uh, make that Dusty. Alan Hale was unavailable for some reason, so Forrest Tucker took over the role of the wagonmaster. The millionaire was played by Ivor Francis, who was a much funnier actor than Jim Backus; unfortunately, the scripts were even worse than those for Gilligan (unlikely as that sounds), so it's hard to tell that from watching the show.
The premise is even more ridiculous than Gilligan's Island. (I know, I know - that sounds impossible.) In Dusty's Trail, the protagonists are part of a wagon train that gets lost on the way to California. As the weeks go by, they meet a lot of people in their wanderings, and it doesn't occur to them even once to ask someone, "Which way is California?", or "Which way is West?", or to look where the sun is setting.
The scripts are unspeakably bad. My favorite example of this is when they run across a man who's on the run from the Army, because he's being framed for a robbery. Dusty and the wagonmaster travel to the nearby Army camp, where they happen to stand next to the Exposition Tent, in which the men framing our new friend are helpfully explaining how they're going about it, and what they're going to do next.

Sherwood Schwartz is responsible for many of the worst shows in the history of television, but this is his masterpiece. There's a DVD set containing most of the episodes, available for masochists everywhere.
Every now and then, I think of how much better it would be if today's FCC actually acted in the public interest, instead of merely kowtowing to a couple of dozen religious fundamentalists who've learned how to send bulk e-mail.
But if they did, we might end up with another Dusty's Trail. I'm not sure the tradeoff is worth it.