Up to this point in the season, "Lou Grant" had been drawing high ratings, usually ranking in the top 20 or 25 each week and sometimes better -- quite good considering that its lead-in, "House Calls," was all but canceled due to weak ratings (it finally left the air on March 29). But all shows from this one to May 24 finished in the bottom 20 of each ratings chart and often in the bottom 10. Nobody could figure out why, although series star Edward Asner was getting heavily involved in politics and promoting what appeared to be a Marxist revolution in El Salvador (this might have put off some viewers but he believed it put off network programming executives much more). CBS-TV held out hope until mid-May before giving up and renewing "Cagney and Lacey" (with major cast changes of its own) to fill the time slot, a highly controversial decision because "Cagney and Lacey" had been a total failure in a three-week spring run. (When "Cagney and Lacey" ran a full season in 1982-83, the season average was lower than "Lou Grant" had pulled for 1981-82, although far higher than "Lou Grant"'s spring 1982 tallies.) To add insult to injury, reruns of "Lou Grant" in the summer of 1982 (against NBC baseball) soared to the tops of the ratings again, although this had happened every summer since "Lou Grant" had moved to Mondays.