What Happened on the Last Episode of ''Designing Women'' Was Top Secret, Until NOW!

On the twenty fourth of May, 1993, millions of people sat down to watch Designing Women. They thought it was a normal night. They were watching the last episode ever made, and nobody had told them. There was no farewell season. No goodbye tour. Even the cast had not begun that year knowing it was the end. For decades, the reason was explained away in one lazy sentence: the ratings dropped. But the ratings did not drop on their own. Something happened in a network office months earlier, and it took two other shows down with it. Here is what was really going on.