Not overly popular, but many people already knew him from the Bruce Lee era, so it had a following by default.
Same with Dallas and The Dukes of Hazzard.
Thinking WTR, Dallas, or TDoH are representative of American culture is... hilarious.
But I guess shows that hit the big American cultural stereotypes hard are maybe the ones that do better abroad?
It was just a fun show. Magnum PI, Different Strokes, McGiver.. were just as popular.
Oh and Married with Children, but it was always very late night and I was not allowed to watch it.
And our teacher always played us ET on VHS. (and that dog playing basketball.)
that's america for me when I was a kid
Exported media is weird. Like the huge proportion of British/BBC output (usually period, but also often detective in a way redolent of Christie) that is made primarily for export to foreign consumers who think of British upper-class culture as aspirational.
It was big internationally. But the jokes made Norris known to a whole different generation than the one watching WTR.
Also, he fought Bruce Lee! One of my favorite face-offs ever filmed, esp in the martial arts movie genre. Not many actors who could say that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlTyJhbTxxo&pp=ygUZY2h1Y2sgb...
"Friday night is action night with Walker Texas Ranger"
Would the people who grew up in the early 2000s, or especially 2010s, know much of anything about him?
I mean how much do younger people know about Scott Baio or the Corys or Candice Bergen these days?
His career lasted far longer. He had big movie appearances for 30 years, none of those people accomplished that.
Norris' first movie role was in 1968, first big credited appearance was 1972, Walker Texas Ranger finished in 2001.
I think that's a hard argument to make.
Candace Bergen's career was just as long. Her first movie role was 1966, she was nominated for an Oscar in 1979, and she was on a popular sitcom from 1988 to 1998 that won her five Emmies and attracted national commentary after criticism from the Vice President.
I was a kid in the 80s and 90s and to me even then Chuck Norris was a B-movie self-parody joke character. He was not an A-list "action star" in the sense that Schwarzenegger, Stallone, or even Van Damme were.
Those who cared would/will know him regardless. But obviously those people would be relatively few and far apart.