Editing Cheers (section)

==Cheers owners==
[[File:Boston5808.JPG|thumb|The Cheers sign in 2005]]
Cheers had several owners before Sam, as the bar was opened in 1889. The "Est. 1895" on the bar's sign is a made-up date chosen by Carla for [[numerology]] purposes, revealed in season 8, episode 6, "The Stork Brings a Crane", which also revealed the bar's address as 112{{Frac|1|2}} Beacon Street and that it originated under the name Mom's. In the series' second episode, "Sam's Women", Coach tells a customer looking for Gus, the owner of Cheers, that Gus is dead. In a later episode, Gus O'Mally comes back from Arizona for one night and helps run the bar.

The biggest storyline surrounding the ownership of Cheers begins in the fifth-season finale, "[[I Do, Adieu]]", when Sam and Diane part ways, due to Shelley Long's departure from the series. In addition, Sam leaves on a trip to [[Circumnavigation|circumnavigate the globe]]. Before he leaves, he sells Cheers to the Lillian Corporation. He returns in the sixth-season premiere, "Home is the Sailor", having sunk his boat, to find the bar under the new management of Rebecca Howe. He begs for his job back and is hired by Rebecca as a bartender. In the seventh-season premiere, "How to Recede in Business", Rebecca is fired and Sam is promoted to manager. Rebecca is allowed to keep a job at Lillian vaguely similar to what she had before, but only after Sam has Rebecca ([[wikt:in absentia|in absentia]]) "agree" to a long list of demands that the corporation had for her.

From there, Sam occasionally attempts to buy the bar back with schemes that usually involve the wealthy executive [[Robin Colcord]]. Sam acquires Cheers again in the eighth-season finale, when [[Peppercorn (law)|it is sold back to him for 85¢]] by the Lillian Corporation after he alerts the company to Colcord's [[insider trading]]. Fired by the corporation because of her silence on the issue, Rebecca is hired by Sam as a hostess/office manager. For the rest of the episode, to celebrate Sam's reclaiming the bar, a huge banner reading "Under OLD Management!" hangs from the staircase. When it is learned that the Pool Room and bathrooms are actually owned by Melville's (which spawns a war of wits between Sam and Melville's owner John Allen Hill), Rebecca later purchases them from Hill, making Sam and Rebecca partners in the ownership of Cheers (and more or less co-runners of the establishment).

Sam has two main battles. One is with Gary's Olde Towne Tavern, trying to beat them at some activity or another but always failing, except for one episode when Diane helps Cheers win the bowling trophy, and extending to the practical jokes they play on each other. The second is with Melville's owner John Allen Hill, who keeps annoying Sam with his pettiness and ego. Hill had an ongoing relationship with Carla.