The pilot was picked up by ABC as part of their 1972-73 weekly series "The Men", which was designed to utilize the "wheel" rotating show format used so successfully by the NBC Mystery Movie series. The wheel format used several independently produced shows in rotation in the same time slot. This allowed for higher production values for each of the shows in the "wheel" as there were several weeks available to shoot each episode of a one-hour format TV show.
NBC had Columbo, McMillan and Wife, McCloud as staples throughout the run and had other fill-ins such as Madigan, Banacek and, at the end of the run, Quincy M.E. which broke out as its own series for another seven years.
ABC's "The Men" launched with Assignment Vienna, Jigsaw, and The Delphi Bureau. The "Assignment: ..." location was moved from Munich to Vienna to retain the Germanic feel, but avoid the impossible logistics of shooting on location in a city hosting the 1972 Summer Olympics at the time.
For the series, Robert Conrad replaced Roy Scheider as Jake Webster and Charles Cioffi replaced Richard Basehart as Major Caldwell. Anton Diffring replaced Werner Klemperer as Inspector Hoffman. The yellow BMW was replaced by a yellow Corvette Stingray convertible.
