getTV Blog

With every boom comes a bust, and the TV Western boom of the 1950s was no different. By the mid-'60s, audiences had begun to tire of the genre that dominated television’s first decade as a mass medium. But movie studios had found a lucrative new business producing episodic Westerns on existing films sets and backlots, and wanted to keep milking the cash cow. So producers began scrambling to put new spins on familiar stories and settings.

When a new sitcom debuted on CBS on Tuesday, January 12, 1971, it was accompanied by the following disclaimer: “The program you are about to see is All In The Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show – in a mature fashion – just how absurd they are.”

“CBS was nervous about it,” co-star Rob Reiner told PBS American Masters in 2016. “[They were] saying, essentially, ‘We don’t have anything to do with this show.’”

One of the most enjoyable things about a good TV series is watching it evolve over a long run. Even the best shows often start as one thing and end up as something else. The core premise may remain consistent, but sensibility, tone, and even cast can — and probably should — change, as characters age, actors come and go, and stories reflect a changing world (both real and fictional).

As America was built by westward expansion during the 19th century, so too was American television built by the Western programming boom of the mid-20^th century. More than two dozen shows set in the Old West populated primetime at the format’s peak in 1959, and it looked like medium and the genre would be forever linked. Spoiler alert: they weren’t

After conquering the record charts for a decade and a half, country music legend Johnny Cash came to television in 1969 — and became a crossover superstar.

At the end of Hondo, the Oscar-nominated 1953 Western, John Wayne’s title character rides off with his bride-to-be and her son after escaping a hostile Apache tribe. It’s a happy ending for two characters who both lost spouses to violence, and one that suggests new beginnings.