1970s in television
Encyclopedia
The decade of the 1970s
saw significant changes in television programming in both the United Kingdom
and the United States. The trends included the decline of the "family sitcoms" and rural-oriented programs to more socially contemporary shows and "young, hip and urban" sitcoms in the United States and the permanent establishment of colour television in the United Kingdom.
had started trials of their new colour service, and it was gradually rolled out over the next few years. BBC One
and ITV
followed suit in 1969, so by 1970 the viewer had three colour channels from which to choose: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. Although U.S. imports occupied a significant proportion of airtime, there was a substantial amount of high quality in-house production too.
The BBC, supported by its licence fee and with no advertisers to placate, continued fulfilling its brief to entertain and inform. The Play for Today
was a continuation of the Wednesday Play which had run from the mid '60s. As the title implied, it presented TV drama which had relevance to current social and economic issues, done in a way calculated to intrigue or even shock the viewer. As well as using established writers, it was effectively an apprenticeship for new ones who were trying to make a name for themselves; Dennis Potter
, John Mortimer
, Arthur Hopcraft
and Jack Rosenthal
all served time on Play for Today before going on to write their own independent series. In style, the plays could go from almost documentary realism (of which Cathy Come Home
is the best known example) to the futuristic or surrealist (The Year of the Sex Olympics
, House of Character).
Potter went on to write Pennies From Heaven, one of the landmarks of '70s television drama. It had the now familiar elements of Potter's style: sexual explicitness, nostalgia, fantasy song and dance scenes, all overlaying a dark and pessimistic view of human motivation. The series was a success, but the BBC was not yet ready for Brimstone and Treacle
, a story of the rape of a physically and mentally handicapped young woman. After viewing it, the BBC's Director Of Programmes Alasdair Milne
, pronouncing it to be "brilliantly written … but nauseating", withdrew it, and it would not be shown on British television until 1987.
The science fiction
show Doctor Who
reached its peak with actors Jon Pertwee
and Tom Baker
cast in the role of the Doctor, though it is arguable that the current tenure of the Tenth Doctor
, David Tennant
, is more widely successful.
Things had begun to change in the '60s, with Till Death Us Do Part, and the series continued during 1972–75. The rantings of Alf Garnett on race, class, religion, education and anything else at all definitely touched a nerve. Although the show was in fact poking fun at right-wing bigotry, not everyone got the joke. Some — including, notably, Mary Whitehouse
— complained about the language (although the level of profanity was quite light) and resented the racial epithets like "wog" and "coon" and the attitudes underlying them. Others, completely missing the point of the show, actually adopted Alf as their hero, thinking he was uttering truths that others didn't dare to — apparently oblivious to the fact that he never got the best of any argument and was regularly shown up to be stupid and ill-informed. The series regularly provoked controversy in the media, and for millions it became a common gossiping point at work or in the pub.
Many popular British situation comedies
(sitcoms) were gentle, innocent, unchallenging portrayals of middle-class life, avoiding or only hinting at controversial issues; typical examples were Terry and June
, Sykes
, and The Good Life. Set in a hotel in Torquay, Fawlty Towers
was a massive success for the BBC, despite only twelve episodes being made. More nostalgic in tone were Last of the Summer Wine
, about the escapades of pensioners in a Yorkshire
town, and Dad's Army
, about a Home Guard
unit during World War II. A more diverse view of society was offered by series like Porridge
, a comedy about prison life, and Rising Damp
, set in a lodging house inhabited by two students, a lonely spinster and a lecherous landlord. Taking a softer approach to race than Till Death Us Do Part, ITV
's Mind Your Language
(1977-9) represented several foreign nations personified as English language
students attending an evening class. Despite LWT
ending the show after its third series in objection to the undeniable stereotyping, Mind Your Language did later return for a fourth series in the '80s.
In police dramas there was a move towards increasing realism. Dixon of Dock Green
continued until 1976, but it was essentially a nostalgic look back to an earlier time when police officers were depicted as a mix of strict but fair law enforcer, and kindly social worker. On the other hand, detective series such as Softly, Softly (a spin-off from the earlier Z-Cars
) began to show police work done by fallible human beings with their own personal failings and weaknesses, constantly frustrated by the constraints under which they worked. Such series showed crime at the level of petty larceny and fraud, being tackled by ordinary coppers on the beat. Serious organised crime, on the other hand, was the province of various elite units, and one show in the '70s set a new standard. The Sweeney
presented a hard, gritty picture of an armed police unit — members of Scotland Yard
's elite Flying Squad
. Violence was routine, as were fast car chases; Regan and Carter were hard-hitting coppers, who when they weren't catching villains were likely to be on a drunken binge or womanizing.
Although this was a truer picture of British policing, it was not always to the liking of senior police officers, who felt that the confidence of the public in the police force would be diminished as a result. In police dramas through most of the '70s however, corruption was rare, the detection rate was unrealistically high, and the criminals arrested were always convicted on solid evidence. Although the officers in The Sweeney were no angels, and there were occasional hints that police who inhabited a world where informants were necessary could not completely avoid compromises, these never amounted to more than turning a blind eye to minor misdmeanours. It would not be until 1978 that a police drama (the mini-series Law and Order
) would depict a police officer fabricating evidence to secure a conviction, with the collusion of his colleagues.
and The Ed Sullivan Show
, long-revered American institutions, were finally canceled after multi-decade spans. The "family sitcom," popularized by the travails of Ozzie
and Harriet Nelson
in the fifties and sixties, saw its last breath at the start of the new decade with The Brady Bunch
, which ran for five seasons. Although the show was never highly rated during its original run, it has been broadcast in syndication continuously since 1974, and many children have grown up with it, causing them to think of the Bradys as the quintessential family — not only in 1970s television, but quite possibly all of American television. In the early 1970s the high concept
sitcoms like I Dream of Jeannie
and Bewitched
began to lose American interest with I Dream of Jeannie ending its run in 1970 and Bewitched ending in 1972.
, tired of being ridiculed to as the "Hillbilly Network" because the majority of its hit shows were rural-oriented, cancelled The Beverly Hillbillies
, Hee Haw
, Green Acres
and Mayberry RFD plus every show "that had a tree in it" as described by actor Pat Buttram
. In its place, shows that appealed to a more younger, urban demographic became commonplace. It was transformed by what became termed as "social consciousness" programming, spearheaded by television producer Norman Lear
. All in the Family
, his adaptation of the British television series Till Death Us Do Part, broke down television barriers. When the series premiered in 1971, Americans heard the words "fag," "jigaboo," and "spic" on national television programming for the first time. All in the Family was the talk of countless dinner tables throughout the country; Americans hadn't seen anything like it on television before. The show became the highest-rated program on U.S. television schedules in the fall of 1971 and stayed in the top slot until 1976 — to date, only one other series has tied All in the Family for such a long stretch at the top of the ratings. All in the Family spawned numerous spin-offs, such as Maude
, starring Bea Arthur.
Maude was Edith Bunker
's cousin and Archie's arch-enemy. She stood for everything liberal and was an outspoken advocate of civil rights
and feminism
. Like All in the Family, Maude broke new ground in television and presented American audiences with something they had never encountered on television before when Maude admitted, without guilt or shame, to planning to have an abortion. Maude felt most comfortable, however, hiring a black woman as her housekeeper. Maude's housekeeper, Florida Evans (played by Esther Rolle
), became popular in her own right and was given her own television series in 1974, Good Times
, which proved to be another hit for Lear's production company. Lear developed two shows in 1975: The Jeffersons
, a spin-off of All in the Family in which Archie Bunker's black next-door neighbors moved to a luxury apartment on the Upper East Side
of Manhattan
, and One Day at a Time
, about a single mother raising her two teenage daughters in Indianapolis
.
, a very popular genre in the 1960s
, slowly died out. The first casualties were The High Chaparral
and The Virginian
, both NBC
staples, in the spring of 1971. Bonanza
suffered a blow when actor Dan Blocker
died during surgery in 1972, and the show quietly ended its run the next year. CBS
's Gunsmoke
outlasted them all, and finally ended its run with a star-studded series finale in 1975. Bonanza actor Michael Landon
helped popularize a television adaptation of the popular children's book series Little House on the Prairie
. Debuting in 1974, the series ran for eight years.Little House s competitor family drama was CBS
's The Waltons
, which revolved around family unity but during a different time and place — Virginia
during the Great Depression
.
defected to struggling ABC
started the trend of TV centred on sexual gratification and bawdy humor and situations, nicknamed "jiggle television." Jiggle TV shows included the crime-fighting television series Charlie's Angels
, which starred up-and-coming sex symbols Farrah Fawcett
, Jaclyn Smith
, and Kate Jackson
and the risqué sitcom such as Three's Company
, modeled after the British series Man About the House
, in which swinging single-man Robin Trip pretended to be gay
in order to live in an apartment with two single women. Mildly controversial at the time, the show quickly became a Top Ten hit in the ratings.
The aforementioned Charlie's Angels
was one of many crime shows to prosper during the 1970s. Other successful TV crime dramas of the decade included The Streets of San Francisco
, Barnaby Jones
, The Rockford Files
, Starsky & Hutch, Kojak
, and, above all, Hawaii Five-O
, for many years considered the longest-running police show in the history of American television. However, crime shows often came under fire during the '70s from various groups decrying the programs' often-violent content and demanded that companies pull their ads from such programs. 1977 saw the debut of CHiPs
, an action-packed police show where the cops very seldom drew their guns. One year earlier, Quincy, M.E.
, a mystery-crime show centered around an inquisitive medical examiner who often immersed himself in contemporary hot-button issues, had bowed on NBC.
, The Bionic Woman
, Battlestar Galatica
, Wonder Woman
, The Incredible Hulk, and Fantasy Island
.
, which moved from being a genre watched exclusively by housewives to having a sizable audience of men (who largely watched The Edge of Night
) and college students; the latter audience helped All My Children
gain a devoted following, as it was on during many universities' traditional "lunch period." In a TIME
article written about the genre in 1976, it was estimated that as many as 35 million households tuned into at least one soap opera each afternoon, the most popular being As the World Turns
, which routinely grabbed viewing figures of twelve million or higher each day.
The soap boom spawned a nighttime soap parody, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
, which made a quick star out of Louise Lasser
, who played the eponymous heroine. A rising soap opera toward the decade's end was Ryan's Hope
, which capitalized on the everyman success of the film Rocky (despite Ryan's Hope debuting earlier; the show's success came a while after the movie's release). The serial was about an Irish-American family running a pub in New York City
, and earned critical acclaim from television critics for its realistic portrayal of an "ethnic" middle-class family in a contemporary setting. The show's matriarch, played by Helen Gallagher
, won two Daytime Emmys by decade's end. Also during the decade General Hospital
, a soap that spent most of the decade with bad ratings (It was almost canceled in 1976) saw a rise in popularity around late 1978 due to its more youthful focus. However, it would not yet become a ratings giant until the 1980s
.
ABC aired Soap
, a sitcom that parodied soap operas, and garnered controversy by writing in one of the first gay characters on U.S. television. Many stations refused to air the series (another storyline consisted of heroine Corinne Tate, played by Diana Canova, lusting after a priest who eventually left the priesthood to marry her). Silverman's legacy also included the escapist "fantasy" genre, which started in 1977 with The Love Boat
. The series involved popular movie and television stars in guest roles as passengers on a luxury cruise liner that sailed up and down the Pacific Coast
. Silverman followed up in 1978 with Fantasy Island
, starring Ricardo Montalban
and Hervé Villechaize
. Montalban and Villechaize were the owner and sidekick, respectively, of a luxury island resort where peoples' wishes came true.
) was the most popular, winning numerous Emmy awards. Hosted by masterly emcee Peter Marshall
, nine celebrities in a large tic-tac-toe
board — among them, archetypical center square Paul Lynde
— responded to miscellaneous questions. Contestants must state whether they "agree" or "disagree" with the answers and if they are correct, their "X"/"O" symbol lights up in the celeb's box. The first to get three in a row or a five-square win succeeds and wins money. Bluffs and zingers made this the essential show to watch on afternoons. In the mid-70s Match Game
(CBS
) was the most popular game show (it was #1 among them from 1973 to 1977), in a time when there were many of them. Players must match the answers of flaky panelists like Brett Somers
and Charles Nelson Reilly
.
Fill-in-the-blank questions involving crude humor, zany panelists, several hilarious incidents, and pure "fun" between the panel and "ringmaster" host Gene Rayburn
made it popular. At one point, it broke records as the highest-rated daytime TV show in U.S. history. The show launched a spin-off
, Family Feud
(ABC
), an enormously prominent game which prevailed as the #1 game show of the late 70s. Two families squared off in assuming the most common answers to surveys of 100 people across the nation with such questions as, "name a public figure most Americans dislike." The simple concept was the main cause of its success, but interesting answers and the clever wit of Richard Dawson fueled the show's amazingly high ratings. Other successful game shows during this decade included The Price is Right
(still on the air to this day), Let's Make a Deal
, The $20,000 Pyramid, The Gong Show
, The Newlywed Game
, Password, Tattletales
, Tic Tac Dough, Bowling for Dollars
, Break the Bank, and The Joker's Wild
.
. Each of the three television networks had widely recognizable and respected journalists helming their newscasts: CBS
anchor Walter Cronkite
, who was voted "The Most Trusted Man in America" many times over, led in the nightly ratings. NBC
's John Chancellor
and David Brinkley
were a strong second, while ABC
, perennially third place in the news department until the 1990s
, had a newscast helmed by Howard K. Smith
.
, a multi-part miniseries that ran on a number of consecutive nights in early 1977, proved to be a huge hit in the ratings and thus paved the way for others of its kind like Shogun
and The Thorn Birds
.
received its last hurrah during this decade. Popular during the 1950s and 1960s, variety shows carried on in the 1970s with The Carol Burnett Show
. With a repertory company that included Vicki Lawrence
, Harvey Korman
and Lyle Waggoner
, the veterans' series continued to be successful and ran well into the mid-seventies. NBC
aired a variety show of its own, starring African-American comedian Flip Wilson
. The Flip Wilson Show
became a success and became the first show headed by an African-American comedian to become a ratings winner.
In 1971, while Fred Silverman was still working for CBS
, he spotted singing duo Sonny & Cher
doing a stand-up concert and decided to turn it into a weekly variety show. In addition to some entertaining stand-up banter between the husband and wife, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
would also have skits and music (mostly sung by Cher
). The show was a ratings winner from the first episode and ran for three years. It was followed in the same vein shortly after by singing group Tony Orlando and Dawn
.
Another group of singers who received a variety show in the seventies were two of the famous singing Osmonds — Donny
and his sister Marie
. Sid & Marty Krofft set to work on the siblings' series and Donny & Marie
premiered on ABC in the winter of 1976. Although the show became very popular, the Osmonds were equally ridiculed for their wholesome image and Mormon
moral reputation (on an episode of Good Times, the lead character, Florida, listed three things in the world you just can't do, and one was "smile wider than Donny and Marie").
, who produced such crime shows as The Streets of San Francisco
, Cannon
, and Dan August
(a one-season cop series starring an up-and-coming Burt Reynolds
that would find greater popularity after its star had hit it big at the cinema). Martin's success would fade during the latter half of the decade, however; by the end of 1980, the erstwhile mega-producer would be left without a single prime-time network series on the air. As for other producers during the period, Norman Lear
produced the socially-relevant All in the Family
as well as more innocuous fare such as One Day at a Time
. Jack Webb
, a holdover from previous decades, oversaw Adam-12
and Emergency!
, the latter highly popular with young children. Glen A. Larson
produced a number of series in association with Universal TV (McCloud
, Switch
, etc.), while David Gerber
made a name for himself with such fare as Police Woman
and Police Story. (The latter was a one-hour anthology series with no real regulars.) Among 1970s TV producers, however, it was Aaron Spelling
who would go on to be perhaps, according to an article written by Michael Idato
for The Sydney Morning Herald
, "the most prolific producer in TV history." Like Quinn Martin, Spelling was known for producing crime dramas (S.W.A.T.
, Starsky & Hutch). However, Spelling also produced more escapist fare as represented by the likes of The Love Boat
, Fantasy Island
, and even the private-eye opus Charlie's Angels
. There was also Family
, a socially-relevant hour-long series which would win a number of Emmys during its four-year run. Spelling's success would continue well into the 1990s.
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
saw significant changes in television programming in both the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the United States. The trends included the decline of the "family sitcoms" and rural-oriented programs to more socially contemporary shows and "young, hip and urban" sitcoms in the United States and the permanent establishment of colour television in the United Kingdom.
United Kingdom
In 1967 BBC TwoBBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
had started trials of their new colour service, and it was gradually rolled out over the next few years. BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
and ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
followed suit in 1969, so by 1970 the viewer had three colour channels from which to choose: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. Although U.S. imports occupied a significant proportion of airtime, there was a substantial amount of high quality in-house production too.
The BBC, supported by its licence fee and with no advertisers to placate, continued fulfilling its brief to entertain and inform. The Play for Today
Play for Today
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted...
was a continuation of the Wednesday Play which had run from the mid '60s. As the title implied, it presented TV drama which had relevance to current social and economic issues, done in a way calculated to intrigue or even shock the viewer. As well as using established writers, it was effectively an apprenticeship for new ones who were trying to make a name for themselves; Dennis Potter
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
, John Mortimer
John Mortimer
Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...
, Arthur Hopcraft
Arthur Hopcraft
Arthur Hopcraft was an English scriptwriter, well known for his TV plays such as The Nearly Man, and for his small-screen adaptations such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Hard Times, Bleak House, and Rebecca...
and Jack Rosenthal
Jack Rosenthal
Jack Morris Rosenthal CBE was an English playwright, who wrote 129 early episodes of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street and over 150 screenplays, including original TV plays, feature films, and adaptations.-Biography:...
all served time on Play for Today before going on to write their own independent series. In style, the plays could go from almost documentary realism (of which Cathy Come Home
Cathy Come Home
Cathy Come Home is a 1966 BBC television play by Jeremy Sandford, produced by Tony Garnett and directed by Ken Loach, about homelessness. An industry poll rated it as the best British television drama ever made. Filmed in a gritty, realistic drama documentary style, it was first broadcast on 16...
is the best known example) to the futuristic or surrealist (The Year of the Sex Olympics
The Year of the Sex Olympics
The Year of the Sex Olympics is a 1968 television play made by the BBC and first broadcast on BBC2 as part of Theatre 625. It stars Leonard Rossiter, Tony Vogel, Suzanne Neve and Brian Cox. It was directed by Michael Elliot...
, House of Character).
Potter went on to write Pennies From Heaven, one of the landmarks of '70s television drama. It had the now familiar elements of Potter's style: sexual explicitness, nostalgia, fantasy song and dance scenes, all overlaying a dark and pessimistic view of human motivation. The series was a success, but the BBC was not yet ready for Brimstone and Treacle
Brimstone and Treacle
-Potter on Brimstone and Treacle:In 1978, Potter said:I had written Brimstone and Treacle in difficult personal circumstances. Years of acute psoriatic arthropathy—unpleasantly affecting skin and joints—had not only taken their toll in physical damage but had also, and perhaps inevitably, mediated...
, a story of the rape of a physically and mentally handicapped young woman. After viewing it, the BBC's Director Of Programmes Alasdair Milne
Alasdair Milne
Alasdair David Gordon Milne is a former BBC producer who became Controller of BBC Scotland, the BBC's Director of Programmes and then Director-General of the BBC in July 1982. His resignation was forced by the BBC Governors in January 1987, following pressure from the Thatcher government...
, pronouncing it to be "brilliantly written … but nauseating", withdrew it, and it would not be shown on British television until 1987.
The science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
show Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
reached its peak with actors Jon Pertwee
Jon Pertwee
John Devon Roland Pertwee , was an English actor. Pertwee is best known for his role in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, in which he played the third incarnation of the Doctor from 1970 to 1974, and as the title character in the series Worzel Gummidge...
and Tom Baker
Tom Baker
Thomas Stewart "Tom" Baker is a British actor. He is best known for playing the fourth incarnation of the Doctor in the science fiction television series Doctor Who, a role he played from 1974 to 1981.-Early life:...
cast in the role of the Doctor, though it is arguable that the current tenure of the Tenth Doctor
Tenth Doctor
The Tenth Doctor is the tenth incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He is played by David Tennant, who appears in three series, as well as eight specials...
, David Tennant
David Tennant
David Tennant is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 TV serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch, Jr...
, is more widely successful.
Things had begun to change in the '60s, with Till Death Us Do Part, and the series continued during 1972–75. The rantings of Alf Garnett on race, class, religion, education and anything else at all definitely touched a nerve. Although the show was in fact poking fun at right-wing bigotry, not everyone got the joke. Some — including, notably, Mary Whitehouse
Mary Whitehouse
Mary Whitehouse, CBE was a British campaigner against the permissive society particularly as the media portrayed and reflected it...
— complained about the language (although the level of profanity was quite light) and resented the racial epithets like "wog" and "coon" and the attitudes underlying them. Others, completely missing the point of the show, actually adopted Alf as their hero, thinking he was uttering truths that others didn't dare to — apparently oblivious to the fact that he never got the best of any argument and was regularly shown up to be stupid and ill-informed. The series regularly provoked controversy in the media, and for millions it became a common gossiping point at work or in the pub.
Many popular British situation comedies
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
(sitcoms) were gentle, innocent, unchallenging portrayals of middle-class life, avoiding or only hinting at controversial issues; typical examples were Terry and June
Terry and June
Terry and June is a British sitcom that was broadcast on BBC1 from 1979 to 1987. The programme is largely a continuation of Happy Ever After, and stars Terry Scott and June Whitfield as a middle-class suburban couple, Terry and June Medford...
, Sykes
Sykes
Sykes is a British sitcom that aired on BBC1 from 1972 to 1979. Starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques, it was written by Eric Sykes, who had previously starred with Jacques in Sykes and A... and Sykes and a Big, Big Show ....
, and The Good Life. Set in a hotel in Torquay, Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers is a British sitcom produced by BBC Television and first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975. Twelve television program episodes were produced . The show was written by John Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth, both of whom played major characters...
was a massive success for the BBC, despite only twelve episodes being made. More nostalgic in tone were Last of the Summer Wine
Last of the Summer Wine
Last of the Summer Wine is a British sitcom written by Roy Clarke that was broadcast on BBC One. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse on 4 January 1973 and the first series of episodes followed on 12 November 1973. From 1983 to 2010, Alan J. W. Bell produced and...
, about the escapades of pensioners in a Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
town, and Dad's Army
Dad's Army
Dad's Army is a British sitcom about the Home Guard during the Second World War. It was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft and broadcast on BBC television between 1968 and 1977. The series ran for 9 series and 80 episodes in total, plus a radio series, a feature film and a stage show...
, about a Home Guard
British Home Guard
The Home Guard was a defence organisation of the British Army during the Second World War...
unit during World War II. A more diverse view of society was offered by series like Porridge
Porridge (TV series)
Porridge is a British situation comedy broadcast on BBC1 from 1974 to 1977, running for three series, two Christmas specials and a feature film. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it stars Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale as two inmates at the fictional HMP Slade in Cumberland...
, a comedy about prison life, and Rising Damp
Rising Damp
Rising Damp is a television sitcom produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV, first broadcast from 1974 to 1978. It was adapted for television by Eric Chappell from his well-received 1971 stage play, The Banana Box The series was the highest-ranking ITV sitcom on the 100 Best Sitcoms poll run in...
, set in a lodging house inhabited by two students, a lonely spinster and a lecherous landlord. Taking a softer approach to race than Till Death Us Do Part, ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
's Mind Your Language
Mind Your Language
Mind Your Language is a British comedy television series, that premiered on ITV in late 1977. Produced by LWT and directed by Stuart Allen, it is set in an adult education college in London and focuses on the English as a Foreign Language class taught by Mr. Jeremy Brown, portrayed by Barry Evans,...
(1977-9) represented several foreign nations personified as English language
Teaching English as a foreign language
Teaching English as a foreign language refers to teaching English to students whose first language is not English. TEFL usually occurs in the student's own country, either within the state school system, or privately, e.g., in an after-hours language school or with a tutor...
students attending an evening class. Despite LWT
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
ending the show after its third series in objection to the undeniable stereotyping, Mind Your Language did later return for a fourth series in the '80s.
In police dramas there was a move towards increasing realism. Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green was a popular BBC television series that ran from 1955 to 1976, and later a radio series. Despite being a drama series, it was initially produced by the BBC's light entertainment department.-Overview:...
continued until 1976, but it was essentially a nostalgic look back to an earlier time when police officers were depicted as a mix of strict but fair law enforcer, and kindly social worker. On the other hand, detective series such as Softly, Softly (a spin-off from the earlier Z-Cars
Z-Cars
Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...
) began to show police work done by fallible human beings with their own personal failings and weaknesses, constantly frustrated by the constraints under which they worked. Such series showed crime at the level of petty larceny and fraud, being tackled by ordinary coppers on the beat. Serious organised crime, on the other hand, was the province of various elite units, and one show in the '70s set a new standard. The Sweeney
The Sweeney
The Sweeney is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London...
presented a hard, gritty picture of an armed police unit — members of Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
's elite Flying Squad
Flying Squad
The Flying Squad is a branch of the Specialist Crime Directorate, within London's Metropolitan Police Service. The Squad's purpose is to investigate commercial armed robberies, along with the prevention and investigation of other serious armed crime...
. Violence was routine, as were fast car chases; Regan and Carter were hard-hitting coppers, who when they weren't catching villains were likely to be on a drunken binge or womanizing.
Although this was a truer picture of British policing, it was not always to the liking of senior police officers, who felt that the confidence of the public in the police force would be diminished as a result. In police dramas through most of the '70s however, corruption was rare, the detection rate was unrealistically high, and the criminals arrested were always convicted on solid evidence. Although the officers in The Sweeney were no angels, and there were occasional hints that police who inhabited a world where informants were necessary could not completely avoid compromises, these never amounted to more than turning a blind eye to minor misdmeanours. It would not be until 1978 that a police drama (the mini-series Law and Order
Law and Order (UK Miniseries)
Law & Order is a series of four television plays written by G. F. Newman and directed by Les Blair...
) would depict a police officer fabricating evidence to secure a conviction, with the collusion of his colleagues.
Long-standing trends reach the end of the road
At the start of the decade, long-standing trends in American television were finally reaching the end of the road. The Red Skelton ShowThe Red Skelton Show
The Red Skelton Show is an American variety show that was a television staple for two decades, from 1951 to 1971. It was second to Gunsmoke and third to The Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings during that time. Skelton, who had previously been a radio star, had appeared in several motion pictures as...
and The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan....
, long-revered American institutions, were finally canceled after multi-decade spans. The "family sitcom," popularized by the travails of Ozzie
Ozzie Nelson
Oswald George "Ozzie" Nelson was an American entertainer and band leader who originated and starred in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet radio and television series with his wife and two sons.-Early life:...
and Harriet Nelson
Harriet Nelson
Harriet Nelson was an American singer and actress. Nelson is best known for her role on the long-running sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.-Early life and career:...
in the fifties and sixties, saw its last breath at the start of the new decade with The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family...
, which ran for five seasons. Although the show was never highly rated during its original run, it has been broadcast in syndication continuously since 1974, and many children have grown up with it, causing them to think of the Bradys as the quintessential family — not only in 1970s television, but quite possibly all of American television. In the early 1970s the high concept
High concept
High concept is a term used to refer to an artistic work that can be easily described by a succinctly stated premise.-Terminology:High concept narratives are typically characterised by an over-arching "what if?" scenario that acts as a catalyst for the following events...
sitcoms like I Dream of Jeannie
I Dream of Jeannie
I Dream of Jeannie is a 1960s American sitcom with a fantasy premise. The show starred Barbara Eden as a 2,000-year-old genie, and Larry Hagman as an astronaut who becomes her master, with whom she falls in love and eventually marries...
and Bewitched
Bewitched
Bewitched is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for eight seasons on ABC from 1964 to 1972, starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Dick York and Dick Sargent , Agnes Moorehead, and David White. The show is about a witch who marries a mortal and tries to lead the life of a typical suburban...
began to lose American interest with I Dream of Jeannie ending its run in 1970 and Bewitched ending in 1972.
The death of rural-oriented programming and the rise of "socially conscious" programming
In 1971; CBSCBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, tired of being ridiculed to as the "Hillbilly Network" because the majority of its hit shows were rural-oriented, cancelled The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for nine seasons on CBS from 1962 to 1971, starring Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Donna Douglas, and Max Baer, Jr....
, Hee Haw
Hee Haw
Hee Haw is an American television variety show featuring country music and humor with fictional rural Kornfield Kounty as a backdrop. It aired on CBS-TV from 1969–1971 before a 20-year run in local syndication. The show was inspired by Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, the major difference being...
, Green Acres
Green Acres
Green Acres is an American television series starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as a couple who move from New York City to a country farm...
and Mayberry RFD plus every show "that had a tree in it" as described by actor Pat Buttram
Pat Buttram
Maxwell Emmett "Pat" Buttram was an American actor, known for playing the sidekick of Gene Autry and for playing the character of Mr. Haney in the TV series Green Acres. He had a distinctive voice which, in his own words, "... never quite made it through puberty"...
. In its place, shows that appealed to a more younger, urban demographic became commonplace. It was transformed by what became termed as "social consciousness" programming, spearheaded by television producer Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...
. All in the Family
All in the Family
All in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, a new show, Archie Bunker's Place, picked up where All in the Family had ended...
, his adaptation of the British television series Till Death Us Do Part, broke down television barriers. When the series premiered in 1971, Americans heard the words "fag," "jigaboo," and "spic" on national television programming for the first time. All in the Family was the talk of countless dinner tables throughout the country; Americans hadn't seen anything like it on television before. The show became the highest-rated program on U.S. television schedules in the fall of 1971 and stayed in the top slot until 1976 — to date, only one other series has tied All in the Family for such a long stretch at the top of the ratings. All in the Family spawned numerous spin-offs, such as Maude
Maude (TV series)
Maude was an American television sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS network from September 12, 1972 until April 22, 1978.Maude starred Beatrice Arthur as Maude Findlay, an outspoken, middle-aged, politically liberal woman living in suburban Tuckahoe, Westchester County, New York with...
, starring Bea Arthur.
Maude was Edith Bunker
Edith Bunker
Edith Bunker is a fictional 1970s sitcom character on All in the Family , played by Jean Stapleton. She was the wife of Archie Bunker , mother of Gloria Stivic, mother-in-law of Michael "Meathead" Stivic, and, after 1975, grandmother of Joey Stivic...
's cousin and Archie's arch-enemy. She stood for everything liberal and was an outspoken advocate of civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
and feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
. Like All in the Family, Maude broke new ground in television and presented American audiences with something they had never encountered on television before when Maude admitted, without guilt or shame, to planning to have an abortion. Maude felt most comfortable, however, hiring a black woman as her housekeeper. Maude's housekeeper, Florida Evans (played by Esther Rolle
Esther Rolle
Esther Rolle was an American actress. She was perhaps best known for her portrayal of Florida Evans on the CBS television sitcom Maude and its spin-off series Good Times.-Biography:...
), became popular in her own right and was given her own television series in 1974, Good Times
Good Times
Good Times is an American sitcom that originally aired from February 8, 1974, until August 1, 1979, on the CBS television network. It was created by Eric Monte and Michael Evans, and developed by Norman Lear, the series' primary executive producer...
, which proved to be another hit for Lear's production company. Lear developed two shows in 1975: The Jeffersons
The Jeffersons
The Jeffersons is an American sitcom that was broadcast on CBS from January 18, 1975, through June 25, 1985, lasting 11 seasons and a total of 253 episodes. The show was produced by the T.A.T. Communications Company from 1975–1982 and by Embassy Television from 1982-1985...
, a spin-off of All in the Family in which Archie Bunker's black next-door neighbors moved to a luxury apartment on the Upper East Side
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, between Central Park and the East River. The Upper East Side lies within an area bounded by 59th Street to 96th Street, and the East River to Fifth Avenue-Central Park...
of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, and One Day at a Time
One Day at a Time
One Day at a Time is an American situation comedy on the CBS network that aired from December 16, 1975 until May 28, 1984. It portrays Ann Romano, a divorced mother, played by Bonnie Franklin, her two teenage daughters Julie and Barbara Cooper and Schneider, their building superintendent .The show...
, about a single mother raising her two teenage daughters in Indianapolis
Indianapolis
Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
.
The decline of the western
With the rise in socially responsible programming, the television westernWestern (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
, a very popular genre in the 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
, slowly died out. The first casualties were The High Chaparral
The High Chaparral
The High Chaparral is a Western-themed television series starring Leif Erickson and Cameron Mitchell which aired on NBC from 1967 to 1971. The show was created by David Dortort, who had previously created the hit Bonanza for the network...
and The Virginian
The Virginian (TV series)
The Virginian is an American Western television series starring James Drury and Doug McClure, which aired on NBC from 1962 to 1971 for a total of 249 episodes. Filmed in color, The Virginian became television's first 90-minute western series...
, both NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
staples, in the spring of 1971. Bonanza
Bonanza
Bonanza is an American western television series that both ran on and was a production of NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes, it ranks as the second longest running western series and still continues to air in syndication. It centers on the...
suffered a blow when actor Dan Blocker
Dan Blocker
Dan Blocker was an American actor best remembered for his role as Eric "Hoss" Cartwright in the NBC western television series Bonanza.-Early life:...
died during surgery in 1972, and the show quietly ended its run the next year. CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
's Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....
outlasted them all, and finally ended its run with a star-studded series finale in 1975. Bonanza actor Michael Landon
Michael Landon
Michael Landon was an American actor, writer, director, and producer. He is widely known for his roles as Little Joe Cartwright in Bonanza , Charles Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie , and Jonathan Smith in Highway to Heaven...
helped popularize a television adaptation of the popular children's book series Little House on the Prairie
Little House on the Prairie (TV series)
Little House on the Prairie is an American Western drama television series, starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, about a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was an adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of Little House books...
. Debuting in 1974, the series ran for eight years.
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
's The Waltons
The Waltons
The Waltons is an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr., based on his book Spencer's Mountain, and a 1963 film of the same name. The show centered on a family growing up in a rural Virginia community during the Great Depression and World War II. The series pilot was a television...
, which revolved around family unity but during a different time and place — Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
.
"Jiggle television" and crime shows
By the mid-to-late 1970s, viewers tired of socially responsible sitcoms. Former CBS head of programming Fred SilvermanFred Silverman
Fred Silverman is an American television executive and producer. He worked as an executive at the CBS, ABC and NBC networks, and was responsible for bringing to television such programs as the series Scooby-Doo , All in the Family , The Waltons , and Charlie's Angels , as well as the...
defected to struggling ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
started the trend of TV centred on sexual gratification and bawdy humor and situations, nicknamed "jiggle television." Jiggle TV shows included the crime-fighting television series Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels is a television series about three women who work for a private investigation agency, and is one of the first shows to showcase women in roles traditionally reserved for men...
, which starred up-and-coming sex symbols Farrah Fawcett
Farrah Fawcett
Farrah Fawcett was an American actress and artist. A multiple Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominee, Fawcett rose to international fame when she first appeared as private investigator Jill Munroe in the first season of the television series Charlie's Angels, in 1976...
, Jaclyn Smith
Jaclyn Smith
Jacquelyn Ellen "Jaclyn" Smith is an American actress and businesswoman. She is best-known for the role of Kelly Garrett in the television series Charlie's Angels, and was the only original female lead to remain with the series for its complete run...
, and Kate Jackson
Kate Jackson
Kate Jackson is an American actress, director, and producer, perhaps best known for her role as Sabrina Duncan in the popular 1970s television series Charlie's Angels...
and the risqué sitcom such as Three's Company
Three's Company
Three's Company is an American sitcom that aired from March 15, 1977, to September 18, 1984, on ABC. It is based on the British sitcom, Man About the House....
, modeled after the British series Man About the House
Man About the House
Man About the House is a British sitcom starring Richard O'Sullivan, Paula Wilcox and Sally Thomsett that was broadcast for six seasons on ITV from 1973 to 1976. It was created and written by Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke. The series was considered daring at the time due to its subject matter of...
, in which swinging single-man Robin Trip pretended to be gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
in order to live in an apartment with two single women. Mildly controversial at the time, the show quickly became a Top Ten hit in the ratings.
The aforementioned Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels is a television series about three women who work for a private investigation agency, and is one of the first shows to showcase women in roles traditionally reserved for men...
was one of many crime shows to prosper during the 1970s. Other successful TV crime dramas of the decade included The Streets of San Francisco
The Streets of San Francisco
The Streets of San Francisco is a 1970s television police drama filmed on location in San Francisco, California, and produced by Quinn Martin Productions, with the first season produced in association with Warner Bros...
, Barnaby Jones
Barnaby Jones
Barnaby Jones is a television detective series starring Buddy Ebsen and Lee Meriwether as father- and daughter-in-law who run a private detective firm in Los Angeles. A spin-off from Cannon, the show ran on CBS from January 28, 1973 to April 3, 1980, beginning as a midseason replacement...
, The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files is an American television drama series which aired on the NBC network between September 13, 1974 and January 10, 1980. It has remained in regular syndication to the present day. The show stars James Garner as Los Angeles-based private investigator Jim Rockford and features Noah...
, Starsky & Hutch, Kojak
Kojak
Kojak is an American television series starring Telly Savalas as the title character, bald New York City Police Department Detective Lieutenant Theo Kojak. It aired from October 24, 1973, to March 18, 1978, on CBS. It took the time slot of the popular Cannon series, which was moved one hour earlier...
, and, above all, Hawaii Five-O
Hawaii Five-O
Hawaii Five-O is an American police procedural drama series produced by CBS Productions and Leonard Freeman. Set in Hawaii, the show originally aired for twelve seasons from 1968 to 1980, and continues in reruns. The show featured a fictional state police unit run by Detective Steve McGarrett,...
, for many years considered the longest-running police show in the history of American television. However, crime shows often came under fire during the '70s from various groups decrying the programs' often-violent content and demanded that companies pull their ads from such programs. 1977 saw the debut of CHiPs
CHiPs
CHiPs is an American television drama series produced by MGM Studios that originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1977, to July 17, 1983. CHiPs followed the lives of two motorcycle police officers of the California Highway Patrol...
, an action-packed police show where the cops very seldom drew their guns. One year earlier, Quincy, M.E.
Quincy, M.E.
Quincy, M.E., also called Quincy, is a United States television series from Universal Studios that aired from October 3, 1976, to September 5, 1983, on NBC...
, a mystery-crime show centered around an inquisitive medical examiner who often immersed himself in contemporary hot-button issues, had bowed on NBC.
Science-fiction
A science-fiction trend accelerated as the '70s decade progressed. A number of sci-fi shows, many of them from Universal TV, achieved at least a measure of popularity during this period. They included The Six Million Dollar ManThe Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man is an American television series about a former astronaut with bionic implants working for the OSI...
, The Bionic Woman
The Bionic Woman
The Bionic Woman is an American television series starring Lindsay Wagner that aired for three seasons between 1976 and 1978 as a spin off from The Six Million Dollar Man. Wagner stars as tennis pro Jaime Sommers who is nearly killed in a skydiving accident. Sommers' life is saved by Oscar Goldman ...
, Battlestar Galatica
Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV series)
Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction television series, created by Glen A. Larson. It starred Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict and ran for one season in 1978–79. After cancellation, its story was continued in 1980 as Galactica 1980 with Adama, Lieutenant Boomer and...
, Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman (TV series)
Wonder Woman is an American television series based on the DC Comics comic book superhero of the same name. Starring Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman/Diana Prince and Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor, the show originally aired from 1975 to 1979....
, The Incredible Hulk, and Fantasy Island
Fantasy Island
Fantasy Island is the title of two separate but related American fantasy television series, both originally airing on the ABC television network.-Original series:...
.
The soap opera boom
Another popular medium in U.S. television moving into the 1970s was the soap operaSoap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
, which moved from being a genre watched exclusively by housewives to having a sizable audience of men (who largely watched The Edge of Night
The Edge of Night
The Edge of Night is an American television mystery series/soap opera produced by Procter & Gamble. It debuted on CBS on April 2, 1956, and ran as a live broadcast on that network until November 28, 1975; the series then moved to ABC, where it aired from December 1, 1975, until December 28, 1984...
) and college students; the latter audience helped All My Children
All My Children
All My Children is an American television soap opera that aired on ABC from January 5, 1970 to September 23, 2011. Created by Agnes Nixon, All My Children is set in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, a fictitious suburb of Philadelphia. The show features Susan Lucci as Erica Kane, one of daytime's most...
gain a devoted following, as it was on during many universities' traditional "lunch period." In a TIME
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
article written about the genre in 1976, it was estimated that as many as 35 million households tuned into at least one soap opera each afternoon, the most popular being As the World Turns
As the World Turns
As the World Turns is an American television soap opera that aired on CBS from April 2, 1956 to September 17, 2010. Irna Phillips created As the World Turns as a sister show to her other soap opera Guiding Light...
, which routinely grabbed viewing figures of twelve million or higher each day.
The soap boom spawned a nighttime soap parody, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is an American soap opera parody that aired in daily syndication from January 1976 to May 1977. The series was produced by Norman Lear, directed by Joan Darling and starred Louise Lasser...
, which made a quick star out of Louise Lasser
Louise Lasser
Louise Lasser is an American actress. She is known for her portrayal of the title character on the soap opera parody Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. She was married to Woody Allen and appeared in several of his films.-Personal life:...
, who played the eponymous heroine. A rising soap opera toward the decade's end was Ryan's Hope
Ryan's Hope
Ryan's Hope is an American soap opera, revolving around 13 years of trials and tribulations within a large Irish American family in the Riverside district of New York City. It aired from July 7, 1975 to January 13, 1989 on ABC...
, which capitalized on the everyman success of the film Rocky (despite Ryan's Hope debuting earlier; the show's success came a while after the movie's release). The serial was about an Irish-American family running a pub in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and earned critical acclaim from television critics for its realistic portrayal of an "ethnic" middle-class family in a contemporary setting. The show's matriarch, played by Helen Gallagher
Helen Gallagher
Helen Gallagher is an American actress, dancer, singer and makeup artist.-Early years:Born in Brooklyn, she was raised in Scarsdale, New York for several years until the Wall Street crash which heralded the Great Depression, and her family moved to the Bronx. Her parents separated and she was...
, won two Daytime Emmys by decade's end. Also during the decade General Hospital
General Hospital
General Hospital is an American daytime television drama that is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running American soap opera currently in production and the third longest running drama in television in American history after Guiding Light and As the World Turns....
, a soap that spent most of the decade with bad ratings (It was almost canceled in 1976) saw a rise in popularity around late 1978 due to its more youthful focus. However, it would not yet become a ratings giant until the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
.
ABC aired Soap
Soap (TV series)
Soap is an American sitcom that originally ran on ABC from 1977 to 1981.The show was created as a parody of daytime soap operas, presented as a weekly half-hour prime time comedy. Similar to a soap opera, the show's story was presented in a serial format and included melodramatic plot elements such...
, a sitcom that parodied soap operas, and garnered controversy by writing in one of the first gay characters on U.S. television. Many stations refused to air the series (another storyline consisted of heroine Corinne Tate, played by Diana Canova, lusting after a priest who eventually left the priesthood to marry her). Silverman's legacy also included the escapist "fantasy" genre, which started in 1977 with The Love Boat
The Love Boat
The Love Boat is an American television series set on a cruise ship, which aired on the ABC Television Network from September 24,1977, until May 24,1986.The show starred Gavin MacLeod as the ship's captain...
. The series involved popular movie and television stars in guest roles as passengers on a luxury cruise liner that sailed up and down the Pacific Coast
Pacific Coast
A country's Pacific coast is the part of its coast bordering the Pacific Ocean.-The Americas:Countries on the western side of the Americas have a Pacific coast as their western border.* Geography of Canada* Geography of Chile* Geography of Colombia...
. Silverman followed up in 1978 with Fantasy Island
Fantasy Island
Fantasy Island is the title of two separate but related American fantasy television series, both originally airing on the ABC television network.-Original series:...
, starring Ricardo Montalban
Ricardo Montalbán
Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG was a Mexican radio, television, theatre and film actor. He had a career spanning six decades and many notable roles...
and Hervé Villechaize
Hervé Villechaize
Hervé Jean-Pierre Villechaize was a French actor who achieved worldwide recognition for his role as Mr. Roarke's assistant, Tattoo, in the television series Fantasy Island...
. Montalban and Villechaize were the owner and sidekick, respectively, of a luxury island resort where peoples' wishes came true.
Daytime game shows
Daytime television was consumed with several game shows, airing alongside soap operas during the mornings and afternoons. During the early years of the decade, The Hollywood Squares (NBCNBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
) was the most popular, winning numerous Emmy awards. Hosted by masterly emcee Peter Marshall
Peter Marshall (game show host)
Peter Marshall is an American television and radio personality, singer, and actor.He was the original host of The Hollywood Squares, from 1966 to 1981. He has almost fifty television, movie, and Broadway credits...
, nine celebrities in a large tic-tac-toe
Tic-tac-toe
Tic-tac-toe, also called wick wack woe and noughts and crosses , is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The X player usually goes first...
board — among them, archetypical center square Paul Lynde
Paul Lynde
Paul Edward Lynde was an American comedian and actor. A noted character actor, Lynde was well known for his roles as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and Harry MacAfee, the befuddled father in Bye Bye Birdie...
— responded to miscellaneous questions. Contestants must state whether they "agree" or "disagree" with the answers and if they are correct, their "X"/"O" symbol lights up in the celeb's box. The first to get three in a row or a five-square win succeeds and wins money. Bluffs and zingers made this the essential show to watch on afternoons. In the mid-70s Match Game
Match Game
Match Game is an American television game show in which contestants attempted to match celebrities' answers to fill-in-the-blank questions...
(CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
) was the most popular game show (it was #1 among them from 1973 to 1977), in a time when there were many of them. Players must match the answers of flaky panelists like Brett Somers
Brett Somers
Brett Somers was a American actress, singer, and comedienne who was born in Canada and raised in Maine...
and Charles Nelson Reilly
Charles Nelson Reilly
Charles Nelson Reilly was an American actor, comedian, director and drama teacher known for his comedic roles in theater, movies, children's television, animated cartoons, and as a panelist on the game show Match Game....
.
Fill-in-the-blank questions involving crude humor, zany panelists, several hilarious incidents, and pure "fun" between the panel and "ringmaster" host Gene Rayburn
Gene Rayburn
Gene Rayburn was an American radio and television personality. He is best known as the host of various editions of the popular American television game show Match Game for over two decades....
made it popular. At one point, it broke records as the highest-rated daytime TV show in U.S. history. The show launched a spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
, Family Feud
Family Feud
Family Feud is an American television game show created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. Two families compete against each other in a contest to name the most popular responses to a survey question posed to 100 people...
(ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
), an enormously prominent game which prevailed as the #1 game show of the late 70s. Two families squared off in assuming the most common answers to surveys of 100 people across the nation with such questions as, "name a public figure most Americans dislike." The simple concept was the main cause of its success, but interesting answers and the clever wit of Richard Dawson fueled the show's amazingly high ratings. Other successful game shows during this decade included The Price is Right
The Price Is Right
The Price Is Right is a television game show franchise originally produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, and created by Bob Stewart, and is currently produced and owned by FremantleMedia. The franchise centers on television game shows, but also includes merchandise such as video games, printed...
(still on the air to this day), Let's Make a Deal
Let's Make a Deal
Let's Make a Deal is a television game show which originated in the United States and has since been produced in many countries throughout the world. The show is based around deals offered to members of the audience by the host. The traders usually have to weigh the possibility of an offer being...
, The $20,000 Pyramid, The Gong Show
The Gong Show
The Gong Show is an amateur talent contest franchised by Sony Pictures Television to many countries. It was broadcast on NBC's daytime schedule from June 14, 1976 through July 21, 1978, and in first-run syndication from 1976–1980 and 1988–1989. The show was produced by Chuck Barris, who also served...
, The Newlywed Game
The Newlywed Game
The Newlywed Game is an American television game show that pits newly married couples against each other in a series of revealing question rounds to determine how well the spouses know each other. The program, originally created by Nick Nicholson and E. Roger Muir The Newlywed Game is an American...
, Password, Tattletales
Tattletales
Tattletales is a game show which first aired on the CBS daytime schedule on February 18, 1974. It was hosted by Bert Convy, with several announcers, including Jack Clark, Gene Wood, Johnny Olson and John Harlan, providing the voiceover at various times...
, Tic Tac Dough, Bowling for Dollars
Bowling for Dollars
Bowling for Dollars is a television game show on which people could play the sport of bowling to win cash and sometimes prizes based on how well they bowled....
, Break the Bank, and The Joker's Wild
The Joker's Wild
The Joker's Wild is an American television game show that aired at different times during the 1970s through the 1990s. Contestants answered questions based on categories that were determined randomly by a mechanism resembling a slot machine....
.
Television newscasts
Another influential genre was the television newscast, which built on its initial widespread success in the 1960s1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
. Each of the three television networks had widely recognizable and respected journalists helming their newscasts: CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
anchor Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
, who was voted "The Most Trusted Man in America" many times over, led in the nightly ratings. NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's John Chancellor
John Chancellor
John William Chancellor was a well-known American journalist who spent most of his career with NBC News...
and David Brinkley
David Brinkley
David McClure Brinkley was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997....
were a strong second, while ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, perennially third place in the news department until the 1990s
1990s
File:1990s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War; The signing of the Oslo Accords on...
, had a newscast helmed by Howard K. Smith
Howard K. Smith
Howard Kingsbury Smith was an American journalist, radio reporter, television anchorman, political commentator, and film actor. He was one of the original Edward R. Murrow boys.-Early life:...
.
The rise of telefilms
The success of the 1971 telefilm Duel signaled the rise of movies produced specifically for television. Some featured a hero or heroine whose life was in jeopardy, while others were pilots for proposed TV series to be picked up by a network. (Some sold; many did not.) Still others centered around the descrutiveness of a certain disease, whether medical or social. RootsRoots (TV miniseries)
Roots is a 1977 American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's fictional novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Roots received 36 Emmy Award nominations, winning nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings with the finale still...
, a multi-part miniseries that ran on a number of consecutive nights in early 1977, proved to be a huge hit in the ratings and thus paved the way for others of its kind like Shogun
Shogun (TV miniseries)
Shōgun is an American television miniseries based on the namesake novel by James Clavell. As with the novel, the title is often shown as Shōgun in order to conform to Hepburn romanization. The miniseries was broadcast over five nights, between September 15 and September 19, 1980 on NBC in the...
and The Thorn Birds
The Thorn Birds (TV miniseries)
The Thorn Birds is a television mini-series broadcast on ABC between 27 and 30 March 1983. It starred Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward, Barbara Stanwyck, Christopher Plummer, Richard Kiley, Bryan Brown, Mare Winningham, Philip Anglim and Jean Simmons...
.
Variety shows
The variety showVariety show
A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling...
received its last hurrah during this decade. Popular during the 1950s and 1960s, variety shows carried on in the 1970s with The Carol Burnett Show
The Carol Burnett Show
The Carol Burnett Show is a variety / sketch comedy television show starring Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner, and Tim Conway. It originally ran on CBS from September 11, 1967, to March 29, 1978, for 278 episodes and originated from CBS Television City's Studio 33...
. With a repertory company that included Vicki Lawrence
Vicki Lawrence
Vicki Lawrence is an American actress, comedienne, and Billboard Hot 100 #1 singer, who was frequently a game show panelist in the 1970s and 1980s...
, Harvey Korman
Harvey Korman
Harvey Herschel Korman was an American comedic actor who performed in television and movie productions beginning in 1960...
and Lyle Waggoner
Lyle Waggoner
Lyle Wesley Waggoner is an American actor and former model, best known for his work on The Carol Burnett Show from 1967 to 1974 and for playing the role of Steve Trevor in the Wonder Woman television series from 1975 to 1979...
, the veterans' series continued to be successful and ran well into the mid-seventies. NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
aired a variety show of its own, starring African-American comedian Flip Wilson
Flip Wilson
Clerow Wilson, Jr. , known professionally as Flip Wilson, was an American comedian and actor. In the early 1970s, Wilson hosted his own weekly variety series, The Flip Wilson Show...
. The Flip Wilson Show
The Flip Wilson Show
The Flip Wilson Show is a variety show that aired in the U.S. on NBC from September 17, 1970 to June 27, 1974. The show starred American comedian Flip Wilson; the program was one of the first American television programs starring a black person in the title role to become highly successful with a...
became a success and became the first show headed by an African-American comedian to become a ratings winner.
In 1971, while Fred Silverman was still working for CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, he spotted singing duo Sonny & Cher
Sonny & Cher
Sonny & Cher were an American pop music duo, actors, singers and entertainers made up of husband-and-wife team Sonny and Cher Bono in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple started their career in the mid-1960s as R&B backing singers for record producer Phil Spector....
doing a stand-up concert and decided to turn it into a weekly variety show. In addition to some entertaining stand-up banter between the husband and wife, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour is an American variety show based on the married couple of American pop-singer Cher and her husband, Sonny Bono. The show ran on CBS in the United States, when it premiered in August 1971...
would also have skits and music (mostly sung by Cher
Cher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
). The show was a ratings winner from the first episode and ran for three years. It was followed in the same vein shortly after by singing group Tony Orlando and Dawn
Tony Orlando and Dawn
Tony Orlando and Dawn was a pop music group that was popular in the 1970s. Their signature hits include "Candida", "Knock Three Times", "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree", and "He Don't Love You ".-History:...
.
Another group of singers who received a variety show in the seventies were two of the famous singing Osmonds — Donny
Donny Osmond
Donald Clark "Donny" Osmond is an American singer, musician, actor, dancer, radio personality, and former teen idol. Osmond has also been a talk and game show host, record producer and author. In the mid 1960s, he and four of his elder brothers gained fame as the Osmond Brothers on the long...
and his sister Marie
Marie Osmond
Olive Marie Osmond is an American singer, actress, doll designer, and a member of the show business family The Osmonds. Although she was never part of her family's singing group, she gained success as a solo country music artist in the 1970s and 1980s...
. Sid & Marty Krofft set to work on the siblings' series and Donny & Marie
Donny & Marie (1976 TV series)
Donny & Marie was an American variety show which aired on ABC from January 1976 to January 1979. The show stars brother and sister pop duo Donny Osmond and Marie Osmond...
premiered on ABC in the winter of 1976. Although the show became very popular, the Osmonds were equally ridiculed for their wholesome image and Mormon
Mormon
The term Mormon most commonly denotes an adherent, practitioner, follower, or constituent of Mormonism, which is the largest branch of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity...
moral reputation (on an episode of Good Times, the lead character, Florida, listed three things in the world you just can't do, and one was "smile wider than Donny and Marie").
Producers of 1970s television
Many prime-time programs of the 1970s were helmed by independent producers, often in association with a major Hollywood studio. A particularly successful independent producer at the dawn of the decade was Quinn MartinQuinn Martin
Quinn Martin was one of the most successful American television producers. He had at least one television series running in prime time for 21 straight years , an industry record.-Early life:...
, who produced such crime shows as The Streets of San Francisco
The Streets of San Francisco
The Streets of San Francisco is a 1970s television police drama filmed on location in San Francisco, California, and produced by Quinn Martin Productions, with the first season produced in association with Warner Bros...
, Cannon
Cannon
A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...
, and Dan August
Dan August
Dan August is a short-lived 1970-1971 crime drama television series, which starred Burt Reynolds as the title character: a police lieutenant who investigated homicide cases in his hometown of Santa Luisa, California...
(a one-season cop series starring an up-and-coming Burt Reynolds
Burt Reynolds
Burton Leon "Burt" Reynolds, Jr. is an American actor. Some of his memorable roles include Bo 'Bandit' Darville in Smokey and the Bandit, Lewis Medlock in Deliverance, Bobby "Gator" McCluskey in White Lightning and sequel Gator, Paul Crewe and Coach Nate Scarborough in The Longest Yard and its...
that would find greater popularity after its star had hit it big at the cinema). Martin's success would fade during the latter half of the decade, however; by the end of 1980, the erstwhile mega-producer would be left without a single prime-time network series on the air. As for other producers during the period, Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...
produced the socially-relevant All in the Family
All in the Family
All in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, a new show, Archie Bunker's Place, picked up where All in the Family had ended...
as well as more innocuous fare such as One Day at a Time
One Day at a Time
One Day at a Time is an American situation comedy on the CBS network that aired from December 16, 1975 until May 28, 1984. It portrays Ann Romano, a divorced mother, played by Bonnie Franklin, her two teenage daughters Julie and Barbara Cooper and Schneider, their building superintendent .The show...
. Jack Webb
Jack Webb
John Randolph "Jack" Webb , also known by the pseudonym John Randolph, was an American actor, television producer, director and screenwriter, who is most famous for his role as Sergeant Joe Friday in the radio and television series Dragnet...
, a holdover from previous decades, oversaw Adam-12
Adam-12
Adam-12 was a television police drama which followed two police officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, Pete Malloy and Jim Reed, as they patrolled the streets of Los Angeles in their patrol unit, 1-Adam-12. Created by Jack Webb who is known for creating Dragnet, the series captured a...
and Emergency!
Emergency!
Emergency! is an American television series that combines the medical drama and action-adventure genres. It was produced by Mark VII Limited and distributed by Universal Studios...
, the latter highly popular with young children. Glen A. Larson
Glen A. Larson
Glen Albert Larson is an American television producer and writer best known as the creator of Battlestar Galactica, The Fall Guy, Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider.-Career:...
produced a number of series in association with Universal TV (McCloud
McCloud
McCloud is an American television police drama that aired on NBC from 1970 to 1977. The title role was played by Dennis Weaver as Marshal Sam McCloud, a law officer from Taos, New Mexico on semi-permanent "special assignment" with the New York City Police Department.-History:The first choice for...
, Switch
Switch
In electronics, a switch is an electrical component that can break an electrical circuit, interrupting the current or diverting it from one conductor to another....
, etc.), while David Gerber
David Gerber
David Gerber was a television executive producer. His notable work on television included the 1970s TV series Police Story and Police Woman. Other executive producer credits include The Ghost & Mrs...
made a name for himself with such fare as Police Woman
Police Woman (TV series)
Police Woman is an American television police drama starring Angie Dickinson that ran on NBC for four seasons, from September 13, 1974, to March 29, 1978.-Synopsis:...
and Police Story. (The latter was a one-hour anthology series with no real regulars.) Among 1970s TV producers, however, it was Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling was an American film and television producer. As of 2009, Spelling's eponymous production company Spelling Television holds the record as the most prolific television writer, with 218 producer and executive producer credits...
who would go on to be perhaps, according to an article written by Michael Idato
Michael Idato
Michael Idato is a television critic and writer for The Sydney Morning Herald.He has worked previously at The Daily Telegraph, and at The Sunday Telegraph between 1995 and 1999 as a writer and columnist. Between 1992 and 1996 he was also the film critic for Australian Penthouse Magazine...
for The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...
, "the most prolific producer in TV history." Like Quinn Martin, Spelling was known for producing crime dramas (S.W.A.T.
S.W.A.T.
- S.W.A.T. 1 :Date: October 4, 2006Location: VilniusResults: Valentine Bagdonavicius defeated Richard Damanskas by KO Gediminas Bielskis defeated Mantas Kuslin by KO Saulius Poltanavicius vs Aivaras Juska Draw...
, Starsky & Hutch). However, Spelling also produced more escapist fare as represented by the likes of The Love Boat
The Love Boat
The Love Boat is an American television series set on a cruise ship, which aired on the ABC Television Network from September 24,1977, until May 24,1986.The show starred Gavin MacLeod as the ship's captain...
, Fantasy Island
Fantasy Island
Fantasy Island is the title of two separate but related American fantasy television series, both originally airing on the ABC television network.-Original series:...
, and even the private-eye opus Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels is a television series about three women who work for a private investigation agency, and is one of the first shows to showcase women in roles traditionally reserved for men...
. There was also Family
Family (TV series)
Family is an American television drama series that aired on ABC from 1976 to 1980. Creative control of the show was split between executive producers Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling and Mike Nichols...
, a socially-relevant hour-long series which would win a number of Emmys during its four-year run. Spelling's success would continue well into the 1990s.
Television by year
- 1970 in television1970 in televisionThe year 1970 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1970.For the American TV schedule, see: 1970-71 American network television schedule.-Events:...
- Monday Night FootballMonday Night FootballMonday Night Football is a live broadcast of the National Football League on ESPN. From to it aired on ABC. Monday Night Football was, along with Hallmark Hall of Fame, and the Walt Disney anthology television series, one of the longest running prime time commercial network television series...
debutes on (ABCESPN on ABCESPN on ABC is the brand used for sports programming on the ABC television network. Officially the broadcast network retains its own sports division; however, for all practical purposes, ABC's sports division has been merged with ESPN, a sports cable network majority-owned by ABC's parent, The...
) Mary Tyler Moore and All My ChildrenAll My ChildrenAll My Children is an American television soap opera that aired on ABC from January 5, 1970 to September 23, 2011. Created by Agnes Nixon, All My Children is set in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, a fictitious suburb of Philadelphia. The show features Susan Lucci as Erica Kane, one of daytime's most...
premiere, as does the BBC Nine O'Clock NewsBBC Nine O'Clock NewsThe BBC Nine O'Clock News was the flagship BBC News programme launched on 14 September 1970, which ran until 15 October 2000, when it was controversially moved to BBC News at Ten....
and The GoodiesThe GoodiesThe Goodies are a trio of British comedians who created, wrote, and starred in a surreal British television comedy series called The Goodies during the 1970s and early 1980s combining sketches and situation comedy.-Honours:All three Goodies now have OBEs...
in the UK. - 1971 in television1971 in televisionThe year 1971 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1971.For the American TV schedule, see: 1971-72 American network television schedule.-Events:...
- All in the FamilyAll in the FamilyAll in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, a new show, Archie Bunker's Place, picked up where All in the Family had ended...
premieres. Open UniversityOpen UniversityThe Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
broadcasts begin on the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. John ChancellorJohn ChancellorJohn William Chancellor was a well-known American journalist who spent most of his career with NBC News...
becomes the sole anchor of the NBC Nightly NewsNBC Nightly NewsNBC Nightly News is the flagship daily evening television news program for NBC News and broadcasts. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is located in the center...
. - 1972 in television1972 in televisionThe year 1972 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1972.For the American TV schedule, see: 1972-73 American network television schedule.-Events:...
- M*A*S*H and Bob Barker's The Price is RightThe Price Is RightThe Price Is Right is a television game show franchise originally produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, and created by Bob Stewart, and is currently produced and owned by FremantleMedia. The franchise centers on television game shows, but also includes merchandise such as video games, printed...
debut; Home Box OfficeHome Box OfficeHBO, short for Home Box Office, is an American premium cable television network, owned by Time Warner. , HBO's programming reaches 28.2 million subscribers in the United States, making it the second largest premium network in America . In addition to its U.S...
becomes first pay-TV channel. Emmerdale FarmEmmerdaleEmmerdale, is a long-running British soap opera set in Emmerdale , a fictional village in the Yorkshire Dales. Created by Kevin Laffan, Emmerdale was first broadcast on 16 October 1972...
(now just called Emmerdale) premieres on ITV in the UK. - 1973 in television1973 in televisionThe year 1973 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1973.-Events:*January 4 – The record breaking, long-running comedy series in the UK and the world "Last of the Summer Wine" starts as a 30-minute pilot on BBC1's Comedy Playhouse show....
- Large-screen projection color TVs hit the market in the USA. The Young and the RestlessThe Young and the RestlessThe Young and the Restless is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in a fictional Wisconsin town called Genoa City, which is unlike and unrelated to the real life village of the same name, Genoa City, Wisconsin...
, Match GameMatch GameMatch Game is an American television game show in which contestants attempted to match celebrities' answers to fill-in-the-blank questions...
and PyramidPyramid (game show)Pyramid is an American television game show which has aired several versions. The original series, The $10,000 Pyramid, debuted March 26, 1973 and spawned seven subsequent Pyramid series...
begin hugely successful daytime TV runs. Last of the Summer WineLast of the Summer WineLast of the Summer Wine is a British sitcom written by Roy Clarke that was broadcast on BBC One. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse on 4 January 1973 and the first series of episodes followed on 12 November 1973. From 1983 to 2010, Alan J. W. Bell produced and...
premieres on BBC1. - 1974 in television1974 in televisionThe year 1974 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1974.For the American TV schedule, see: 1974-75 American network television schedule.-Events:...
- Happy DaysHappy DaysHappy Days is an American television sitcom that originally aired from January 15, 1974, to September 24, 1984, on ABC. Created by Garry Marshall, the series presents an idealized vision of life in mid-1950s to mid-1960s America....
premieres on ABCAmerican Broadcasting CompanyThe American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
. Monty Python's Flying CircusMonty Python's Flying CircusMonty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...
ends in the UK, and comes to American TV audiences for the first time. Australian TV tests color transmissions (full-time color comes in '75.) - 1975 in television1975 in televisionThe year 1975 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1975.For the American TV schedule, see: 1975-76 United States network television schedule.-Events:...
- Saturday Night LiveSaturday Night LiveSaturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
, Good Morning AmericaGood Morning AmericaGood Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
and Wheel of Fortune premiere; SonySony, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
introduces the BetamaxBetamaxBetamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...
, a home video tape recorder; Fawlty TowersFawlty TowersFawlty Towers is a British sitcom produced by BBC Television and first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975. Twelve television program episodes were produced . The show was written by John Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth, both of whom played major characters...
premieres in Britain on BBC2. - 1976 in television1976 in televisionThe year 1976 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1976.-Global television events:*The Olympics, broadcast from Montreal, Canada, draw an estimated one billion viewers worldwide....
- South AfricaSouth AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
has television service for the first time. UKUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
punk group the Sex PistolsSex PistolsThe Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians...
cause controversy and outrage by swearing on Today, a Thames TelevisionThames TelevisionThames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
regional early evening show. - 1977 in television1977 in televisionThe year 1977 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1977.For the American TV schedule, see: 1977-78 American network television schedule.-Events:...
- The mini-series RootsRoots (TV miniseries)Roots is a 1977 American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's fictional novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Roots received 36 Emmy Award nominations, winning nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings with the finale still...
airs on ABCAmerican Broadcasting CompanyThe American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
; first episode of Three's CompanyThree's CompanyThree's Company is an American sitcom that aired from March 15, 1977, to September 18, 1984, on ABC. It is based on the British sitcom, Man About the House....
. Dad's ArmyDad's ArmyDad's Army is a British sitcom about the Home Guard during the Second World War. It was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft and broadcast on BBC television between 1968 and 1977. The series ran for 9 series and 80 episodes in total, plus a radio series, a feature film and a stage show...
ends on BBC1. - 1978 in television1978 in televisionThe year 1978 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1978.For the American TV schedule, see: 1978-79 American network television schedule.-Events:...
- DallasDallas (TV series)Dallas is an American serial drama/prime time soap opera that revolves around the Ewings, a wealthy Texas family in the oil and cattle-ranching industries. Throughout the series, Larry Hagman stars as greedy, scheming oil baron J. R. Ewing...
paves the way for the return of prime time soapsSoap operaA soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
in the U.S.. Abarembo Shogun begins 25-year run in Japan. Grange Hill premieres on BBC1BBC OneBBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
in the UK. - 1979 in television1979 in televisionThe year 1979 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1979.For the American TV schedule, see: 1979-80 American network television schedule.-Events:...
- 43 million viewers watch Elvis! on ABCAmerican Broadcasting CompanyThe American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
. All-sports cable channel ESPNESPNEntertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
is launched. The Pinwheel Channel changes its name to Nickelodeon. A technician's strike forces ITVITV1ITV1 is a generic brand that is used by twelve franchises of the British ITV Network in the English regions, Wales, southern Scotland , the Isle of Man and the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey. The ITV1 brand was introduced by Carlton and Granada in 2001, alongside the regional identities of their...
off air for eleven weeks (except in the Channel IslandsChannel IslandsThe Channel Islands are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey...
) while BBC2BBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
launches the first computer generated ident in the world.