Television Programs Starting In the Early Days I am not a reviewer of television programs, but like everyone else there are some I really like, some I can take and others I cannot stand. Trends change and this has a lot to do with the type of programming that is put on the tube. I just realized I used an old term. Televisions no longer use a cathode tube. Anyway, back to the topic. I was always a fan of a good scifi show. Anther type of show I liked was a good cowboy along with some dramas. In the beginning there were very few channels so the programming was very limited. Then for a long time there were 7 channels. 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. Some very good westerns had come on. The very first one I liked was the Lone Ranger. It started in the ancient days, in 1949. We didn’t get a television until years late, but my aunt had a television and sometimes she would put it on for me. I remember when the star of the show Clayton Moore, when the show finished, he used to make appearances but he was no longer allowed to wear the mask so he wore dark sunglasses. Sounds crazy, but it is true. In 1952 another cowboy came along named Hopalong Cassidy. The kids were crazy for him and you could see him in person at shows also which had nothing to do with the television show. As time went by more mature cowboy programs developed. Gunsmoke became one of the longest running shows on television 635 episodes and 20 seasons and was a great show. Another great show was Paladin. It starred Richard Boone and ran from 1967 to 1973 and Boone got two Emmy nominations. Gunsmoke had originally been a radio show. Only the older generation will remember the cowboy programs I talked about. If you would have told someone in those days, we would be paying for television they would have laughed you out of the building. There were some really great science fiction television shows on over the years. One of the first ones would be laughable today. It was Captain Video. He battled aliens, but they were only stick figures. The first serious one I remember was The Science Fiction Theatre. It came on in 1955 and lasted until 1957. Each story was different. I enjoyed the show very much. Who could forget Star Trek, Star Trek the Next Generation, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Star Trek Enterprise? I no longer look at the newest Star Trek on streaming services. There were so many good science fiction programs on television it was incredible. Take Stargate for example. It was a great show for those who like scifi. Each episode was interesting and it had a great cast. As long as I am talking about shows that start with the letter S, let’s not forget a current one named Stranger Things. Sliders and the Time Tunnel were sort of the same type of shows. Both were interesting and in one, travel was to different times, and in the other different dimensions with parallel universes. The Six Million Dollar Man was very popular for a while. It was about an astronaut who crashes back to earth and is rebuilt with robotic parts but still looks human. His rebuild makes him into a type of superman who fights crime. One of my all time favorites was Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It was on television from 1964 to 1968. It had some great adventures which took place from a submarine and a great cast. I liked Agents of Shield. Not everyone I know felt the same, but I looked at every episode. Another scifi show which I thought was interesting was Alien Nation. It was only on for 3 years but it was interesting. A race of aliens are on a spaceship and they are slaves to another race which abandoned the ship and left them to die, but they survived and the United States took them in. I don’t want to forget the original Battlestar Galactica. Robots from a robot world decide to destroy a human world sending them fleeing. They eventually populate a planet, which turns out to be the earth. There were some great dramas over the years. One program named Studio One had a different story every week and they were usually very interesting. It first appeared on television in 1947 and had been a radio show before that. When do you think the first sitcom appeared on television, make a guess? No, you are wrong it was 1946 and named Pinwright’s Progress. Sitcoms became very popular in the early days. And before 1950 there were several which had appeared on television. One of the most popular early ones was the Aldrich Family which ran from 1949 to 1953. The funny thing is sitcoms are still the meat and potatoes of the television industry. Some of the good ones over the years were Leave it to Beaver, My Three Sons, The Odd Couple, Married With Children, Frasier and Seinfeld. There are hundreds more and some of them were also very popular. I really like a few of the mini-series. One was the Martin Chronicles. We finally settle Mars and astronauts find their dead relatives live there. I won’t tell you more because I don’t want to spoil it for you if you ever see it. Band of Brothers was terrific and very realistic. It was made like a movie and didn’t skimp on anything. Rome was another great show with incredible sets and actors. I call it a mini-series but others may think of it more as a show with a short run. It turned out it was so expensive to make because of the sets, it only had two seasons. Another category is movies made for television. This would have been unheard of years ago. You made a movie back then and it was made in Hollywood for the big screen, which was really not so big compared to today. Some of the movies in this category are It, a Steven King movie, some other movies which received critical acclaim are Special Bulletin, The Tribe, Duel, An Early Frost and Brian’s Song. I just want to say I have never seen these movies except for It. One of the lucky thinks for many of us during this pandemic is the fact we have a lot we can look at and we all have computers and cell phones. Can you imagine what it would have been like stuck at home with only a radio? It is the only silver lining in these days.
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