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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 misdemeanours.
The "family sitcom", represented by the travails of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson in the 1950s and 1960s, saw its last breath at the start of the new decade with The Brady Bunch, which ran for five seasons.
Maude's housekeeper, Florida Evans (played by Esther Rolle), 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.
Bonanza actor Michael Landon was cast in the lead role of Little House on the Prairie, adapted from the children's books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Former CBS head of programming Fred Silverman 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.
Other successful TV crime dramas of the decade included The Streets of San Francisco, The Rookies, McCloud, Columbo, Barnaby Jones, The Rockford Files, Starsky & Hutch, Kojak, Switch, and, above all, Hawaii Five-O, for many years considered the longest-running police show in the history of American television.
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.
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).
The series involved movie and television stars in guest roles as passengers on a luxury cruise liner that sailed up and down the Pacific Coast.
Fill-in-the-blank questions involving crude humor, zany panelists, several hilarious incidents, and pure "fun" between the panel and "ringmaster" host Gene Rayburn led to it breaking records at one point as the highest-rated daytime American TV show ever.
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.
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.
Roots, 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.
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.
Although the show was successful, 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").
[2][3] 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.
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.