Golden Age of Television
The Golden Age was followed by the network era, wherein television audiences and programming had shifted to less critically acclaimed fare, almost all of it taped or filmed.
The Bell Telephone Hour, an NBC radio program, began its television run featuring both classical and Broadway performers.
The networks employed art critics, notably Aline Saarinen and Brian O'Doherty, something that was mostly discontinued by the start of the digital television era (CBS's John Leonard being the last of significance).
Critics and viewers looked forward to new teleplays by Paddy Chayefsky, Horton Foote, Tad Mosel, Reginald Rose, Rod Serling, William Templeton, Gore Vidal and others.
Live, abridged versions of plays such as Cyrano de Bergerac, with members of the cast of the 1946 Broadway revival recreating their roles, were regularly shown during this period.
Dinah Shore, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Lawrence Welk as well as other stars had popular weekly musical variety shows.
Professional wrestling was one of the most popular genres of programming in the early days of television, largely based on the star power of Gorgeous George Wagner.
[18] Consequently, it was Gorgeous George who brought the sport into the nation's living rooms, as his histrionics and melodramatic behavior made him a larger-than-life figure in American pop culture.
Moreover, in a very real sense, it was Gorgeous George who single-handedly established television as a viable entertainment medium that could potentially reach millions of homes across the country.
A great many B-movie Westerns were aired on TV as time fillers, starring actors like: Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, John Wayne, Lash LaRue, Buster Crabbe, Bob Steele, Johnny Mack Brown, Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard and others.
Notable TV Westerns include: The Gene Autry Show, The Roy Rogers Show, Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, The Rifleman, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Have Gun – Will Travel, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Tales of Wells Fargo, The Range Rider, The Cisco Kid, Bonanza, The Virginian, Wagon Train, The Restless Gun, Trackdown, Annie Oakley, The Big Valley, Maverick, The High Chaparral, Sugarfoot, Cheyenne, The Adventures of Kit Carson, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, Death Valley Days and many others.
The mid-1950s were a period of rapid growth in popularity for the quiz show format until it was beset by a series of scandals, hastening the end of the golden age.
The late-night talk show began in 1950 with short-lived efforts from Jerry Lester (Broadway Open House) and Faye Emerson; Tonight would prove more enduring under the successive hosting runs of Steve Allen (1954–57), Ernie Kovacs (1956–57) and Jack Paar (1957–62).
Many lightweight television programs of this era evolved from successful radio shows, which in turn originated from vaudeville stages, many of them in the Borscht Belt within driving distance of New York City.
Sylvester "Pat" Weaver was fired in 1956 after his strategy of programming highbrow "spectacular" productions once a month on NBC proved to be a ratings failure against more conventional fare on CBS.
[30] Rural sitcoms and Westerns boomed, perplexing even the writers of the shows[31] and being treated as an opportunity for callous exploitation by the network executives, who nonetheless hated the programs,[32] as did most critics.
[33] James Aubrey, the president of CBS Network from 1960 to 1965, introduced to television the shows such as Mister Ed, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Danny Kaye, in addition to already well-established Danny Thomas, Ed Sullivan, What's My Line?, Perry Mason, I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke.
Characterized by a former colleague at ABC as having "a smell for the blue-collar", Aubrey later admitted:[32] We made an effort to continue purposeful drama on TV, but we found out that the people just don't want an anthology.
[34] As filmed series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone began to dominate during the mid-1950s to early 1960s, the period of live television dramas was viewed as the Golden Age.
Defending his upcoming series The New Price Is Right in 1972, he remarked:[37] The critics will always look down their noses, but you can't have The Bell Telephone Hour on and still stay in competition.
"[38] The quality of television in the United States would begin to recover in the mid-late 1960s with more experimental shows such as The Monkees[39] and He & She,[40] even as gimmick-driven sitcoms continued to dominate for a few years after[41] until the rural purge of the early 1970s.
Although there were a handful of efforts to produce domestic content for the Canadian networks,[42] most Golden Age shows were imported from the United States until the Can-Con requirements took effect around 1970.
The television series, which is of the same title witnessed a tremendous success, especially in South western states, where it was reported that the show constantly left streets deserted during its broadcast on Sunday evenings.
[49] Other television successes witnessed in the 1980s include series such as Adio Family, The Village Headmaster, Cock's Crow at Dawn, The Masquerade, Mirror in the Sun, Checkmate, Sura The Tailor, Second Chance and Awada Kerikeri.
The early British television drama borrowed a great deal from dramatic radio productions developed between the First and the Second World Wars.
[53] The golden age of British television enjoyed its peak around the same time as in the United States, ranging from approximately 1949 to 1955 – although the term has been used to describe the period until the mid-1970s.
[55][56] The live nature of television and relatively young age of the people involved in its development afforded certain level of exuberance, edginess, debate and criticism.
The Soviet government deemed Czechoslovak mass media, which hosted political disputes and broadcast news about protesting students and young workers, to be complicit in undermining Communist rule in Czechoslovakia.
This period is notable for edgy talk shows and comedic productions that targeted youth, such as Outlook, Till 16 and older, 12th Floor, Before and After Midnight, Oba-na.
Contemporary independent television broadcasters stick mostly to unoffensive soap operas and talk shows, leaving the political programming to government-owned channels.
