Nostalgic Showcase Presents is joining in on the 250th birthday celebration of the United States of America with our own yearlong landmark celebrations of our favorite toys, movies, characters, and franchises! Check back every two months for a special themed article, and attend our in-person events throughout the year.
Television! That remarkable screen of endless hours of entertainment all at the push of a button, from streaming services to local independent stations (UHFs) broadcasting through the airwaves. It’s remarkable to think of how this industry has evolved over the past ninety years, covering a wide range of genres and eras of entertaining; situational comedies, dramas, mysteries, live news reporting, documentary series, and reruns of our favorite shows and movies over and over, just to name a few. I grew up with the tail end of cable networks (although they are still around to this day; I have not tuned in since 2020, when I leaped to streaming services and physical media), but I can recall the many pitfalls of live television; long, repetitive commercial breaks, troublesome DVRs, and having to wait a whole week for the next episode to premiere. Yet, there is something that was lost with the rise of streaming services, a monocultural influence from the shows we used to watch for entertainment as a family, huddled around the television set, only a handful of channels and shows to choose from. I hope that this article inspires you to check out some of these television series that celebrate landmark anniversaries this year!
First, a bit of a background on the history of television! If you’ve attended either of my Saturday Morning Cartoon presentations, this information will be a bit of a recap. Televisions as we know them became widely popular and available in the early 1950s. By 1959, almost 90% of households owned a TV set, with three channels broadcasting original content and news; ABC, NBC and CBS. Programming was filmed on black-and-white film stock, as it was cheaper to produce and for majority of television audiences, whose their television sets were not capable of receiving color transmissions. Some programming in color started over the airwaves in the mid-1950s, for various broadcasting specials and a handful of shows. In 1965, it was announced that over half of all prime-time network programming would be broadcast in color. By the next year, sixty years ago, all of programming broadcast across the nation was in color.
Our list starts in 1951, with the premiere of I Love Lucy. Starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, the iconic situational comedy had 180 half-hour episodes, spread over six seasons, filmed in front of a live studio audience. For audiences with a preference for Westerns, The Roy Rogers Show, featuring Roy Rogers, premiered that same year, lasting for 100 half-hour episodes until 1957. Five years later, in 1956, The Price is Right is broadcast for the first time on NBC with host Bill Cullen. The show would switch to ABC before being cancelled in 1965. Notably, this would be the precursor to the more popular and longer-lasting revival of the show in 1972 on CBS, which continues to this day, awarded as the longest-running game show in the United States. 1961 would introduce a couple of great cartoon series; The Yogi Bear Show, a spin off of Hanna-Barbera’s wildly popular Huckleberry Hound Show, and Top Cat. (We briefly covered Hanna-Barbera’s many animated series in this article, check it out!) Still need a laugh? The Dick Van Dyke Show also premiered that same year. Five years later would bring even more classics to the airwaves: Batman, featuring Adam West, and Star Trek, featuring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, a personal favorite. For viewers looking for a spooky, more gothic take on a soap opera, Dark Shadows released the same year, returning for a film adaption in 2012.
The next two decades produce some great original programming. 1971 would bring All in the Family, featuring the grouchy Archie Bunker and his family. For those interested in tuning in for that week’s mystery, may I recommend Columbo? For the kids, The Electric Company appealed to an audience that aged out of Sesame Street, but still focused on grammar, syntax, spelling, and reading skills through various skits, songs, and animated segments. Speaking of those lovely Muppets, five years later would bring the airing of The Muppet Show (readers- I know this one originated in England, but Jim Henson was American! I couldn’t not include them in this list), introducing audiences to Miss Piggy, Gonzo the Great, Scooter, Dr Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker, Animal, and hundreds of other furried and felted monsters. (You can read more about the history of the Muppets in my article, here.) It would only be appropriate, as well, to celebrate The Krofft Supershow which also turns fifty this year. Produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, some of the live action segments were filmed at the short-lived World of Sid and Marty Krofft amusement park (covered in a previous article), and featured numerous live bands and various serial-style series within the show.
Oh, the 1980s! There’s so many amazing cultural icons and shows from this decade, how could I narrow it down to just a handful? Starting at what might be one of the biggest impacts on television, MTV premiered on August 1st, 1981, with a voice announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll,” rolling right into the music video for Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. What would follow would be nearly four decades of iconic music videos, interviews, shows, and many hours of entertainment. I know some of my readers enjoy some campy horror, and lucky for you, Elvira’s Movie Macabre aired her spellbinding commentary on an eclectic selection of various B-movies on September 26th. Kids, don’t feel left out! To round out 1981, the animated adaptation of Peyo’s The Smurfs, animated by Hanna-Barbera Productions, started its long-lasting airing schedule this year on NBC, lasting for nine seasons, over eight years. 1986 would also provide many children’s classics, like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse featuring Pee-Wee Herman and his colorful cast of puppets and characters airing on September 13, and loveable alien puppet ALF dropping from space and into our television sets, premiering on September 22. I’ll give two shout-outs to a couple of more obscure shows that premiered this year; the third-wall breaking comedy It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, which made light of the sitcom genre, and Matlock, a legal/drama mystery series starring Andy Griffith. To bookend this decade of television, I have to give a shout-out to a certain computer generated talksperson of the Coke campaign, Max Headroom, whose stutter and appearance was inescapable on various television commercials and physical Coca-Cola products starting in 1986. C-c-c-catch the wave, readers!
It’s strange to try to think of a time before Spongebob Squarepants was the mascot behind Nickelodeon, the network for children’s television, but eight years before he swam onto our screens, viewers only had three options. These three cartoons would make up the three original Nicktoons; Ren and Stimpy, created by John K.’s Spumco; Doug, created by Jim Jenkins; and Rugrats, created by Csupo/Klasky. (You can read more about Spumco here, and Saturday Morning Cartoons in this article.) Older kids and teens could tune into Nickelodeon’s live action offerings, Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Clarissa Explains It All. Shocking tabloid talk shows weren’t uncommon, but 1991’s Jerry Springer would be the more explosive standout from the norm and longest lasting, parodied in various movies, and airing new episodes until 2018. I only have two shows on my list for 1996, both for our younger demographics. Arthur, based on the book series by Marc Brown, premiered on PBS and lasted for 25 seasons, airing into 2022. Nick Jr’s Blue Clues (1996-2006) became an instant success with toddlers, combining live action with animated characters, with numerous spin-off series and a short lived reboot (2019-2024).
As we enter the millenium, I had a harder time picking out just a few shows to showcase. I’ve decided to list some of the more culturally significant ones, although I’m certain I’ve missed some of them. Twenty-five years ago, The Amazing Race took teams on scavenger hunts across the globe; Reba‘s family focused sitcom brought the country singer into acting; and Scrubs brought a humorous twist on medical dramas. Nickelodeon continued to provide original and off beat cartoons for their audiences; Invader Zim‘s dark and edgy humor and unusual art style continues to inspire artists to this day, Fairly Odd Parents brought a silly and fast paced refrain, and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy combined elements of both shows, equally cynical and silly. Game shows and reality television shows rose to popularity during this decade; in 2006, contestants across America could perform live for the chance to win big in America’s Got Talent and Guy Fieri traveled across the nation to find the best tasting food joints in Diners, Dive-ins and Dives. Jump forward another five years, and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, based on the wildly popular book series of the same name, premiered on HBO for the first time. Black Mirror, a modernization of The Twilight Zone, also premiered this year, alongside American Horror Story, whose stories continue to frighten adult audiences. The Amazing World of Gumball, a children’s cartoon, took characters from various failed pitches at Cartoon Network and combined all of them into a hodge-podge of different styles, a visually unique show for the time. Ten years ago brought the wildly popular Stranger Things, which just ended earlier this year, featuring a cast of kids fighting against monsters in the 1980s. Writers strikes and the pandemic impacted the television and film industry, and so, majority of shows that were released on television in 2021 went straight to streaming. Many studios played it safe, leaning on nostalgia and bringing back dead franchises for reboots or spin-offs, adapting older shows or movies into shows. Of the original offerings, I have just one on my list to showcase here: Only Murders in the Building which continues to be a fan favorite starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, solving the mysteries behind the murders and other happenstances in their apartment building.
With the advent of streaming services, thousands of new shows are premiering, many under my personal radar. For the shows that I remember watching as a kid, they premiered on prime-time slots or in syndication, and if I really wanted to watch a certain program, I either had to program the DVR to record it or hope I was home in time to see it. Fast forwarding through commercials was just not possible, unless you paused the show and some time had passed; wait too long, and the player would jump to the present-time. Sometimes the schedule would be off by a half-hour, and your programmed recording would miss the last part of your show- and you’d have to wait for the next rerun. Physical media for television is also a relatively new invention, with many shows currently unable to get physical releases for either copyright issues, lost episodes or low quality scans of negatives from the film, or many episodes recorded over to reuse film. If you’re a long time reader of my articles or attended my in-person events, I have vocalized innumerous times that lost media is the bane of my research process. There’s nothing quite as bitter as finding out that something that could have been archived at some point has gone missing! Ultimately, unless there’s television guides that have been uploaded onto the internet, it can be hard to figure out when the first episode of some of these series first hit the airwaves. I have tried my best to authenticate the true airing dates and years of the programs listed in this article.
Did you know that your Westlake Porter Public Library card can be used to borrow media on streaming platforms hoopla Digital, Kanopy, and OverDrive/Libby for free? Learn about how to access hundreds of titles and more by visiting this page.
I hope you enjoyed this little channel surf back in time!
Enjoy this article? Check out my upcoming event in October on Don Bluth Studios!
Come back in October for a showcase of our favorite movies that celebrate anniversaries this year!
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