What kind of tv was most watched in the late 1950s early 1960s?
I would say sit coms like I Love Lucy, westerns like Gunsmoke, game shows like To Tell the turth, and varitey shows like Ed sullivan- —Reality shows as we know them didnt’ really exist then-there were talents shows but the viewers didn’t vote-they had judges there and it was different people every week. I grew up in the 60’s/70’s and remember when all shows were black/white- we didn’t get a color set till the late 60’s. Soaps were 30 minutes and b/w till the mid-late 70’s- daytime soaps reached their peak in the 80’s-the audience for daytimes soaps is now less than Half it was in the 80’s. I — PBS had a series about the early days of TV on couple months ago called “Pioneers of Televison”- it was 4-5 episodes and each one had a theme like “game shows”, sitcoms, etc- I really enjoyed the clips and interviews.
There wasn’t a great deal to choose from, as I remember – I was a child in the late 50’s and TV was ‘off’ for most of the day – there were no programmes until late afternoon and they finished well before midnight! There were also only two channels, at first just BBC then ITV came later. Children’s TV was shown in the early evening with programmes like ‘Torchy, the Battery Boy’, ‘Four Feather Falls’ ‘Muffin the Mule’, all of which were puppet shows – the strings on the puppets were like ropes!! Family based viewing followed the early news with lots of variety shows, game shows etc. were the norm. I remember a hospital drama called ‘Emergency Ward 10’. ‘Doctor Who’ started in the 60’s and was ground-breaking stuff! The first and only soap was ‘Coronation Street’ which started in 1960 – ‘Emmerdale Farm’ came later and was shown during the day (at lunchtime) – all they did was sit around the table in the Sugden’s farmhouse drinking tea! Reality TV didn’t really start until Big Brother in 2
