1970s in television

The decade of the 1970s saw significant changes in television programming in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The trends included the decline of the "family sitcoms" and rural-oriented programs to more socially contemporary shows and "young, hip and urban" sitcoms in the United States and the permanent establishment of colour television in the United Kingdom.

Overall trends

United Kingdom

In 1967 BBC Two had started trials of their new colour service, and it was gradually rolled out over the next few years. BBC One and ITV followed suit in 1969, so by 1970 the viewer had three colour channels from which to choose: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. Although U.S. imports occupied a significant proportion of airtime, there was a substantial amount of high quality in-house production too.

The BBC, supported by its licence fee and with no advertisers to placate, continued fulfilling its brief to entertain and inform. The "Play for Today" was a continuation of the "Wednesday Play" which had run from the mid '60s. 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").

Potter went on to write "Pennies From Heaven", one of the landmarks of '70s television drama. 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. The series was a success, but the BBC was not yet ready for "Brimstone and Treacle", a story of the rape of a physically and mentally handicapped young woman. After viewing it, the BBC’s Director Of Programmes Alasdair Milne, pronouncing it to be “brilliantly written … but nauseating”, withdrew it, and it would not be shown on British television until 1987. The science fiction show Doctor Who reached its peak with actors Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker cast in the role of the Doctor, though it is arguable that the current tenure of the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant, is more widely successful.

Many popular British situation comedies (sit-coms) were gentle, innocent, unchallenging comedies of middle-class life, avoiding or only hinting at controversial issues; typical examples were "Terry and June", "Sykes", and "The Good Life". 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. More nostalgic in tone were "Last of the Summer Wine", about the escapades of pensioners in a Yorkshire town, and "Dad's Army", about a Home Guard unit during World War II. Set in a hotel in Torquay, "Fawlty Towers" was a massive success for the BBC, despite only twelve episodes being made.

Things had begun to change in the '60s, with "Till Death Us Do Part", and the series continued during 1972–75. The rantings of Alf Garnett on race, class, religion, education and anything else at all definitely touched a nerve. Although the show was in fact poking fun at right-wing bigotry, not everyone got the joke. Some — including, notably, Mary Whitehouse — complained about the language (although the level of profanity was quite light) and resented the racial epithets like “wog” and “coon” and the attitudes underlying them. 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. The series regularly provoked controversy in the media, and for millions it became a common gossiping point at work or in the pub.

In police dramas there was a move towards increasing realism. "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. On the other hand, detective series such as "Softly, Softly" (a spin-off from the earlier "Z-Cars") began to show police work done by fallible human beings with their own personal failings and weaknesses, constantly frustrated by the constraints under which they worked. Such series showed crime at the level of petty larceny and fraud, being tackled by ordinary coppers on the beat. Serious organised crime, on the other hand, was the province of various elite units, and one show in the '70s set a new standard. "The Sweeney" presented a hard, gritty picture of an armed police unit — members of Scotland Yard's elite Flying Squad. Violence was routine, as were fast car chases; Regan and Carter were hard-hitting coppers, who when they weren’t catching villains were likely to be on a drunken binge or womanizing.

Although this was a truer picture of British policing, it was not always to the liking of senior police officers, who felt that the confidence of the public in the police force would be diminished as a result. In police dramas through most of the '70s however, corruption was rare, the detection rate was unrealistically high, and the criminals arrested were always convicted on solid evidence. 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 misdmeanours. It would not be until 1978 that a police drama (the mini-series "Law and Order") would depict a police officer fabricating evidence to secure a conviction, with the collusion of his colleagues.

United States

At the start of the decade, long-standing trends in American television were finally reaching the end of the road. "The Red Skelton Show" and "The Ed Sullivan Show", long-revered American institutions, were finally canceled after multi-decade spans. The "family sitcom," popularized by the travails of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson in the fifties and sixties, saw its last breath at the start of the new decade with "The Brady Bunch", which ran for five seasons. Although the show was never highly rated during its original run, it has been broadcast in syndication continuously since 1974, and many children have grown up with it, causing them to think of the Bradys as the quintessential family — not only in 1970s television, but quite possibly all of American television. In the early 1970s the magical sitcoms like I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched began to lose American interest with "I Dream of Jeannie" ending its run in 1970 and "Bewitched" ending in 1972.

In 1971; CBS, tired of being ridiculed to as the "Hillbilly Network" because the majority of its hit shows were rural-oriented, cancelled "The Beverly Hillbillies", "Hee Haw", "Green Acres" and "Mayberry RFD" plus every show "that had a tree in it" as described by actor Pat Buttram. In its place, shows that appealed to a more younger, urban demographic became commonplace. It was transformed by what became termed as "social consciousness" programming, spearheaded by television producer Norman Lear. "All in the Family", his adaptation of the British television series "Till Death Us Do Part", broke down television barriers. When the series premiered in 1971, Americans heard the words "fag," "jigaboo," and "spic" on national television programming for the first time. "All in the Family" was the talk of countless dinner tables throughout the country; Americans hadn't seen anything like it on television before. The show became the highest-rated program on U.S. television schedules in the fall of 1971 and stayed in the top slot until 1976 — to date, only one other series has tied "All in the Family" for such a long stretch at the top of the ratings. "All in the Family" spawned numerous spin-offs, such as "Maude", starring Bea Arthur.

Maude was Edith Bunker's cousin and Archie's arch-enemy. She stood for everything liberal and was an outspoken advocate of civil rights and feminism. Like "All in the Family," Maude broke new ground in television and presented American audiences with something they had never encountered on television before when Maude admitted, without guilt or shame, to planning to have an abortion. Maude felt most comfortable, however, hiring a black woman as her housekeeper. Maude's housekeeper, Florida Evans (played by Esther Rolle), became popular in her own right and 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.

With the rise in socially responsible programming, the television western, a very popular genre in the 1960s, slowly died out. The first casualties were "The High Chaparral" and "The Virginian", both NBC staples, in the spring of 1971. "Bonanza" suffered a blow when actor Dan Blocker died during surgery in 1972, and the show quietly ended its run the next year. CBS's "Gunsmoke" outlasted them all, and finally ended its run with a star-studded series finale in 1975. "Bonanza" actor Michael Landon helped popularize a television adaptation of the popular children's book series "Little House on the Prairie". Debuting in 1974, the series ran for eight years. "Little House"'s competitor family drama was CBS's "The Waltons", which revolved around family unity but during a different time and place — Virginia during the Great Depression.

By the mid-to-late 1970s, viewers tired of socially responsible sitcoms. Former CBS head of programming Fred Silverman defected to struggling ABC started the trend of TV centred around 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 Jack Tripper pretended to be gay in order to live in an apartment with two single women. Mildly controversial at the time, the show quickly became a Top Ten hit in the ratings.

ABC also aired "Soap", a sitcom that parodied soap operas, and garnered controversy by writing in one of the first gay characters on U.S. television. 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). Silverman's legacy also included the escapist "fantasy" genre, which started in 1977 with "The Love Boat". The series involved popular movie and television stars in guest roles as passengers on a luxury cruise liner that sailed up and down the Pacific Coast. Silverman followed up in 1978 with "Fantasy Island", starring Ricardo Montalban and Hervé Villechaize. Montalban and Villechaize were the owner and sidekick, respectively, of a luxury island resort where peoples' wishes came true.

Another popular medium in U.S. television moving into the 1970s was the soap opera, which moved from being a genre watched exclusively by housewives to having a sizable audience of men (who largely watched "The Edge of Night") and college students; the latter audience helped "All My Children" gain a devoted following, as it was on during many universities' traditional "lunch period." In a "TIME" article written about the genre in 1976, it was estimated that as many as 35 million households tuned into at least one soap opera each afternoon, the most popular being "As the World Turns", which routinely grabbed viewing figures of twelve million or higher each day.

The soap boom spawned a nighttime soap parody, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman", which made a quick star out of Louise Lasser, who played the eponymous heroine. A rising soap opera toward the decade's end was "Ryan's Hope", which capitalized on the everyman success of the film "Rocky" (despite "Ryan's Hope" debuting earlier; the show's success came a while after the movie's release). The serial was about an Irish-American family running a pub in New York City, and earned critical acclaim from television critics for its realistic portrayal of an "ethnic" middle-class family in a contemporary setting. The show's matriarch, played by Helen Gallagher, won two Daytime Emmys by decade's end. Also during the decade "General Hospital", a soap that spent most of the decade with bad ratings (It was almost canceled in 1976) saw a rise in popularity around late 1978 due to its more youthful focus. However, it would not yet become a ratings giant until the 1980s.

Daytime television was consumed with several game shows, airing alongside soap operas during the mornings and afternoons. During the early years of the decade, "The Hollywood Squares" (NBC) was the most popular, winning numerous Emmy awards. Hosted by masterly emcee Peter Marshall, nine celebrities in a large tic-tac-toe board — among them, center square Paul Lynde — responded to miscellaneous questions. Contestants must state whether they "agree" or "disagree" with the answers and if they are correct, their "X"/"O" symbol lights up in the celeb's box. The first to get three in a row or a five-square win succeeds and wins money. Bluffs and zingers made this the essential show to watch on afternoons. In the mid-70s "Match Game" (CBS) was the most popular game show (it was #1 among them from 1973 to 1977), in a time when there were many of them. Players must match the answers of flaky panelists like Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly.

Fill-in-the-blank questions involving crude humor, zany panelists, several hilarious incidents, and pure "fun" between the panel and "ringmaster" host Gene Rayburn made it popular. At one point, it broke records as the highest-rated daytime TV show in U.S. history. The show launched a spin-off, "Family Feud" (ABC), an enormously prominent game which prevailed as the #1 game show of the late 70s. Two families squared off in assuming the most common answers to surveys of 100 people across the nation with such questions as, "name a public figure most Americans dislike." 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. Other successful game shows during this decade included "The Price is Right" (still on the air to this day), "Let's Make a Deal", "The $20,000 Pyramid", "The Gong Show", "The Newlywed Game", "Password", "Tattletales", "Break the Bank", and "The Joker's Wild".

Another influential genre was the television newscast, which built on its initial widespread success in the 1960s. 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.

Finally, the variety show received its last hurrah during this decade. Popular during the 1950s and 1960s, variety shows carried on in the 1970s with "The Carol Burnett Show". With a repertory company that included Vicki Lawrence, Harvey Korman and Lyle Waggoner, the veterans' series continued to be successful and ran well into the mid-seventies. NBC aired a variety show of its own, starring African-American comedian Flip Wilson. "The Flip Wilson Show" became a success and became the first show headed by an African-American comedian to become a ratings winner.

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. In addition to some entertaining stand-up banter between the husband and wife, "The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour" would also have skits and music (mostly sung by Cher). The show was a ratings winner from the first episode and ran for three years. It was followed in the same vein shortly after by singing group Tony Orlando and Dawn.

Another group of singers who received a variety show in the seventies were two of the famous singing Osmonds — Donny and his sister Marie. Sid & Marty Krofft set to work on the siblings' series and "Donny & Marie" premiered on ABC in the winter of 1976. Although the show became very popular, 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").

Television by year

*1979 in television - 43 million viewers watch "Elvis!" on ABC. All-sports cable channel ESPN and kids' net Nickelodeon are launched. A technician's strike forces ITV off air for eleven weeks (except in the Channel Islands) while BBC2 launches the first computer generated ident in the world.
*1978 in television - "Dallas" paves the way for the return of prime time soaps in the U.S.. "Abarembo Shogun" begins 25-year run in Japan. "Grange Hill" premieres on BBC1 in the UK.
*1977 in television - The mini-series "Roots" airs on ABC; first episode of "Three's Company". "Dad's Army" ends on BBC1.
*1976 in television - South Africa has television service for the first time. UK punk group the Sex Pistols cause controversy and outrage by swearing on "Today", a Thames Television regional early evening show.
*1975 in television - "Saturday Night Live", "Good Morning America" and "Wheel of Fortune" premiere; Sony introduces the Betamax, a home video tape recorder; "Fawlty Towers" premieres in Britain on BBC2.
*1974 in television - "Happy Days" premieres on ABC. Monty Python's Flying Circus ends in the UK, and comes to American TV audiences for the first time. Australian TV tests color transmissions (full-time color comes in '75.)
*1973 in television - Large-screen projection color TVs hit the market in the USA. "The Young and the Restless", "Match Game" and "Pyramid" begin hugely successful daytime TV runs. "Last of the Summer Wine" premieres on BBC1.
*1972 in television - "M*A*S*H" and Bob Barker's "The Price is Right" debut; Home Box Office becomes first pay-TV channel. "Emmerdale Farm" (now just called "Emmerdale") premieres on ITV in the UK.
*1971 in television - "All in the Family" premieres. "Open University" broadcasts begin on the BBC. John Chancellor becomes the sole anchor of the NBC Nightly News.
*1970 in television - Monday Night Football debutes on (ABC) "Mary Tyler Moore" and "All My Children" premiere, as does the "BBC Nine O'Clock News" and "The Goodies" in the UK.