A few questions about 'Bonanza', please...

I followed a link from some posting that mentioned that the first color TV in 1954 cost $1000. I'm guessing the 2011 eqivalent could be $15,000 or more. You could buy a new car back then for about a $1000.

 

My family as well. We didn't get a color TV until 1972; my father was one of those guys who kept "waiting for them to perfect it." Heck, we didn't have stereo speakers until about 1969.

The transition to B&W was actually even longer than that. There were local stations still doing B&W local news or combinations of color and B&W programming as late as 1968-1969.

Here's a great copy of the CBS logo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq0mUCFlizg

ABC hooked the "In Color" tag to their opening show banners, which was famously parodied in the Police Squad show in 1982.

 

Actually new cars were more like $2000 for a basic Ford or Chevy back in the early 50s. A Buick would be $3000+ But you're right, $1000 for a TV was a lot of money back then. It would be about the same as paying $8000 today...

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

 

Thanks for the info and the link. That is what I was trying to find. I was only 5 in 1954, so I had no memory of prices of things back then. I knew that $1000 for a TV was an exobanate amount of money.

 

Are you referring to the show with the opening whose first words are "Space . . . the final frontier"?

 

Well . . . like, how many CBS shows scheduled for Sunday evenings at the 9-to-10 time period (NYT) between 1961 and early 1967 all withered and died because of the Bonanza juggernaut. Including the likes of Judy Garland and an early Shatner series.

 

Benno 123,

I know we have drifted off topic here, but I viewed that 1954 Burns & Allen color show several months ago at UCLA. Sony Pictures film restoration held a screening of several restored early color TV shows, including B&A and a 1954 NBC color kinescope of the Eddie Fisher Coke Time show and a 1954 color Kine of a Dinah Shore show. You can PM me for a list of some CBS color telecasts prior to the Burns & Allen broadcasts.

-Steve D.

 

Sorry about that. I was really fascinated about how expensive a TV was in the early 50s. To get it back on track, Bonanza was so much more than a Western. It was a family drama that happened to be set in the 1800's west.

 

Sorry . . . when The Monkees were originally on, they were network-mates of the Cartwright clan.

 

And they were on a weeknight.

 

So was Bonanza, in its final half-season (1972-73) following Dan Blocker's death.

 

But that's half a decade after "The Monkees" was cancelled.

 

Are you thinking of he best western tv show of all time "Cimarron Strip",staring Stuart Whitman and featuring a character named "dulcey" ?

 

in my opinion the best season of bonanza is the first one.

 

Where it "didn't hit its stride" in its first two seasons was ratings. It didn't become a ratings . . . er, bonanza (sorry about that) until Dinah Shore ended her association with Chevrolet in 1961 and her variety show moved to another night. (I think in its first two years on the air, Bonanza was on Saturdays - and was struggling to find an audience.)

 

Many years ago, I transferred the clip below, which was RCA's December 1953 announcement on the introduction of compatible color:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojJCJIaDp9Q

This announcement says that color TVs will cost "as low as $239.95" (2:38 into the clip), which is about $1900 today. I wouldn't be surprised if a bigger TV was several times more expensive, but not $1000.

 

Given that they owned the show, it's no wonder they "hung in there."