The decade was young, so were the new inhabitants of the White House, and in 1961, network TV was entering its own adolescence. Little wonder the medium experienced growing pains that year. In May, FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow infamously described the broadcasting landscape as a “vast wasteland,” obviously not a fan of the plethora of Westerns and squeaky-clean family sitcoms that had carried over from the 1950s.
Dennis was still a menace, we hadn’t stopped leaving it to Beaver, teens were swooning to Edd “Kookie” Byrnes on 77 Sunset Strip and grooving to hipster Maynard G. Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Gunsmoke, TV’s top-rated show, was now so popular it grew from 30 minutes to an hour in 1961 (with repeats of the original format airing as Marshal Dillon).
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
