The Following Program is Brought To You in Living Color…
One of the first classic television shows that I remember loving in reruns as a kid was Gilligan’s Island. I would glue myself to the television each morning to see what kooky situation my beloved castaways had gotten themselves into that day (and I always continued to hold out hope that maybe one of the episodes would finally lead to their rescue!).
I also vividly remember the confusion that my kid self had when a black and white episode of Gilligan’s Island first graced my television screen, as I had first discovered the show in color. How could a single TV show have some episodes in black and white and some in color? I didn’t get it. I was equally confused when the same thing happened as I was watching Bewitched reruns. Needless to say, as a kid, I always was a bit disappointed when a black and white episode instead of a color episode was airing that day. The color helped make these shows seem so alive to me and truly made the show’s characters “pop” - from Ginger’s shining red hair and sparkling movie star dresses on Gilligan’s Island to the signature purple-and-lime-green attire of Endora on Bewtiched.
When I first started doing some research to put together the above graph, I quickly learned that I wasn’t the only person out there with clear childhood memories tied to television shows making the transition from black and white to color (or tied to watching both versions of shows in reruns). While my own memories were not from the years of the actual changeover to color programming on network television, many others did have clear memories of being around in the early to mid 1960s to see a show seemingly “magically” transform into color a few seasons into its run.
As I finished up the data collection for this graph, I found myself pulled in to multiple articles about the different dynamics at play surrounding the transition to color programming and the varying approaches each network was taking. There were a few interesting things I discovered as I read up on this piece of television history:
NBC was ahead of the curve in terms of the move towards color programming, since its parent company RCA also manufactured color televisions. Therefore, the network was much more actively pushing color programming, whereas ABC and CBS were deliberately dragging their feet (as they understandably weren’t all that eager to push folks towards a product marketed by RCA).
As you can see on the graph, there were a handful of shows that had one or more early episodes in color before officially making the switch (e.g. Hazel, The Joey Bishop Show, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and a handful of others). There are some interesting details behind a few of these examples, such as how Hazel’s sole color episode in season one involved a plotline of the character purchasing a color TV, in what essentially boiled down to a way to promote RCA color televisions to the audience (Hazel was an NBC show at the time). And before The Joey Bishop Show or Wagon Train made the switch over to color, there were five episodes of each that were filmed and aired in color as part of special "all color nights” to market (you guessed it) RCA color television sets.
The other thing that may stand out right away in looking at this graph is that two shows, The Joey Bishop Show and Wagon Train, switched to color, but then switched back to black and white. What gives? For The Joey Bishop Show, the show had migrated over to color when it was on NBC, but then in 1964, when it moved over to CBS (which again, was in no real rush to move shows to color), it was switched back to black and white. In the case of Wagon Train, the show made a bit of a change in its seventh season and decided to extend all episodes to 90 minutes and make them all color. For whatever reason, the network then chose to revert back to original format (black & white and only an hour long) for the show’s eighth and final season. Theories suggest that the move back to black and white was done either to cut costs, or due to the network trying to recapture the more “classic” feel of earlier Wagon Train episodes (or it perhaps may have been a combination of both reasons).
The TV show Laramie was one of the first to make the transition from black and white to color, doing so at the start of the 1961-62 season. During this season, a new version of the NBC peacock logo was introduced before Laramie episodes, alongside an announcement about the program being brought to you “in living color.” This particular version of the network’s mascot became known as the “Laramie peacock.”
Source: NBC
Many times, after creating a graph, I will have a desire to incorporate other data points or dimensions into the visualization, as a way to dig in further to personal curiosities that arose when I put the original graph together. That was the case with the above graph; as soon as I posted it, I realized that I wanted to see a view that incorporated both network information and the specific years in which shows made the switch. As such, I put together this follow-up graph, focused on the same general topic (TV shows that switched from black & white to color), but structured as more of a timeline view:
This follow-up visualization hopefully illustrates a few things: 1) how ahead of the pack shows like Laramie, Hazel, and The Joey Bishop Show (all NBC shows at the time) were with their moves to color, and 2) how the 1965-66 season and the 1966-67 season were really turning points in terms of so many shows (and not just NBC shows anymore!) finally making the switch to color.
For the 1965 season, NBC announced that almost all its primetime lineup would be in color (I Dream of Jeannie and Convoy were the only two exceptions), and for ABC / CBS, it was about half their programs. Prior to the 1965-66 season, CBS had offered no regularly scheduled color programming, other than variety shows and occasional specials. By the 66-67 season, all three networks were airing their entire primetime schedules in color.
I always enjoy when making a graph becomes an excuse to dive into a part of television history that I would otherwise not have been as familiar with. If this topic happens to have sparked your interest (as it did mine, somewhat unexpectedly!), a few worthwhile articles I found when researching this era and the color programming evolution include this one from TVTropes.org and this one from TVObscurities.com - both have even more context and make for great follow-up reads on this subject.