TV "Programming"

[Mystic Wanderer]

Ninurta and I must be watching similar old TV programs on the same broadcast networks, so he should relate to my observations.

I have been watching the cowboy western TV shows on CW network, they have a lot of the classics from the 50s through the 60s. I find them interesting for a number of reasons, one thing of interest is the plots of the story lines.

In the older TV series, like Rawhide and  Wagon train, the stories have a moral to teach. Wagon train is highly conservative with morals involving the law and Christian beliefs. Pretty much all of the shows from the 50s through about the mid 60s had a plot that involved a lesson to be learned at the end of the program.

Now, sometime in the late 60s and early 70s, the story lines changed. I suspect that Vietnam played a big part, but I also suspect that film director Sam Peckinpah had a lot to do with how westerns changed during that era.

The TV series Gunsmoke ran from 1955 to 1975 and is a good example of how these stories changed. I watched one episode from later in the series with a plot that was just senseless violence and cruelty with Marshal Matt Dillon unable, or unwilling, to come to the rescue. No lesson to be learned, no moral to that story, just mindless gratuitous violence and misery...

The movies and TV series back then -in general, are far superior to the banal programmes they put out today.
I agree with you Swamp Buck, Westerns held simple moral threads that can easily be accessed by young and old.
AND the actor who played Marshall Dillon (James Arness) also played 'The Thing' in the original movie!


Back then and just before Mr Arness' death in 2011.

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I recently watched a film from the days of when I was a kid (1966), a movie that was produced by The Children's
Fim Foundation. Titled 'Operation Third Form', it was an English-made film where school children save an old junk
collector from being accused of a theft and try to prevent his partner from stealing a valuable painting.

Simply made and showing high principles of wholesomeness, a trait lost these days.

@"BIAD" 
Good heavens!  I have never seen that picture.  It's a shame what old age does to one's looks.