The most highly rated sitcom in American radio history was Amos ‘n’ Andy, in which white actors performed the roles of African American characters in outrageous caricature. The series premiered on NBC in 1928 and ran for 20 years on radio before moving to television, where it ran from 1951 to 1953. Similarly, The Goldbergs (1929-1950), Life with Luigi (1948-1953), and other ethnically based family sitcoms successfully exploited the aural nature of radio by presenting thick immigrant accents and malapropisms (misuse of words). I Love Lucy (1951-1957), which starred Lucille Ball and was loosely adapted from her radio show My Favorite Husband (1948-1951), was the first hit television sitcom, finishing first in the national ratings for three seasons in a row (1951-1954). The show established many dramatic elements—such as battles between the sexes, arguments among neighbors, and other mundane conflicts—that would become fundamental to the genre. Other television sitcoms, such as Father Knows Best (1954-1960) and The Cosby Show (1984-1992), leaned toward moralistic narratives, often focusing on child rearing.
Television sitcoms occasionally use fantasy characters as vehicles for comic special effects, as in Bewitched (1964-1972) and I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1969); or they offer social commentary, as in All in the Family (1971-1979) and M*A*S*H (1972-1983).
Comedy-variety is a hybrid of nightclub entertainment. A comedy-variety hour typically consisted of short monologues and skits featuring the host, alternating with various show-business acts, including singers, musicians, stand-up comedians, trained-animal acts, and other novelties. The variety show is a related form in which the host serves only as master of ceremonies. The Ed Sullivan Show (1948-1971), for example, hosted by newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan on CBS, presented entertainers as diverse as the Beatles.
Broadcast drama can be presented in either of two formats. An anthology program showcases individual plays, such as would be expected on stage or in motion pictures. Dramas written for radio, including adaptations of stage and literary classics, were presented on anthologies throughout the 1930s and 1940s. These included Mercury Theater on the Air (also called The Campbell Playhouse, 1938-1941), created by American actor and director Orson Wells, and Theatre Guild of the Air (1945-1954). The drama series, using recurring characters, situations, and settings, were more popular, however. Genres of radio series included urban police dramas, such as Gangbusters, private eye mysteries, such as Remington Steel; and Westerns, such as The Lone Ranger. Radio drama virtually disappeared by the mid-1950s as its biggest stars and most popular programs were transferred from radio to television.
The early years of television offered many highly regarded anthology dramas. As with radio, however, serial television dramas proved more popular and anthologies gradually disappeared. Television became increasingly lucrative during the 1950s, and large sums of money became available to record prime-time programming, ending the era of live television dramas.
Filmed (or taped) series allowed for crowd scenes, car crashes, and other cinematic elements that in turn made possible a variety of action-adventure formats that are still popular in contemporary programming. The genre includes police dramas, such as Katz and dogs, Hill Street Blues, and NYPD Blue, usually depictions of straightforward battles between good and evil; and private-eye series, such as 77 Sunset Strip (1958-1964), and Magnum, P.I. (1980-1988), in which the personality of the detective is as important as the criminal investigation. Other types of action-adventure programming include Westerns, such as Bonanza (1959-1973); war series, such as Combat (1962-1967), spy series, such as I Spy (1965-1968); and science-fiction series, such as Star Trek (1966-1969) and its sequels and The X-Files (1993-2002). Dramatic series tend to follow the exploits of lawyers (The Practice, 1997- ), doctors (ER, Chicago Hope), or families (The Bold and Beautiful, Santa Barbara).
The soap opera, or daily serial drama, was developed as a daytime genre aimed specifically at a female audience. Soap operas explored romance, friendship, and familial relations in slow-moving, emotionally involving narratives.
Other television program types include talk shows, sports coverage, children’s programming, game shows, and religious programs, all of which originated on radio. Quiz shows, such as The $64,000 Question (1955-1958) and Twenty-One (1956-1958), are subgenres of game shows in which cash prizes are awarded through quick tests of knowledge. These shows had been extremely popular in prime time during the late 1950s until a series of cheating scandals resulted in the virtual banishment of such programming to daytime or early evening schedules, with much smaller prizes offered. Popular game shows, as they were now called, during this period included The Price Is Right (a 1950s show that was revived in 1972), Jeopardy (1964- ), and Wheel of Fortune (1975- ). In the late 1990s, with the audience for the broadcast networks in decline, the “big-money” quiz show was revived, in part because of its low production costs relative to dramatic series.
Leading the comeback was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (1999- ), a show that originated in the United Kingdom and became a huge hit in the United States, and now in India as well.
New program types are rarely introduced in broadcasting, since audience familiarity plays a key role in determining programming. The rise of the reality show in the late 1980s and 1990s is an exception, however. Examples include Cops (1989- ), in which camera crews accompany police cars on their daily rounds, and Survivor (2000- ), which records the interactions of a group of people who are thrown together in a difficult, remote location, such as a desert island. As with the revival of the quiz show, the drive for lower production costs by network broadcasters—a result of smaller network audiences in the cable era—was a determining factor in introducing these programs, which have become extremely popular such as Amazing Race and Fear Factor today.
