In the earliest days of television broadcasting, the networks and local stations depended heavily upon the "B" Westerns of the Thirties and Forties to fill their programming schedules.  As early as 1947 the Dumont network showed old "B" Westerns under the simple heading Western Movie, later  airing them under the heading Frontier Theatre.  ABC also drew heavily from the early "B" Westerns, airing them under the heading The Saddle Pal Club every Saturday night.

As television grew it eventually saw the development of Western series made specifically for the small screen.  These early Western TV series, like most "B" Westerns, were oriented primarily towards younger viewers.  Perhaps the earliest and most successful of these series was drawn from radio.  The Lone Ranger, based on the popular radio show, debuted in 1949 on ABC.  The Lone Ranger met with immediate success, and was the only ABC show to rank in the top 15 from 1950 to 1953.  It ran eight years on network, only to be reran endlessly in syndication.

Naturally the success of The Lone Ranger saw other juvenile Western TV series follow in its wake.  Many of these  entrants in this new field were veterans of the "B" Westerns themselves. Gene Autry and Roy Rogers each debuted in their own successful series in 1950 and 1951 respectively.  The Gene Autry Show featured the singing cowboy and his sidekick, Pat Buttran, riding from town to town in the West. Autry went on to develop other juvenile Western series such as Buffalo Bill Jr. and Range Rider. Roy Rogers met with even more success than his old rival, Gene Autry, with The Roy Rogers Show, which established him as television's favourite cowboy in its early years.  William Boyd also met with great success, initially leasing the old Hopalong Cassidy films to television, then making an entirely new Hopalong Cassidy TV series. Duncan Renaldo, who had played the O. Henry character, the Cisco Kid,  in several United Artists features of the Forties reprised his role in a series made especially for television. Television drew upon other sources than the "B" Westerns for its early juvenile Westerns; it also drew upon the Old West itself juvenile audiences could thrill to the exploits of Wild Bill Hickok, Kit Carson, and Annie Oakley.

While Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger were entertaining youngsters across the nation, however, a revolution was beginning.  In the early Fifties a new type of Western rose to prominence--the "adult" Western. The "adult" Western differs from other Westerns in that it focuses on character development and character interaction more than it does plot and action. It is difficult to say exactly when and where the "adult" Western first developed and one could probably find many Westerns made before the Fifties that could be described as such. However, if forced to choose a starting point for the "adult" Western,  the best choice would perhaps be the year 1952 when the radio show Gunsmoke and the movie High Noon both debuted. The radio show Gunsmoke met with little success in its first year on the air on the CBS radio network (it finally caught on in its second season), though High Noon was a hit at the box office and its star, Gary Cooper, won the Oscar for best actor.  Regardless, it is difficult to say whether the success of either resulted in more "adult"  Westerns at the time, as they began to appear almost immediately. The movie Shane debuted in 1953 and even television saw its own "adult" Western during the 1953-1954 television season- -The U. S.. Steel Hour production of "Last Notch," a teleplay about a gunfighter who didn't particularly care for gunfighting. The appearance of "adult Westerns in the early Fifties may not have been due so much to the effect of the Gunsmoke radio show and High Noon as it was a case of an idea whose time had finally arrived. At any rate, the advent of the "adult" Western TV series would not arrive until Gunsmoke was brought to television.

The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp  was the first of the three series to debut that September. It featured Hugh O'Brien as the legendary marshal, first in Ellsworth, Kansas, then in Dodge City, Kansas, and finally in Tombstone, Arizona. The series emphasized the interrelations of the characters, and the plots involved character development and politics as often as they did action.  The series, if it did not portray Earp's life with the utmost accuracy, at least paid lip service to history, and the series ended with the infamous gunfight at the O. K. Corral.

Gunsmoke was the second of the three series to premiere-only four days after The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.  It is perhaps the most successful Western TV show of all time, running longer than any other entertainment series with continuing characters.  It brought in tact the structure of the radio show to television,  centring around the Marshal of Dodge City, Matt Dillon.  Matt Dillon had close friends in his loyal deputy Chester, the curmudgeonly yet kind-hearted Doc Addams, and the operator of the Longbranch Saloon, Miss Kitty.  Much like The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, the emphasis on Gunsmoke was not on action.  Gunsmoke  examined the lives of Dodge City's inhabitants, and, particularly in the show's later days, tackled such social issues as rape and racial injustice.

The last of these series to premiere, Cheyenne featured Clint Walker as wanderer Cheyenne Bodie.  Cheyenne crossed the West, taking a variety of jobs.  One episode he might be a  cowhand, the next episode he might find himself a deputy sheriff.  Unlike  The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp  and  Gunsmoke, Cheyenne focused primarily on action and adventure, with plenty of villains for Cheyenne to fight and beautiful women for him to romance.  It was produced by Warner Brothers with the lavishness of a movie.

All three series met with a great deal of success.  Cheyenne ranked in the top twenty programmes from 1956 to 1959, while The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp ranked in the top ten for several years.  Gunsmoke by far saw the most success.  It was the number one show from 1957 to 1960, ranking in the top ten for much of the Sixties, and running a record twenty years.
The success of these three shows precipitated a "boom" in Westerns on television. While the 1956-1957 season following their premiere only saw three new Western series premiere, the 1958-1958 season saw the debut of almost ten.  By the following 1958-1959 season alone over 25 Western shows were on the air each week!

This boom produced some of television's best loved and most successful shows.  In addition to Gunsmoke and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp,  television's Western boom in the Fifties produced Maverick; Have Gun, Will Travel; Rawhide; Wagon Train; Bonanza; The Rifleman; and many others. Maverick featured James Garner as one of the television's most interesting and well remembered characters, Bret Maverick.  Bret was a master gambler and ladies man who preferred to get out of sticky situations using his wits instead of a gun (which he wasn't particularly skilled with anyhow).   Also appearing was Bret's brother, Bart, played by Jack Kelly.  Bart was more serious than wisecracking Bret, and while much more adept at gunmanship, like any good Maverick tried to avoid fights as much as possible.  The series ran five years and saw two revivals on television as well as a major motion picture (Maverick directed by Richard Donner).

Like Maverick, Have Gun, Will  Travel featured a non-traditional hero.  Paladin (played by veteran of the stage and screen, Richard Boone) was based in the luxurious Hotel Carlton in San Francisco, where he enjoyed the best clothes, the finest meals,  high brow conversation, and high stakes poker games.  Paladin was no simple gambler or playboy, however; a graduate of West Point and a veteran of the Civil War, he employed himself  to anyone with enough money as a high-priced gun for hire.  His card, decorated with a white chess knight (the paladin) read:  Have gun, will travel....Wire Paladin, San Francisco."  The white chess knight was fitting as Paladin's trademark because of more than just his name.  Paladin was a man of honour with definite ideas of what he would and would not do; if those who had hired him were in fact  guilty of a particular crime, his morality led him to seek out them out.  The series enjoyed a five year run, most of it spent in the top five shows of each year.

Rawhide centred upon a cattle drive operated by trail boss Gil Favor (played by Eric Fleming) and his second-in-command Rowdy Yates (played by a young Clint Eastwood).  Because the drive was constantly on the move from place to place, Rawhide  was able to tell stories about  people met along the drive's way and the occasional person who joined the drive itself, as well as the series regulars.  Rawhide then had all the advantage s of a series with continuing characters and those of anthology shows as well.  The producer of Rawhide wasCharles Marquis Warren, the TV show Gunsmoke's original producer.  It ran seven years.

Wagon Train was set in a wagon train which made a trip from St. Joseph, Missouri to California each year.  The wagonmaster was originally Major Seth Adams (played by screen veteran Ward Bond) and later Christopher Hale (played by John McIntire).  Like Rawhide, Wagon Train had the advantage of being able to focus on different people each week-a different member of the wagon train or someone encountered along the way.  The regulars, who made up the wagon train's crew, were often seen as only co-stars or even in only secondary roles in episodes.  Wagon Train ran 90 minutes in one season, and an hour in the rest-this at a time when many Western series ran only a half hour.  Wagon Train attracted some great talents in its eight years on the air, director John Ford and actress Bette Davis among them.  For four years Wagon Train ranked in the top five shows (most of them spent alongside fellow Westerns Gunsmoke and Have Gun, Will Travel) and one season it was the number one show on television.

Bonanza centred around the sprawling Ponderosa ranch, operated by Ben Cartwright (played by Lorne Greene)  and his three sons:  Adam (played by Pernell Roberts), the eldest and most serious of the brothers; Hoss (played by Dan Blocker), a huge and gentle giant of a man (and easily the most popular character);  and Little Joe (played by Michael Landon), the youngest and most romantic of the brothers.  Adventures took place on the ranch, in nearby Virginia City, and several other diverse locales (San Francisco among them).  Besides Gunsmoke, Bonanza was the most successful Western TV series.  It ran 14 years and ranked in the top ten shows for each season for nine consecutive years-three of them spent at the number one spot.  Bonanza has seen two revivals:  one a pilot for a prospective new syndicated series, and the other a television movie on NBC.

The Rifleman featured Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain, a homesteader living near the town of North Fork, New Mexico and a widower with an adolescent son.  While the series' title referred to Lucas's skill with a rifle (he had a specially modified Winchester with a large ring which allowed him to cock it as he grew),  action was not the only focus of the series.  The Rifleman dealt realistically with the doubts and concerns of its characters, and it was perhaps one of the few Western series to seriously address the problems experienced by a boy coming of age.

These were not the only well remarkable series to emerge out of TV's Western boom of the Fifties, as there were several other series of note.  Unfortunately most of the Western TV series of the Fifties were not so remarkable.  A huge number of them dealt with either gunslingers or lawmen, so many in fact that it was often hard to tell one series from another.  Indeed, many Western TV series (even relatively good ones, such as The Rifleman mentioned above) felt the need to give their hero a "gimmick" in order to differentiate him from the heroes of other Western TV shows. Sundance, the hero of Hotel de Paree, wore a black Stetson with a row of polished silver discs with which he could blind opponents, while Bat Masterson, in the series of the same name, used his cane to disarm opponents more often than his specially designed gun.  The lack of any real variation between  many Western TV series is probably the reason most of them lasted only one or two seasons, and some not even that.
 

This new boom was probably created in part by the success of Bonanza (which was the number one show in the 1964-1965 season) and The Virginian.  The Virginian was based on the classic novel by Owen Wister, which had already been filmed three times as a major motion picture.  It starred James Drury as The Virginian, a mysterious stranger who had come to the Shiloh Ranch. The Virginian was ninety minutes long, and in many ways resembled a weekly Western television movie more than it did a regular series.  Because of its running time, The Virginian was able to concentrate on the characterization of its regulars and guest stars rather than action or any gimmicks.  The Virginian ranked in the top 25 shows for all of its run, and was still in the top twenty (under its new name, The Men From Shiloh) when it went off the air in 1971.  It ran nine years, longer than any other Western besides Gunsmoke and Bonanza.

The 1965-1967 Western boom produced few Western TV series as remarkable as The Virginian and none with its longevity.  The most interesting of this new crop of Western TV series was The Wild Wild West.  The Wild Wild West (TWWW to its fans) was really as much a spy drama of the James Bond type or a fantasy  of Jules Verne type as it was a Western.  It featured Robert Conrad as James West and Ross Martin as Artemus Gordon, two secret agents charged by President Grant with defending the West from revolutionaries, enemy governments, and nefarious, criminal masterminds.  West was unique among Western heroes in that, besides being a spy, he was trained in the martial arts of the Orient as well as the use of gun.  Artemus Gordon was also a skilled combatant (though less so than West) in addition to being a master in disguise who was an expert in a huge number of languages and dialects.  The duo utilized a number of advanced (advance for the 1870's anyway) gadgets and travelled on a specially designed train.  They had a regular opponent in the diminutive figure of Dr. Miguelito Loveless (played by Michael Dunn), the Napoleon of the West.  Loveless was a criminal genius capable of developing the most advanced technology of the time (some of it would be advanced by today's standards!) in his quest to take over the world.  Despite this West and Gordon managed to foil every one of the doctor's plots.  TWWW was a fairly successful show, ranking in the top 25 during its first season.    Agnes Moorehead received the 1966-1967 Emmy for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Drama for the TWWW episode "The Night of the Vicious Valentine."  The Wild, Wild West was cancelled in 1969 as a scapegoat in the current controversy over TV violence (oddly the higher rated and much more violent Mannix remained on the air).  CBS reran specially selected episodes during the summer of 1970 with much of the "objectionable" violence cut.  Since then it has gone on to become one of the biggest cult shows of all time, and it saw a revival in two telefilms aired on CBS in the early Eighties (The Wild Wild West Revisited and More Wild Wild West).

Another well remembered series to emerge from the second Western boom on television was Big Valley. Big Valley was unique in that it featured a woman in the lead role-Barbara Stanwyck (veteran of many "empire" Westerns where she always played the rancher's daughter) played Victoria Barkley, a widow and owner of the Barkley ranch.  To help her were her four children.  Her eldest son, Jarrod (played by Richard Long) was a lawyer.  Nick (played by Peter Breck) was a more traditional Western hero and handled much of the day to day running of the ranch.  Heath (played by Lee Majors) was the illegitimate son of Victoria's late husband and, like Nick, was a more traditional Western hero.  Finally there was her daughter Audra (played by Linda Evans), the object of desire of many of the locals.  Barbara Stanwyck won the Emmy for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Series for the 1965-1966 season.  The series lasted only four years, but went on to a successful syndication run.

The Guns of Will Sonnet was another rather unique series to emerge from this second boom. It featured an elderly lead character (most Westerns starred men in their prime),  character actor Walter Brennan (most famous as Grandpa on The Real McCoys) as ex-cavalry scout Will Sonnet. Will travelled the West with his grandsom Jeff (played by Dack Rambo) searching for Jeff's father, James,  a gunfighter who had disappeared 19 years before.  While there was no lack of action on the series, it focused more upon the characters and often addressed ethical and moral dilemmas.  The series only lasted two years but went on to a successful syndication run.

The second Western boom on television also saw a few Western comedies, the best of which was F Troop.  F Troop focused on the incompetent cavalry unit at Fort Courage somewhere in the West.  Capt. Parameter (played by Ken Berry) was a former private promoted to an officer's rank during the Civil War when he accidentally retreated towards the enemy, thus winning the battle.  Frank deKova played Chief Wild Eagle,  Parameter's much more intelligent counterpart among the Hekawi Indians.  Wild Eagle had a secret and profitable treaty with F Troop's Sgt. Rourke (played by Forrest Tucker) and his aide de camp Cpl. Agarn (played by Larry Storch) from which he had exclusive rights to sell their souvenirs to tourists.  There was no peace treaty between the Hekawi and F Troop, though it was admittedly to the Indians' advantage to let F Troop remain unharmed.  Had they eliminated F Troop (which they could easily have done), the United States may have sent out a competent cavalry unit, which would mean real trouble for the Hekawi.  F Troop lasted only two years but following its network run was quite successful in syndication.

The second boom in Western TV series produced a few more interesting series, though the television Western still suffered from an amazing lack of originality.  Of the twenty Western TV series debuting between 1965 and 1967, five dealt with ranches or homesteads, five dealt with gunfighters or drifters (for the most part the two differ in Western TV shows only in that the drifter is not a professional, though he does use his guns nearly as often), and two about lawmen.  The Westerns of the second boom also saw less success than their predecessors.  Of all of them, only The Wild Wild West ranked in the top Twenty y Five shows, and then only for its first season.  Similarly, none of the shows debuting between 1965 and 1967 lasted beyond 1969-making the oldest of them only four years old when they were cancelled.  The failure of these new Western TV series to sustain any amount of success may well explain the general decline in the number of Westerns on television after 1967.

The Seventies was a bleak time for the Western TV series.  In 1971 the long running The Virginian went off the air.  In 1973, following the death of Dan Blocker and a move to a new time, Bonanza went off the air after fourteen years.  New Westerns debuting in the Seventies had extremely short runs for the most part.  Nichols, featuring veteran James Garner as an extremely non-traditional hero in 1916 Arizona, only lasted a season, generally longer than most of the other Western TV series.  It was clear that the Western TV series was facing a serious decline.

Of the Westerns debuting in the  Seventies, only three saw any real success.  Kung Fu is perhaps one of the more original Western series to debut in any decade.  It featured David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine, a Buddhist monk born of Chinese and American parents who was force d to kill one of the Chinese royal family.  He fled China for American West where he began a search for his long lost brother.  In the meantime he was hounded by Chinese Imperial agents and bounty hunters.  Caine was unique among Western heroes.  Besides being Chinese (the only other Orientals featured in Westerns before had been cooks and laundrymen), he did not use a gun, relying instead upon the martial art kung fu for self defense.  As a Buddhist monk he did not believe in violence except when necessary and avoided killing at all costs.  Caine spoke little and when he did, it was usually some maxim of Buddhist philosophy.  The series' execution also differed greatly from other Western TV series.  It often used flashbacks to Caine's days as a pupil in the Shaolin Temple and action scenes were often done in slow motion.  Kung Fu only lasted two and a half seasons, though one of its directors, Jerry Thorpe, won the 1972-1973 Emmy for  Outstanding Directorial Achievement In Drama (Series) for the episode "An Eye for an Eye."  Kung Fu also became a huge cult series, with one of the most successful syndication runs of any Western TV series.

Hec Ramsey was one of the rotating elements of the umbrella series, The NBC Mystery Movie. Hec Ramsey featured veteran Richard Boone as the character of the title, an ex-gunfighter turned deputy sheriff in turn of the century Oklahoma.  Hec had long ago hung up his guns in favour of a new weapon in the pursuit of justice--the young science of criminology.  He kept a trunk full of equipment meant for just that:  magnifying glasses, fingerprinting tools, scales, measuring tape, and so on.  Sheriff Oliver Stamp was young and inexperienced, and more often than not the old deputy solved the various crimes committed in New Prospect, Oklahoma.  Hec Ramsey ran two years.

It is perhaps debatable whether or not Little House on the Prairie is  a Western.  It did centre around the Ingalls family and their struggle to make a living on farm outside Walnut Grove, Minnesota in the 1870s; however, both the setting and the stories told on the series were very civilized.  There were no sixguns, no outlaws, no Indians on the warpath, and the series had no real violence to speak of.  Instead episodes focused on the dealings with the personal struggles of the Ingalls (one daughter went blind and the wife lost a child in the series run), natural disasters threatening the farm, and the lives of various neighbours.  The series was narrated by the second oldest daughter Laura (played by Melissa Gilbert) and the father, Charles Ingalls, was played by Michael Landon of Bonanza fame.  It was based on the series of "Little House " books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, which related her days growing up on the American frontier.  Whether of not Little House on the Prairie can be considered a Western, it was immensely successful.  The series ranked in the top twenty five shows for several years and lasted a decade.

By 1975 the handwriting was on the wall.  The TV Western, if not dead, was slowly dying.  That year Gunsmoke left the air after a phenomenal twenty year run.  The 1975-1976 season saw no Western TV series (unless one counts Little House on the Prairie on the air), the first such season since The Lone Ranger had debuted in 1949.  The 1976-1977 saw the debut of two short lived Western series. The Quest featured Kurt Russell as a white raised among Native Americans and Tim Matheson as his San Francisco educated brother in their search for their lost sister.  The series had the misfortune of being against that season's smash hit, Charlie's Angels, and died after only three months on the air. Sara featured Brenda Vaccaro as a young schoolmarm in the town of Independence, Colorado in the 1870s.  The series focused on the conflict between the progressive Sara and the more conservative townsfolk. Sara lasted only six months.

The next season featured two Western TV series, the epic How the West Was Won and the short lived Oregon Trail.  How the West Was Won featured James Arness (Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke) as Zeb Macahan, a rugged mountain man left in charge of his brother's four children.  The series was vast in scope, and was filmed on location in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Southern California.  Its executive producer was John Mantley, a producer on Gunsmoke for years.  How the West Was Won was based on the 1963 movie of the same name, directed by John Ford, Henry Hathaway, and George Marshal, as well as featuring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Henry Fonda.  It in turn had been based on a successful series of articles in Life magazine.  The series'  epic scope, the involvement of veterans from Gunsmoke (James Arness and John Mantley), nor its origins saved How the West Was Won.  It left the air after seven months.  Oregon Trail centred on a wagon train headed west for Oregon.  It vanished in a matter of weeks.

The following seasons Westerns would be far and few between. For a mere few months in 1979, CBS aired Young Maverick, a spin off of Maverick centring on Ben Maverick, Beau's son and Bret's second cousin. A sequel to Maverick, Bret Maverick (featuring James Garner once more in the title role) aired on NBC for nearly the entire '80-'81 season. It would not be until the miniseries Lonesome Dove that the Western would once more be a viable format for television. Even then, however, Westerns continue to be rare on television and primarily take the form of TV movies and miniseries rather than standard series. The only great success has been Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, which lasted about six years.
 

As to why the Western TV series of the Seventies failed in the ratings, the answer lies partially in the Western booms of the Fifties and Sixties.  From 1955 to 1975 television produced an extraordinary number of Westerns, nearly a hundred different shows.  The sheer amount of saturation becomes even more evident when one considers that, during that same period in history,  approximately twenty five series about private eyes and around ten medical dramas aired.  During the Fifties and Sixties the networks had flooded the market with Western TV shows, so that by the Seventies viewers may well have been sick and tired of the genre.  And for those who weren't bored of Westerns, there were plenty of them to be seen in syndication.

A factor that may have led to the viewer apathy regarding TV Westerns, and hence their low ratings in the Seventies, may have been the fact that many of the Westerns seemed so much alike.  Around twenty of the Western TV series made from 1955 to 1975 were about gunslingers or drifters.  Around another twenty of the shows dealt with various types of lawmen (sheriffs, U.S.  Marshals, Texas rangers, and so on).  Around ten dealt with ranches or homesteads.  The sameness of many of  the Western TV series made from 1955-1975 can be seen in the vast territory left unexplored by them.  Despite the popularity of medical dramas in the Sixties, there have only been two TV shows with doctors as main characters (Frontier Doctor, with the great Rex Allen, in 1958 and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman in the Nineties).  Similarly, no TV Westerns  have ever taken advantage of the travelling medicine shows infamous in the Old West (though oddly enough there was one about a circus, Frontier Circus).  Only three TV Westerns  made during the period featured lawyers as their main characters and only two newspaper editors.  Only two of the Westerns made from 1955-1975  focused on wagon trains (Wagon Train and Overland Trail) and two on the cattle drive (Rawhide and the short lived Seventies series The Cowboys).  If Western TV series have been characterized as shoot-'em ups or ranch bound melodramas, it is perhaps not without good reason.

The sameness of these Westerns extends beyond the occupations explored by them.  The vast majority of the heroes of Western TV series are white males of either Anglo-Saxon or Celtic descent.  In the entire history of television, only four adult Westerns have featured women as the main characters (Big Valley, the short lived Seventies series Dirty Sally, Sara, and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman).  Ethnic minorities had even less exposure in Western TV series than women.  Despite the significance of the Chinese in the history of the American West, only one (Kung Fu) featured a hero of Chinese descent.  Similarly only one series featured an African American as a hero (The Outcasts).  TV Westerns have done a bit better by Native Americans, who had two series focused on Native American life (Brave Eagle and Broken Arrow) and a few others in which Native American characters played significant roles.  Mexicans too have oddly been ignored by the TV Westerns, appearing neither as heroes or as supporting characters.  In the history of television only two Westerns featured Hispanic characters in lead roles:  The Cisco Kid and Zorro, both in the Fifties. Only two more Westerns featured Hispanics in supporting roles:  Rawhide and High Chapparal. Depsite the importance of Hispanics in the history of the West, they were virtually invisible on many TV Westerns.

That the essential sameness of many Western TV series may have killed the television Western can be seen in that the most successful Westerns are, for the most part, those that are different. Rawhide, being  only one of two Westerns to cover a cattle drive, stood out easily from the pack.  Maverick differed vastly from a number of its contemporaries in that its hero was a professional gambler who preferred using his wits to a gun.  Have Gun, Will Travel featured an educated hero whose occupation, a combination of bounty hunter, troubleshooter, and private eye, made him stand out even more.  And The Wild Wild West centring on two spies and featuring some rather bizarre plots, was decidedly different.

Producers in the Seventies appeared to realize this and came out with some new twists on the Western.  Hec Ramsey combined elements of the Western and the Mystery.  Nichols took place at the end of the Old West and featured a very pacifistic hero.  Dirty Sally featured Jeanette Nolan as Sally Fergus, an elderly woman travelling to the California gold fields.  Though travelling with Cyrus Pike (played by Dack Rambo), an ex-gunfighter, it was Sally's wits that got them into and out of trouble.  In fact, most of the TV Westerns of the Seventies differed to some degree from their predecessors.  When a series did repeat a theme from earlier shows (such as The Cowboys with the cattle drive and Oregon Trail with the wagon train), it was a theme which had not been over done by previous Westerns.  Only Alias Smith and Jones repeated a common theme in TV Westerns, though with a twist-Smith and Jones were lawmen posing as outlaws and gunfighters (they had been outlaws before)!  Unfortunately this burst of originality in Westerns of the Seventies was too late.  Viewers were not interested and most of the Westerns of the Seventies died quick deaths.

Despite their originality, however, many of the Westerns of the Seventies were rather lack lustre affairs, and quality as much as anything may have killed the television Western, just as it had a part in the movie Western's death.  While very few of the series received bad reviews, only a very few of them received good reviews.   For the most part,  the Western TV series of the Seventies were mediocre affairs despite any differences they might have from their predecessors.  The viewers, watching such high quality sitcoms as All in the Family and M*A*S*H,  probably saw no reason to watch Western TV shows with only average writing and average direction.

Another factor in the TV Western's death was probably the very climate of television in the Seventies.  In the Fifties and Sixties the networks usually contracted a series for one season and it was rare that a show was cancelled before that season was up; hence the vast majority of TV shows in the Fifties and Sixties lasted at least one year.  In the early Seventies this began to change and the networks would cancel series after only a few months or even weeks on the air.  Indeed, the average life span of a TV series in the Seventies is almost exactly one month.  This practice was detrimental to series of any genre.   Most series were cancelled before they had any chance to build up an audience, and it appears significant that two of the Seventies' biggest hits, The Waltons and All in the Family, were both on several months before getting respectable numbers.  TV Westerns, in particular, have always taken some time before becoming hits. Gunsmoke and Bonanza were both  on one season apiece before they emerged in the Top Twenty.  Similarly, The Virginian had been on a whole two seasons before it cracked the Top Twenty Five.  Many of the Western TV shows cancelled after less than a year on the air (such as Dirty Sally and Nichols) may have turned out to be hits had they been allowed to remain on the air.  As it was, most of the TV shows of the Seventies probably went off the air before viewers even realized they were on.

Finally, yet another factor that may have killed the Western was simply changing times.  The A. C.. Nielsen Company's demographics for December 1967 have much to reveal about the viewers who watched TV Westerns.  No Westerns appeared in the Top Ten for children aged ten to eleven.  Only The Guns of Will Sonnet ranked in the Top Ten of teenagers aged twelve to seventeen, albeit at the number one spot. The High Chapparal  was the only Western appearing in the Top Ten for adults aged eighteen to thirty four.  As far as age is concerned, only the Top Ten for Adults over fifty featured more than one Western:  Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and The Virginian all appearing.  In the mid-Seventies the vast majority of the population, and hence the vast majority of the television audience, was between the ages of 12 and 30-the people least likely to watch Western TV shows.  In other words, the Western TV series may well have died simply because the younger TV audience simply did not watch them.  With such a large segment of the population tuning away from Westerns, the genre could hardly expect to get high ratings on television.

That the television Western was killed by ratings is a forgone conclusion.  Those low ratings were probably brought on by a number of factors:  the sheer number of shows produced between 1955 and 1975, the overall sameness of Westerns in the history of television, a decline in quality in the TV Western, the programming practices of the Seventies, and an aging audience.