September 11, 1967…”The Carol Burnett Show” Debuts on CBS
September 11, 1967…”The Carol Burnett Show” Debuts on CBS
After leaving the “Garry Moore Show” in 1962, Burnett signed a 10 year contract with CBS with 2 options. Option 1 required her to do two guest appearances and a special each year, which she did for the first five years.
Option 2 gave her 30 weeks in her own show. After discussion with her husband Joe Hamilton, in the fifth year of the contract, Burnett decided to call CBS and exercise Option 2 of the contract. Mike Dann of CBS Programming, explaining that the variety show Carroll wanted to do was a “man’s genre”, offered Burnett a sitcom called “Here’s Agnes”. Burnett had no interest in doing a sitcom and because of the contract, CBS was obliged to give Burnett her own variety show. The rest as they say is history!
The original show ran on CBS from September 11, 1967, to March 29, 1978, for 278 episodes and originated in CBS Television City’s Studio 33. It won 25 prime-time Emmy Awards, was ranked No. 16 on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time in 2002, and in 2007 was listed as one of Time magazine’s “100 Best TV Shows of All Time.” Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
#t=106″ target=”_blank”>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlF4GVVi6Ss #t=106
Bloopers from the classic CBS variety show.
Thank God I grew up in the era of the variety show.
Back in the days when people had talent.
The NBC program with Maya Rudolph and Martin Short. Is that coming back this Fall? That was an attempt, and daring because it was live.
You wonder if something that G-rated could find a vast enough audience to prosper. It’s a shame we don’t have variety shows. We have late night chats, but nobody ever does anything on those shows (maybe on Fallon a bit), and then they invariably have a music act no one’s heard of and never will again. Ventriloquists! Tumblers! Plate Spinners!
Burnett’s show and The Dean Martin Show were in a class of their own. Different shows to some extent but yet great in their own right. I doubt another show of these types will ever appear again weekly.
Another example of a broadcaster having success forced on them. The last great variety show, a genre which ran from “The Fleischmann’s Yeast Hour” in 1929 starring Rudy Vallee to Carol Burnett’s final ear tug in 1978 – 49 years, Now gone mostly because families won’t sit together in front of a radio or television sitting through stuff each doesn’t care about in order to hear or see what each does care about (i.e., sitting through the ballet number and the dancing bear to see the Beatles).
Carol Burnett was also the finale of CBS’ “Saturday Night Line-Up,” when people actually stayed home on Saturdays to watch TV (a night the networks now write off).