Television in the Sixties


It's perhaps not surprising that baby boomers who grew up with such icons want to see them revisited in modern cinema productions. "Star Treks 1 thru 9", "Mission Impossible", "Lost in Space", "The Addams Family", "The Saint", "The Avengers"... all owe their existence to the flickering tube of television.

A time for information

TV in the sixties became our eye on the world. Jacques Cousteau's "Undersea World" was but one of a series of wildlife which enthralled us all. The camera took us where we could not physically go - deep under the seas; or into the remote jungles of South America; or across the Sahara desert.

Satellite TV brought us news as it happened rather than two days late when the film finally arrived off the plane. We watched man land on the moon and take his first steps on another planet. We saw the war unfold in Vietnam and peace break out - sort of - in the Middle East. TV news was brought to us by the authoritative yet comforting faces of presenters like Walter Cronkite in the US or Reginald Bosanquet in the UK.

A time for children

Television for the children of the sixties was a truly magical lantern, a box of delights which yielded as yet unheard-of pleasures. The old adage of 'give me the child and I shall give you the man' certainly has turned out to be true. The child who grew up in the sixties was the first to be fully exposed to the might of television, both for good, and bad.

TV shows like Gerry Anderson's "Fireball XL5" and "Thunderbirds" were the first to introduce mass-marketing of toys to tie in with the TV series. "Star Trek" was a relatively late starter. Today of course, "Pokemon" and "The Simpsons" have turned such marketing into a hugely lucrative art form.

And although that aspect of TV may have turned out to be something of a Pandora's Box, there's no doubt that a lot of children's TV in the sixties brought a new dimension to growing up.

Looking to the future

Although US TV had pioneered mass broadcasting of colour TV in the 1950s, it was in the 1960s that it became a production norm. By the end of the decade, barely a programme was made in the US or Britain, the two great power-houses of English-speaking TV, that wasn't in colour. Other technical advances were under development -

The copyright of the article Television in the Sixties in Broadcasting is owned by Allan Lee. Permission to republish Television in the Sixties in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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