By Eric Kohanik, ReMIND Magazine
It was a rural revolution.
The 1960s were filled with TV comedies populated by simple country folk, a trend launched by ABC’s The Real McCoys in 1957. Moving to CBS for its final season in 1962-63, the series featured Walter Brennan as Amos McCoy, an elderly farmer who migrates to California from West Virginia with his grandson, Luke (Richard Crenna), and other family members. Although that series primed the pump, CBS fortified TV’s down-home flavor with several others.
The Andy Griffith Show arrived in 1960, featuring Griffith as Andy Taylor, the sheriff of Mayberry, a fictional North Carolina town brimming with colorful characters, including Taylor’s bumbling deputy, Barney Fife (Don Knotts), and dimwitted gas-station attendant, Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors). A regular fixture on TV’s Top 10 list, The Andy Griffith Show wrapped its fourth season with an episode that spawned another huge hit. Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. reported for duty in 1964, focusing on Pyle leaving Mayberry to join the U.S. Marine Corps, and spinning stories from the personality clash between Gomer and his uptight sergeant, Vince Carter (Frank Sutton).
When Griffith decided to leave his series, CBS opted to carry on without him, producing a 1968 sequel called Mayberry R.F.D. that starred Ken Berry as widower Sam Jones. The show’s debut, built around the wedding of Andy Taylor and his sweetheart, Helen Crump (Aneta Corsaut), scored huge ratings.
The Beverly Hillbillies made its CBS debut in 1962, spinning a rags-to-riches story around “poor mountaineer” Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen), who strikes oil on his farm and moves to Beverly Hills with his daughter Elly May (Donna Douglas), his nephew Jethro (Max Baer Jr.) and his mother-in-law “Granny” (Irene Ryan). The show became TV’s top-rated series for a couple of seasons.
The culture clash of The Beverly Hillbillies led CBS to cook up Petticoat Junction in 1963. It revolved around a fictional town called Hooterville, home to a steam-driven train called the Cannonball and a hotel named the Shady Rest. Bea Benaderet played Kate Bradley, who ran the hotel with her uncle Joe Carson (Edgar Buchanan). Also on hand were Kate’s gorgeous daughters: Betty Jo (Linda Kaye Henning), Bobbie Jo (Pat Woodell and, later, Lori Saunders) and Billie Jo (Jeannine Riley and, later, Gunilla Hutton and Meredith MacRae). Petticoat Junction reversed the fish-out-of-water focus of The Beverly Hillbillies, plunking city slickers into rural surroundings. A spinoff, Green Acres, hit screens in 1965, with Eddie Albert as Oliver Wendell Douglas, a Manhattan lawyer who moves to a run-down Hooterville farm with his glamorous wife, Lisa (Eva Gabor).
Buoyed by its rural sitcoms, CBS added Hee Haw, a show that emulated NBC’s Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, but with a country comedy/variety mix. Hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark, the show made stars of Junior Samples, Grandpa Jones and Minnie Pearl.
As the 1960s wore on, a show’s success began to be measured not only by how many people watched it, but who those people were. Networks courted audiences that appealed to advertisers — younger viewers in big cities rather than small towns. The shift led CBS to carry out its notorious “rural purge.” Though Hee Haw, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres and Mayberry R.F.D. were still massive hits, CBS canceled them all by the end of the 1970-71 season, making way for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family and other urban-themed newcomers — and ending one of the most colorful eras in TV history.
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Photo Caption: Buck Owens and Roy Clark hosted”Hee Haw”