Decline of the Western

Television, as everyone knows, has become a potpourri of police shows. There are Kojak, Baretta, Police Story, Police Woman, Hawaii Five-O, to name a few of the current crop. On any given night on any given station one can hear the wail of sirens, the hail of bullets, and the anguished cries of the maimed and dying from the alleys and dope-infested, garbage-strewn streets of the big city. Almost overnight, police shows have become America’s Number One viewing pastime.

It was not always thus. Not so very long ago, America was in love with the Western. There were, to be sure, several police shows then on the air (Naked City and M Squad come to mind), but they were by far the exception. Gunsmoke was undisputed champ in those days, holding the title nearly twenty years before a tough young contender called Bonanza knocked it off and assumed the exalted position. And other Westerns were waiting in the wings, ones like Restless Gun, Trackdown, Have Gun— Will Travel, The Virginian. Producers ground them out like sausage, feeding the public what it craved and reaping profits from America’s hunger for frontier stories.

CE

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Christopher E. Baldwin

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Television, as everyone knows, has become a potpourri of police shows. There are Kojak, Baretta, Police Story, Police Woman, Hawaii Five-O, to name a few of the current crop. On any given night on any given station one can hear the wail of sirens, the hail of bullets, and the anguished cries of the maimed and dying from the alleys and dope-infested, garbage-strewn streets of the big city. Almost overnight, police shows have become America’s Number One viewing pastime.

It was not always thus. Not so very long ago, America was in love with the Western. There were, to be sure, several police shows then on the air (Naked City and M Squad come to mind), but they were by far the exception. Gunsmoke was undisputed champ in those days, holding the title nearly twenty years before a tough young contender called Bonanza knocked it off and assumed the exalted position. And other Westerns were waiting in the wings, ones like Restless Gun, Trackdown, Have Gun— Will Travel, The Virginian. Producers ground them out like sausage, feeding the public what it craved and reaping profits from America’s hunger for frontier stories.