Sitcoms
Soon to emerge, however, was what would become the staple genre of American television: the situation comedy, or “sitcom.” The sitcom was a 30-minute format featuring a continuing cast of characters that appeared in the same setting week after week. Audience laughter (either live or by way of an added “laugh track”) usually featured prominently in these shows, most of which were built around families. The situation comedy had been an enormously popular program type on radio, but it had a comparatively slow start on TV. Some of the most popular early sitcoms included Mama (CBS, 1949–57), The Aldrich Family (NBC, 1949–53), The Goldbergs (CBS/NBC/DuMont, 1949–56), Amos ’n’ Andy (CBS, 1951–53), and The Life of Riley (NBC, 1949–50 and 1953–58). (It is noteworthy that these last three shows featured—if not always respectfully—Jewish, African American, and lower-income characters, respectively. These groups would see little representation in the sitcom again until the 1970s.)
The variety show itself often showed evolutionary tendencies toward the sitcom. Some of the recurring sketches on Your Show of Shows, such as “The Hickenloopers,” which featured Caesar and Coca as bickering spouses, were really little domestic sitcoms lodged into a variety show. The Honeymooners (CBS, 1955–56), one of the most beloved sitcoms in TV history, began in 1951 as a sketch within Cavalcade of Stars (DuMont, 1949–52), and it then became a recurring segment of The Jackie Gleason Show (CBS, 1952–55; 1957–59; and 1964–70). The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (CBS, 1950–58) had one foot planted firmly in both the variety and sitcom genres. Like a variety show, it had a curtain, direct addresses to the audience, and guest stars. Like a sitcom, the principal set was a living room, the plotlines were standard-issue situation comedy, and it did not include jugglers, ballerinas, and other variety acts.
In October 1951 the debut of the sitcom I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951–57), starring the husband-wife team of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, was the beginning of a revolution in American television. The show established new standards for TV programming: it was shot on film rather than broadcast live; it was produced in Hollywood rather than New York; and it followed the style of the episodic series rather than that of the anthology drama or the variety show. The extraordinary popularity of the show guaranteed that these new standards would be imitated by others. I Love Lucy was the most-watched series on television for four of its six seasons on the air, and it never fell below third place in the annual Nielsen ratings. If Milton Berle’s The Texaco Star Theatre had been TV’s first big hit, I Love Lucy was the first bona fide blockbuster.
The freeze
Although most programming at the time came from the networks, it had to be broadcast from a local affiliate. Overlapping signals among some nearby stations and a peak period in the interference-creating sunspot cycle caused near chaos in some areas of the country in the earliest days of television. In September 1948 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under its chairman Wayne Coy, elected to institute a freeze on the licensing of new stations in order to regroup and investigate the problem of station allocation and other regulatory issues. The freeze was supposed to last a few months, but it was not lifted until April 1952.
During the freeze large cities such as New York City and Los Angeles could accommodate the growing interest in and appetite for television with no problem, since these locales already had several stations in full operation. Many other cities around the country, however, had only one station, and some cities, both large and small, had none at all. When the freeze was finally lifted in 1952, the steadily building desire for television from those who had not yet been able to receive it was satisfied by the swift construction of new stations. Sometime during the 1953–54 season, the percentage of U.S. households with television sets passed the 50 percent mark for the first time. Television was truly becoming a mass medium, and its programming was starting to reflect it.