Monday Night Football, ‘Columbo’ & More Ways the ’70s Changed TV Forever
It’s something you see proven time and time again: Art follows culture. As soon as something big occurs in the world, you can expect to see movies and TV piggybacking on it and bringing these new messages to the people.
Television in the 1970s offers a perfect example. As the “Me Decade” developed in the wake of the 1960s, new freedoms in thought and action transformed TV in ways no one could have anticipated. One look at the fall schedules during those years and you can see how change took place — not only through All in the Family and other Norman Lear series, but in myriad ways that seem commonplace today.
The NFL’s primetime sporting chance
ABC Television/ Courtesy: Everett Collection.
By 1970, TV had grown older and bolder, and “entertainment” was suddenly king. The NFL was also sexier and sassier, thanks to Joe Namath‘s star turn and the merger between the NFL and the upstart AFL. NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle floated the controversial idea of pro football running games in primetime. After brief experiments, ABC bit, and network exec Roone Arledge brought Howard Cosell and “Dandy Don” Meredith into the booth with Keith Jackson (the following year he was replaced by Frank Gifford), and football — and America — hasn’t been the same since.
Inclusivity comes to TV
Everett Collection
Julia with Diahann Carroll had, in 1968, broken a barrier by giving a starring role that wasn’t considered stereotypical to an actor of color. As the Civil Rights Movement continued to thrive, other such parts would fill the screen, and in 1970, Neil Simon‘s Barefoot in the Park — made into a film in 1967 with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda — became the first sitcom with an almost entirely Black cast. It starred Scoey Mitchell, Tracy Reed, Thelma Carpenter and Nipsey Russell. While it only lasted one season, it was one of a handful of shows that year with Black stars … a trend that finally took root.
Big movies … made for television
Everett Collection
The movies folks were always most interested in by 1970 remained the theatricals that were finally making their broadcast runs. That began to change after ABC took another leap into big event television with its Movie of the Week. Other major networks followed suit, adding made-for-TV fare to their slates, leading to hits such as Duel (Steven Spielberg‘s tense 1971 breakthrough), 1972’s That Certain Summer (the first sympathetic look at a gay couple on television) and the 1971 tearjerker Brian’s Song. Also new: the NBC Mystery Movie with rotating fare that included Columbo, McMillan & Wife and McCloud.
There’s life after Johnny
Gene Trindl/Everett Collection
While Carson’s Tonight Show put many older folks to bed, younger viewers clearly wanted more than just B-movies for late-night hours, and a daypart that thrives today began in earnest in 1973 when NBC debuted The Tomorrow Show. It began as an attempt to make back income after cigarette ads were banned on TV, but host Tom Snyder‘s mix of moxie and mannerisms made for great fun. His interview show set the template that remains in place now.
Ladies on the beat
Everett Collection
“Women’s Lib” dominated headlines back in the day, and for pop culture, that became an excuse to sell everything from Virginia Slims cigarettes to a sexier look to male-dominated professions. Thus, in 1974, TV saw the debut of two female police officers: Get Christie Love! with Teresa Graves, and Angie Dickinson starring in Police Woman. It would be two more years before freedoms in what was allowed on television would lead to the “jiggle TV” of Charlie’s Angels.
Let it rock
After Tom Snyder made TV safe for late-night, producer Burt Sugarman saw an opportunity to program to younger viewers hungry for music, and after NBC finally agreed, live acts had a forum to reach the public nearly a decade before MTV launched, courtesy of The Midnight Special. Less than a year later, the syndicated Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert offered its own bill of stars. And the music played … loud!
This article originally ran in the September 2023 1970s Fall TV issue of ReMIND Magazine. You can purchase the full issue at the link below.
Remind 
1970s Fall TV
September 2023
Take a trip back to the ’70s by looking at the TV Guide Magazine Fall Preview primetime lineups.
Buy This Issue