But is that “artistically speaking”, or just a resume builder?
Hill Street Blues was artistically important because of the over-lapping dialogue and gargantuan cast. Neither had been done before on network TV. Plus the “adult” characters, complex plots, and letting people die. Heck, Hill and Renko were supposed to die in the pilot! They survived because the producers liked the actors.
The guy spent the first 12 years of his career working on Star Trek shows. Maybe he was marking time all that time.
Actually, his wikipedia page has some interesting reading on the subject, particularly his critique of Voyager (after quitting the show), which sure does seem to play into some of the decisions about the Galactica reboot:
Well, artistically speaking Star Trek (as well as The Twilight Zone) had scripts written by serious sci-fi authors that explored serious sci-fi themes, albeit often not as deeply as one might wish.
The Prisioner was hugely influential, artistically, right up to the present (see for example Lost). It has had remarkably long-lived influence for a TV show filmed in the 60s.
I Love Lucy.
Desi Arnez was a genius that changed television.
He added multiple cameras, & shot from all angles.
Difference was night & day.
I Love Lucy ran (in various forms) from 1951 through 1960, so I think it falls outside the scope of the question.
Saturday Night Live was influential - it expanded the scope of sketch comedy and parodized many aspects of television programming (including news broadcasts, daytime talk shows and commercials). SNL helped make Jon Stewart’s and Stephen Colbert’s shows possible.
I consider The Flintstones to be the first cartoon series for adults. They advertised cigarettes for cryin’ out loud.
One would also have to give credit to “An American Family,” the 1973 mini-series that put cameras on a real family & thus anticipated all the “reality” to come.
The Carol Burnett Show
The Muppets
A decade too early for the OP, but it did set the stage for every sitcom since. Before I Love Lucy all sitcoms were made in NYC, and broadcast live. A low-quality kinetoscope (essentially a film camera in front of a TV set) was made to be sent out to the West Coast. Desi Arnaz realized that if they prerecorded the show on 35mm film for later broadcast they could stay in Los Angeles and have even repeat episodes at a much later date.
After the first couple of filmings they realized that they didn’t have to rush through set/costume changes like with a stage play and could devout several hours to filming a half-hour show. Which meant that they could do more and bigger set changes and even experiment with location shooting.
He invented the rerun. Nobody thought that old TV episodes could be valuable and he & Ball were given full rights to them (Lucy once said that if reruns didn’t pan out at least they’d have the best home movies ever). He also came up with the idea of selling American TV shows into syndication abroad.
I Love Lucy also had multi-episode story arcs (Lucy’s pregnancy, going to Hollywood, Europe, Florida, moving to the country, etc).
Carol Burnett was hardly different from other variety shows of the time, like
Red Skelton, for example. Skelton did exactly the same sort of skits Burnett did, with the exception of movie parodies.
Not a show, but the most influential single person on televised sports (notably football) in the 1960s was Preston Ridlehuber.
I guess you don’t like Star Trek. If you don’t understand that the success of Star Trek was instrumental in all the other science fiction dramas that followed, I don’t know what to tell you. You don’t have to like the show to see it’s influence. The original Battlestar was utter crap in my opinion. I’ve never seen the newer version, but it was certainly by the original.
I don’t know how old you are, but compared to the rest of television at the time, Star Trek was ground breaking. It had higher production standards than any earlier shows in the genre, it addressed social issues, raised the level of science from pure bullshit to simply implausable, mixed humor with drama, and spawned additional spin off shows. It also was a major influence on the best science fiction television show of all time, Futurama. So bite my shiny metal ass.
What was the first variety show? Did those descend pretty directly from vaudeville?
Rocky and Bullwinkle predated the Flintstones. It was originally released in 1959, so it may not qualify for the OP. And R&B was also influenced by earlier cartoons that included jokes not understood by juvenile audiences. Cigarette advertising was ubiquitous in early television, so Fred lighting up was barely noticeable. But I believe it was the first 1/2 hour long animated series, done in sitcom style. In that sense it was an influence. It may have influenced producers not to fund animated sitcoms for many years until the success of the Simpsons.
Like Crusader Rabbit!
Probably Texaco Star Theatre that began to feature Milton Berle as a permanent host shortly after in started. The Toast of the Town, later renamed The Ed Sullivan Show started around the same time, as did Arthur Godfrey’s show. There were probably earlier shows that didn’t take off.
Once they were marooned on Nothing Atoll.
The French Chef for wide ranging influence.
No one has mentioned Roots? [del]or 60 Minutes? [/del]