Is This True??? The Patty Duke Show Was Cancelled Because Of Color TV?!?

[Brian Damage]

Even with high ratings on it's last season, ABC did not renew the Patty Duke show, claiming that switching to color programming was way too expensive. All television programs were making the color switch during late 60s.


http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5976154/the_patty_duke_show_pg2.html?cat=37

[Marvo301]

In 1966, United Artists, the company that produced the show, refused ABC's demand that they switch to color film. Patty Duke suspected at the time that this was a negotiating ploy by UA to extract more money from ABC although she never found out for sure. ABC, for their part, decided to cancel the show instead.

[biffbronson]

United Artists TV seemed to be notoriously penny-pinching -- read about The Outer Limits and what their producers went through. Stingy! Of course other companies were pretty much the same when when it came to budgets...

[broadmoor]

Gee, and to think United Artists instead was willing to open up its wallets for color film-stock for their upcoming 'hits' the following season, like "Hey Landlord" and "It's About Time." Oh, well. It would have been nice to see TPDS in color, but I suppose it was a fairly moot point anyway, as I always assumed Patty Duke was more than ready to move on to other things, having reached adulthood and finally having charge of her own career for the first time in her life.

[retroTVfan4ever]

The Patty Duke Show was a unique case with Patty playing in the dual role of Patty and Cathy. For that reason it was felt the show would have been too costly to produce in color episodes for a 4th season in 1966-67. This problem could easily have been solved by writing Cathy out of the series. But I agree that Patty Duke was ready to move on and do other things as she was tiring of the series by the third season.

[treky]

the expense of switching to color was part of the reason why a few shows were cannceled at that time.