Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Addams Family: Carolyn Jones, John Astin and Ted Cassidy

The Addams Family aired for only 2 seasons on ABC from September 1964 until September 1966. It still managed to produce 64 episodes and has endeared in syndication ever since it left the air.

For more on The Addams Family go to the mini-page right here at Sitcoms Online.

Here's an article from Time Magazine on a report about which tv shows are and aren't the best for children in February 1965.

Watch Out for Children
Friday, Feb. 05, 1965 Article

For adults, the front-line television criticism in the U.S. is written by men like Lawrence Laurent of the Washington Post and Jack Gould of the New York Times. For children, the ultimate word on what should or should not be seen comes from an organization known —in what may be the acronym of the century—as NAFBRAT.

NAFBRAT, the National Association for Better Radio and Television, has published in the February issue of Parents' Magazine an inclusive critique of all prime-time TV, judged on its potential value, or harm, to children. "The best of the new shows," says NAFBRAT, "are Slavery's People, Many Happy Returns, Bewitched, Mr. Magoo, World War I, and Twelve O'clock High" But on the dark side, NAFBRAT looks after its own in very unmealy language. For example, NAFBRAT says that Candid Camera is a "Peeping Tom show, without taste or sincerity." The Bob Hope Theater is summarized as being just so many "bedroom backgrounds for humor and crime." The Man from U.N.C.L.E., according to NAFBRAT, is "television at its worst. This is right out of the nightmare factory." And even Flipper is called, "objectionable" for its "indiscriminate selection of story elements, which include crime and danger to children in the cast."

NAFBRAT dismisses both The Addams Family and The Munsters not for their ghoulishness but for "suggestive humor and double-meaning dialogue." Peyton Place, says NAFBRAT, is "an obvious exploitation of the sordid and tasteless elements of the Grace Metalious novel, a monument to the network's search for ratings, regardless of the social impact of unrelieved sex and sin." Wagon Train is knocked for its "extremes in sadism and brutality," and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea because it "stirs up political hatred."

One other show in NAFBRAT'S objectionable category seems to have been unfairly included. This is Broadside, which is condemned only because it is "devoid of depth." This makes little sense when set alongside NAFBRAT'S recommended category, which includes Ed Sullivan, My Favorite Martian, Lassie, Lawrence Welk, Kentucky Jones, Hollywood Palace and the Farmer's Daughter—all of which have a collective depth of just over 3/16th of an inch.

Here's an article from Time Magazine that talks about all the cancelations of popular tv shows at the end of the 1965-1966 season.

The Unloved Ones
Friday, Apr. 01, 1966 Article

However else it is in the rest of the entertainment business, in television the show must go off. The average life expectancy of a TV series is less than two seasons, and this month 38 shows, a full 40% of the prime-time programs, will be sent packing.

Senior on the superannuated list is Ozzie and Harriet, which has persisted for 14 years. Perry Mason will sign off after nine years, Donna Reed after eight, and Hazel and The Flintstones after six. The top-rated Dick Van Dyke Show is the only one retiring—after five years—of its own volition. Explains Van Dyke: "We wanted to quit while we were still proud of the show."

Other casualties include the last of the doctors, Kildare and Casey; both The Addams Family and its imitator, The Munsters; and three combat comedies, Mr. Roberts, McHale's Navy and The Wackiest Ship in the Army. Four westerns are going thataway: Branded, Shenandoah, The Legend of Jesse James and The Loner. Peyton Place will run two installments a week instead of three, and its Southern version, Long Hot Summer, will be cut off altogether.

Hullabaloo and Jimmy Dean will be silenced as well. So will Sammy Davis, which recovered from its calamitous early weeks in every respect but ratings (it stood 96th of 104 at last calculation). Similarly, most of ABC's heavily shilled "second season" has had it: Blue Light, The Baron, Henry Phyfe. Some of the situation comedies, such as Gilligan's Island and Gomer Pyle, are apparently too bad to die, but a few of the most mindless, among them Mona McCluskey and The Smothers Brothers, ran out of gags—just as My Mother the Car has mercifully run out of gas.

All this house cleaning should not delude viewers with the notion that better shows are necessarily in store for next season. "The trend and the entire mass appetite," explains CBS Programming Chief Mike Dann, "is toward larger-than-life drama. Anything true, about real people and real problems, is out." Thus, the 1966-67 batch of shows will include more situation come dies, more science-fiction shows, more spy and spy-spoof serials—all, in short, about untrue, unreal people.

For a complete review of this classic sitcom go to www.televisionheaven.co.uk/adams.htm