Television 

 In 1954 Republic released its final series Western, Phantom Stallion, and in September of the same year came what is generally regarded as the last B-Western made as part of a series, Allied Artists' Two Guns and a Badge. The writing had been on the wall for some time before that.

In 1948 William Boyd had sold his Hopalong Cassidy pictures to television, and from 1950 onwards Hollywood released large numbers of films to what was, in effect, the competition. At first the target audience was almost exclusively children. Gene Autry was also an early entrant into television production, with no less than four series in the late 1940s (Range Rider, Buffalo Bill Jr., Annie Oakley and The Adventures of Champion) offered as syndicated features for local stations. Another television series which began in 1948 was The Lone Ranger, which had originated in radio and then spun off into other media such as films, newspaper strips and comic books, as well as exploiting the market for children's toys, games and clothing. For a time the networks held back on producing Westerns for primetime viewing. But by the mid-1950s it was clear that there was a sizeable audience for shows that appealed to adults. In 1955 abc launched The Life and Legei\d of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O'Brian, and Cheyenne with Clint Walker, cbs began with Gnnsmoke, which for several years had been a successful radio show, nbc were slower to find a really successful series, but in 1957 came up with Wagon Train, starring Ward Bond, one of the longest running of all television Westerns. Other successful shows of the late 50s included Maverick, which made the career of James Garner, and Have Qun, Will Travel, with Richard Boone as the elegant mercenary Paladin. Within two years the Western had carried all before it. By the 1957-8 season Westerns completely dominated the ratings. Qunsmoke was at number 1, Tales of Wells Fargo with Dale Robertson at number 3, Have Qun, Will Travel at number 4, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp at number 6. By 1958-9 six of the top seven shows were Westerns. I )ouglas Brode has identified three distinct types of television Western, hirst came the historical hero, as in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, or Jim Bowie. Then there was a vogue for a roving fictional hero, as in Cheyenne, Bronco or Have Qun, Will Travel. Third was the show built around a fictional hero in a fixed locale, such as Lawman or Qunsmoke. To this Michael Barson adds the show based on a family unit, of which the prime example would be Bonanza, which began in the 1959-60 season and continued until 1973. The first colour television Western, Bonanza, was astonishingly successful and was outlasted only by Qunsmoke. In fact, as Barson admits, the television Western differed little from its
cinematic ancestor. Television drew on the same materials, with series about railroads, outlaws, Indians, the army, about marshals, cowboys, gunmen and settlers. There were even parodies (Maverick and The Wild, Wild West). Nor was the television Western much different from other kinds of television show in the dramatic formulae it employed. As Barson describes it: 'A Western was likely to draw its conflicts from the range of human drama found across the spectrum of ancient myths up to and including contemporary issues. A father unable to communicate with his son; a mob unwilling to tolerate different kinds of people and beliefs; a wife who no longer loves her husband; a boy, eager to be recognized as a man; an outsider, eager to become part of a community - any one of these story premises might one week be the basis for an episode of a Western, the next the basis for a cop show, a family drama, or an episode of Star Trek.' This is not to say that the television Western lacked originality or artistry, even within the cramped confines of what were, at the beginning, merely half-hour shows. These stories had been the stock in trade of Hollywood for forty years before television picked them up. That hadn't prevented those in Hollywood who had it in them from making good pictures. The television Western didn't lack for talent. It threw up many good actors; among them Steve McQueen from Wanted: Dead or Alive, James Garner from Maverick, Clint Eastwood from Rawhide. And two Western series, The Rifleman and The Westerner, provided the training ground for the last great director of the Hollywood Western, Sam Peckinpah. The boom period of the late 1950s didn't last. As the 1960s wore on innovation seemed to wear out and few new successful Western shows were introduced. Rawhide had begun in 1959 and reached the list of the top 25 shows for the season 1959-60, but no other Westerns achieved real success in the ratings until The Virginian in 1963. By the beginning of the 1970s, as Table 6 (Appendix) shows, the television Western had gone into a steep decline, moderated but not reversed by the 'Middle-Western' Little House on the Prairie, which, beginning in 1974, hit number 1 in the ratings by the end of the decade and lasted until 1983. What brought about the decline in the television Western was not so much a fall in popularity as changes in the means whereby television produced a profile of its audience. Up to the end of the 60s aggregates had been all that mattered: the number of people overall who were watching a show. But then at the beginning of the 1970s arose a new method of audience research known as demographics, which measured not just totals but the numbers of viewers of different social groups within the aggregate. The networks soon discovered that though Westerns were generally popular, they were much more popular with juveniles and among the rural and less well-off part of the population than with the urban and more middle-class audience. Westerns on television were finding an audience very similar to that which B-Westerns had traditionally found in the movie theatres. But since television needed to sell advertising time, not programmes, it soon realized that it could do better with shows which appealed to the more affluent. Suddenly, in the 1971-2 season, there was a pitch for what would now be called the 'yuppie' audience; Westerns, assumed to be for hicks, were out. The Virginian, it would appear, was just one of these casualties of demographics.  As the B-Western declined under the influence of television there was renewed activity in a type of film that hovered somewhere between the A- and B-feature. This was less expensive than the full-scale all-star Western, with a cast sometimes of second-rank stars, sometimes of first-rank stars who were aging a little or seeking independence from their studios. Such films, often referred to as co-features (neither top or bottom billing but sharing with a film of equal status), showed considerable vitality and staying power during the long-drawn-out decline of the genre from its position of dominance. Examples of such productions would be the films which James Stewart made with Anthony Mann, starting with Winchester '73 in 1950, or those in which the talents of Randolph Scott, Budd Boetticher, Harry Joe Brown and Burt Kennedy combined to bring about such minor masterpieces as The Tall T and Comanche Station. Despite this, by the end of the 50s the fall-off in production was there for all to see. Not only had the independents collapsed (Republic had ceased production in 1958); the majors too seemed to be losing interest. In 1953 92 Westerns had been made in Hollywood. Ten years later this had sunk to a mere 11. True, production of all kinds of films in Hollywood was in decline; but Westerns sank faster. As a percentage of all films made they went from 27 per cent in 1953 to a mere 9 per cent in 1963. Where once much of the financial stability of the industry had rested on Westerns, now Hollywood seemed to continue making them only out of habit and nostalgia.