50 Years of I Love Lucy

On Monday, Jan. 5, 1959, from 11-11:30 a.m. Eastern Time, CBS inaugurated daily reruns of its most successful 1950s series, I Love Lucy. The sitcom had spent six years on the nighttime schedule - from Oct. 15, 1951 through June 24, 1957 - and finished #1 four of those years, as well as #2 in the 1955-56 season (behind The $64,000 Question) and #3 in the 1951-52 season (behind Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts at #1 and The Texaco Star Theater at #2). It was truly a monster success there, and it would be the same in daytime.      

I Love Lucy was not the first sitcom to be rerun in daytime, nor even the first one on CBS. NBC had the distinction of doing the first, a series called Comedy Time that reran I Married Joan and some lesser NBC properties from 1956-58. CBS made its initial foray in the field in the fall of 1956 with Our Miss Brooks, which ran from 2-2:30 p.m. to replace the unimpressive Johnny Carson Show - yes, the future host of The Tonight Show at one time followed As the World Turns, believe it or not. Why CBS chose Our Miss Brooks over I Love Lucy is somewhat puzzling, given the latter’s ongoing and bigger popularity, and that CBS already repeated I Love Lucy on early Sunday and then Saturday evenings from 1955-56 with considerable success. Apparently CBS worried about overexposure for its top nighttime series and decided to go with a cancelled show instead.

Our Miss Brooks did not set the daytime world on fire. After a year CBS replaced it with a daytime edition of Beat the Clock. The network prospered in mornings and afternoon the next year with hit soaps and games, but the controversy in late 1958 over whether all the “big money” games were rigged in the face of many facing investigation (including The $64,000 Question) led CBS to can a couple in daytime, like Dotto and For Love and Money. That left room for new shows, ones that the network hoped would have no suspicions surrounding them. And what could be less on the up-and-up than the genuine comedy of Lucille Ball and company?

So at the start of 1959, CBS adjusted its morning lineup and moved Arthur Godfrey Time up a half hour to allow for the addition of I Love Lucy, while the latter also aired Thursdays from 7:30-8 p.m. (the show returned to nighttime reruns from September 1957 through September 1959). The reason for the move was that after dominating daytime for much of the time since he debuted in 1952, Godfrey had spent the last year or so losing to The Price is Right on NBC, leading to that network establishing a solid wall of game shows that challenged CBS considerably before 1 p.m., including Concentration, Tic Tac Dough and It Could Be You. In effect, I Love Lucy was installed to stop the bleeding on the CBS morning schedule.

The result did not destroy The Price is Right by any means - indeed, by the time I Love Lucy moved to 10-10:30 a.m. in March 1961, The Price is Right still held sway at its same time slot on NBC and was the second-highest rated daytime game show, behind Concentration. Yet the series had established its own considerable following, and to the relief of the CBS brass, the public did not hold anything against Ball when she divorced her I Love Lucy co-star and real life husband Desi Arnaz in May 1960. In fact, a month later CBS saturated viewers with the chance to watch I Love Lucy every day of the week.

In the summer of 1960, along with the daytime repeats, I Love Lucy popped up Saturday mornings from 11:30 a.m. to noon (it ran Saturday mornings from October 1959 through September 1960), and Sunday evenings from 10-10:30 p.m. under the series title Lucy in Connecticut, featuring the 1956-57 season episodes when the Ricardos moved to the suburbs (c’mon, you remember that!). The network apparently was having withdrawal pains facing the fact that the 1960-61 nighttime season would be its first one in nine years without having Lucy on at least a semi-regular basis (Lucy and her gang did occasional specials on The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse from 1957-60).

Getting back to daytime, Arthur Godfrey had to leave his show on April 24, 1959 for lung surgery. CBS replaced him with Sam Levenson, but ratings fell opposite Treasure Hunt on NBC, so he went off at the end of September 1959 to be replaced by repeats of another sitcom from Desilu Studios, December Bride. It performed better, and lasted in daytime until 1961. In the meantime, CBS never let Godfrey return to its morning lineup and began giving more thought to the viability of daytime sitcom reruns thanks to December Bride and I Love Lucy.

The explosion of daytime reruns came after I Love Lucy fended off Say When on NBC from 10-10:30 a.m. in the spring and summer of 1961, then moved a half hour later and eventually forced Play Your Hunch off NBC in 1963. By then, CBS had followed it with The Real McCoys (titled The McCoys in daytime) and Pete and Gladys in the morning hours, and the ratings advantage grew bigger, even with ABC trying to expand its presence in the period. All three shows won their time periods handily. After knocking off Word for Word and then What’s That Song? on NBC from 1963-65, CBS moved I Love Lucy up one more time in the fall of 1965, kicking off each morning slate from 10-10:30 a.m. It was just as popular as it had been the last few years, limiting Fractured Phrases on NBC to a fractured run of 13 weeks and keeping its follow-up Eye Guess a far runner-up in the period.

But on Feb. 10, 1966, there was at least one person very unhappy with the I Love Lucy reruns. CBS News President Fred W. Friendly wanted the network to pre-empt the show in favor of live coverage of hearings on Vietnam by the U.S. Senate, as ABC and NBC were doing. He was overruled and resigned in protest later that week.

Six months later, CBS finally retired I Love Lucy from daily rotation, replacing it with reruns of Candid Camera. No longer worried about shows in daytime reruns while still on the network, Candid Camera joined The Beverly Hillbillies and The Andy Griffith Show as holding this status on CBS, with The Dick Van Dyke Show from 11:30 a.m.-noon being the one exception on the lineup. Presumably that was the reason for I Love Lucy going off the air, even though the extra exposure did not prevent the nighttime Candid Camera from being cancelled at the end of the 1966-67 season. (Ironically, when Candid Camera repeats ended in the fall of 1968, CBS replaced it with reruns of Ball’s second series, The Lucy Show.) Anyhow, its daily run of seven and a half years remains a record for any repeats on a network

CBS brought I Love Lucy back one more time in 1967, on Sundays from 5-5:30 p.m., before ending Aug. 27, 1967. The series then was available for rerun on local stations, and many of them installed it on their daily schedules, particular CBS stations. By 1974 Mad magazine spoofed the network’s New York City affiliate WCBS by putting a mock I Love Lucy episode summary from the 1950s against one for the present day, with only difference being the former one aired at 9 p.m. on Channel 2 and the latter at 9 a.m.

Indeed, I Love Lucy thrived in the 1970s even as most other black-and-white series no longer found favor in repeats. It was so popular that a dance version of the I Love Lucy theme called “Disco Lucy” made the top 30 on the music charts in 1977.

Some markets ran it more than once daily, a rather groundbreaking move at the time, and one which Lucille Ball did not approve. “When I heard one day that I Love Lucy was rerun seven times a day in some areas, I didn’t like it - every time you turn on the water tap, you get me,” she told Cecil Smith in TV Book in 1977. Some speculated than Lucy resented that the series had a better reputation than her later shows, The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy. One thing is for sure, neither of those have had the durability of I Love Lucy in reruns, which continued strongly in the 1980s, 1990s and today, thanks in part to great exposure on Nick at Nite and TV Land as well as several local stations still carrying it.

Besides its record run, the daytime reruns of I Love Lucy on CBS established the network’s programming philosophy that, for better or worse, dominated its morning schedule from the fall of 1962 through the fall of 1972. It showed that some viewers preferred the old and familiar - even on its ninth rerun - than try a new show. Most importantly, it showed the durability of I Love Lucy itself, as it ended as a top-rated daily offering nine years after its last show was in production. No other program can or will match that achievement. It is a testament to the care and craft of everyone involved of I Love Lucy, a true TV classic.