Do you miss TV Westerns

I had a Ponderosa lunchbox when I was a kid. Little Joe was holding a Winchester. Miss Dalton liked my Poderosa lunchbox. Fast forward a few decades and Miss Dalton would be taking me to the principal's office for making terroristic threats with Little Joe.

There's plenty of good guys versus bad guys on TV. They just don't ride horses anymore.

 

Yes and No.
I still watch westerns-- Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Rifleman, et al, but they've been virtually out of production for 40 years. But if they did make westerns today, what would they be like? cowboys in a queer-fest around the campfire, any conflict with Indians would always be won by (guess who?), we would see female cavalry officers and other ideas that are inherently false. All this would be justified by saying the 'old' westerns showed much that was inherently false-- the "fast draw" gunfight, which virtually never happened; the terrain near Dodge City (Gunsmoke) is mountainous or canyonland, depending on the plot; Jim Bowie as a 'good guy' fighter, when in truth he made his fortune in slave trading and crooked land deals,...

Often we have to go to Youtube, or another site, to see westerns made by those who knew how, but we might as well be content with them, because if any at all are going to be made, if we liked the old ones we wouldn't like the new, short of an unexpected pleasant surprise.

 

My granddad was born when the "Wild West" was still pretty wild, and it could be said that north Missouri was just spitting distance from that Wild West. But granddad was a minor league ballplayer as a young man. He never had the desire to head for the wide open spaces, but he read the typical dime store novels.

Dad was born when science fiction was just taking hold, but he also read the same kind of dime store novels Granddad did, and listened to the old westerns on radio growing up.

I was born in television's heyday, when westerns and other good dramas -- "Playhouse 90" and the Hallmark Theater -- were the staple. I still like to watch the occasional rerun of Gunsmoke or Bonanza.

My kids? Never saw a western, and are so enamored by gadgets and personal entertainment products that they would likely never take the time to view one. And their kids -- they don't have them yet, but when they do -- will not have the educational background to know about the Wild West and as such that era, both the actual Wild West and the reproduction of it on radio and television, will fade into history.

 

Always enjoyed the western. Simple good guy v. bad guy. No question who would win.

 

The combined reproduction of the so-called Wild West via radio,movies and TV was longer than the actual history of those days.