What was your favorite TV ....

[slap happy]

i liked rawhide and wagon train also big valley

[piebiter]

Wild Bill Hickok with Guy Madison and Andy Devine. It was a long time before I learned that the show wasn't factual. I really believed it was all true. My folks really liked Death Valley Days with the Old Ranger and we never missed it or Zane Grey Theater.

[Top Kick Ken]

I guess my favorite was Gunsmoke for the memories I have that are connected to it.  It was my Grandma's favorite show; when we visited, she and I would sit and watch it together.  (Of couse I had to help out Marshal Dillon)

The others I liked in no particular order were:

The Rifleman - Loved that rifle and Chuck Conners was cool
Wanted Dead or Alive - Steve McQueen and another cool rifle
The Wild Wild West - James West and Artemis Gordon and very quirky villians
Bonanza - Great cast
The Big Valley - another great cast
Iron Horse - I was REALLY into Steam Trains!  And with a Railroad named "The Buffalo Pass, Scalplock & Defiance Railroad" and Dale Robertson as Ben Calhoun...it couldn't be wrong in my book!
Have Gun, Will Travel
Alias Smith and Jones  (It humored me more than anything else.)
The Virginian
Barbary Coast - I liked Doug McClure
High Chaparral

[Advertising]

[Leo Tanner]

Have ta go with Have Gun as my all time favorite.  Paladin was different than characters on other shows.
     Every episode began with a scene from the show where he had his special gun drawn and would give a little speech to whatever unlucky fella happened ta  be standin on the wrong end of it.  If I remember right, trigger pull was one ounce, mebbe two of pressure.  I remember one episode where he was trying to help an Indian couple keep their ranch.  It looked like he was doing the wrong thing by them until the very end when everything came together and he was the only one that knew no livestock could survive on the property due ta bad water.  No one else found out until after the bully had a worthless piece of land and the Indian folks had big chunk of money.  I thought he was the smartest man alive!


Leo

[Deadeye Dick]

Some of my favorites were:
Gunsmoke
Cisco Kid
Wild Bill Hickock
Roy Rogers
Have Gun Will Travel
Bonanza
The Lone Ranger

Cisco Kid was the first program I saw on TV. Dad had one delivered to our home, must of been around 1952 or 53.  The TV installer hooked the TV up and after fooling around with it to get a mediocre picture we were able to watch Cisco Kid. Before that we had to make do with radio. Listened to the B bar B Riders and the Red Ryder among others.
Those were the days.

[Texas Lawdog]

Before we had a Color TV(pre-65), I didn't know that "The Cisco Kid" had been filmed in Color. I had seen all the episodes on our old B/W TV in the 50s, so it was a new experience to see them all again, but in color. The same way with a lot of the Lone Ranger episodes.

[Texas Lawdog]

The Western channel has "The Rifleman", "Maverick", "Bat Masterson", and "The Big Valley" every day.  After Jan. 1, 2009, "Cheyenne" will be added to the daily programing.

[Rube Burrows]

Me and my son watch Riflman nearly everyday. I also love Gunsmoke, Wanted Dead or alive and I will watch just about any western. Encore Western is my savior as far as seeing a lot of the older western movies. I dont know what I would do without it.

[Old Doc]

The first one I remember was Wild Bill Hickok. Then Hoppy and The Cisco Kid. It's amazing for me to read today that Pancho (Leo Carillo) was 70 years old when those episodes were filmed. For some reason, we never got The Lone Ranger. In those days, we only had one or two TV stations so I guess we missed a few things. Later, my favorite was probably Have Gun Will Travel. After that, Wild Wild West and Guns of Will Sonnett. Didn't watch Gunsmoke all that much because, some may remember, that shows like Gunsmoke and Dragnet fell victim to a congressional concern about TV violence and a lot of the gunplay disappeared to be replaced with shows with " a message". Remember all of Joe Friday's lectures? I liked it better when he and Frank just shot the bad guys instead of talking them to death. A few other comments from the days of the TV westerns. I never did know why Gene Autry didn't send both Pat Buttram or Smiley Burnett packing. I know you had to have a sidekick but you'd think he would have realized that if he wasn't careful, one of those idiots was going to get him killed one day. I also wondered what the Cartrights were going to do if they ever got into a prolonged gunfight. Not any of them, Ben , Hoss, Adam, or Little Joe had any loops in their gunbelts for extra cartridges.

[Texas Lawdog]

We got our first TV in 1953. We only got 2 TV stations at the time, both of which were in Amarillio, which was 50 miles away. We got  CBS and NBC. We got an ABC station about 60 or 61. We watched Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Rawhide, and Bat Masterson on CBS.  We watched Bonanza and Tales of Wells Fargo on NBC.  We watched all the ABC westerns after we got the ABC station. I was a senior in HS when we got a Color set.

[Drayton Calhoun]

Cheyenne, The Dakotas, The Rifleman, Gunsmoke, The Virginian, Rawhide, Bonanza.
I remember one episode of Bonanza where Little Joe fanned off five shots with an Army Colt playing around with it. Hoss took exception because it spooked his horse.

[Koyote]

I think it's a toss-up between Maverick and Have Gun Will Travel. Wanted Dead or Alive and Nickels were close behind.

What he said.
 I was just thinking of those 2 as I was reading here.

Maverick was COOL!!!

[Mogorilla]

THere are some great ones mentioned here.  I really liked High Chapparal as well, mainly because my dad looked like a cross between Cameron Mitchell and William Shatner.  After dad passed it is really hard to watch Shatner, as the older he gets the more pronounced the similarities.   I think Cameron Mitchell was highly underated.  As to today, I really enojoyed the MAgnificent Seven TV Show, and I was a riveted follower of Deadwood, not the westerns of the 50-70s, but man it was well written (after you got used to the foul language).  Only show to bring me to tears EVER.  When Al puts the preacher out of his misery, (lost my mom to a brain tumor and similar symptoms), I really wept.  It was an amazing scene.