Impact Of I Love Lucy

12 Pages 3117 Words

- Lucille Ball. CBS did not accept until they heard that NBC had offered Lucy the job with Desi. In 1950, in fear of losing Lucy, CBS agreed Lucille could do the show with Desi as her husband. On March 2nd 1950, they had finished their pilot episode. Desi and CBS did not agree on many of the ideas and was not working well with CBS so he decided to make his own producing company over using theirs, beginning the Desilu Empire. They used the Biow Company as their agency and everything was set. By the summer of 1951, all of the chaos finally fell into place, only waiting for the show to begin.
The beginning productions of “I Love Lucy”, proved to be very hard work, which greatly paid off in the end. October 15th 1951- the day the world first saw the soon to be the most popular television show in history, was the beginning of “I Love Lucy”. It aired on CBS, on Monday night from 9-9:30. Originally, the critics had predicted that “I Love Lucy” didn’t stand a chance. However, when the people saw this first episode, which was titled “The Girls want to go to a Nightclub”, they quickly disregarded the critics’ comments. They enjoyed the show and continuously would watch “I Love Lucy” on Monday nights. “ The name Lucy can only mean one person.”- Michael McClay. And thus began a new society tradition.





When “I Love Lucy” premiered on October 15th 1951, the critics were quick to make a 180 and give praise to the show. Within two months it ranked sixteenth in the nation, and by the end of the season it was ranked number three behind “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” and the “Texaco Star Theatre”. Variety reported that an average of twenty-nine million viewers were watching the show every week and that “I Love Lucy” was the first TV show in history to reach over ten million homes.
The second season of “I Love Lucy” (1952-1953), the fairly new series had no competition and finished o...