1960–61 United States network television schedule

The following is the 1960–61 network television schedule for the three major English language commercial broadcast networks in the United States. The schedule covers primetime hours from September 1960 through March 1961. The schedule is followed by a list per network of returning series, new series, and series cancelled after the 1959–60 season.

New fall series are highlighted in bold. All times are Eastern and Pacific.

Each of the 30 highest-rated shows is listed with its rank and rating as determined by Nielsen Media Research.^[1]

  Yellow indicates the programs in the top 10 for the season.

  Cyan indicates the programs in the top 20 for the season.

  Magenta indicates the programs in the top 30 for the season.

Note: ABC aired the interim The Walter Winchell Show at 10:30 p.m. from early October until early November.

Notes: On CBS, Presidential Countdown aired as an interim series, 10:30–11 p.m. in September and October until the November 8th election. In some areas, Douglas Edwards with the News and The Huntley-Brinkley Report aired at 6:45 p.m. Peter Gunn moved from NBC to ABC in the fall of 1960. The episodes of Brenner that ran on CBS in the summer of 1961 consisted of two previously unaired episodes produced in 1959 and reruns of episodes broadcast during the summer of 1959.

NOTES: This is the first broadcast of The Bugs Bunny Show.

On CBS, Comedy Spotlight consisted of reruns of episodes of General Electric Theater.

* formerly You Bet Your Life

Note: On NBC, The Campaign and the Candidates aired as an interim series, 9:30–10:30 p.m., from mid-September until the November 8 election.

Note: The * indicates that the program was introduced in midseason.

Between January and June 1960, the 1960 Writers Guild of America strike took place, affecting the fall schedule. The networks had numerous holes, which were mostly filled with unscripted material, some of which included political programs in anticipation of the forthcoming 1960 United States presidential election. CBS gave the unprecedented step of showing episodes from previous seasons of popular series. Some timeslots however (particularly that of 10:30-11) were ceded to stations.

On May 9, 1961, at the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters new Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow delivered "Television and the Public Interest," a scathing speech directed at the "procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western goodmen, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons, and, endlessly, commercials, many screaming, cajoling, and offending, and, most of all, boredom [...] Is there one network president in this room who claims he can't do better?"^[2] Minow called TV a "vast wasteland"; the phrase was picked up by the press and resulted in bad publicity for the networks and for the television industry as a whole. According to television historians Castleman and Podrazik (1982), the networks were in a bind, though: they had already purchased their fall 1961 programs and had locked in their 1961–62 schedules. "The best the networks could do was slot a few more public affairs shows, paint rosy pictures for 1962–63, and prepare to endure the barrage of criticism they felt certain would greet the new season."^[2]

• Castleman, H. & Podrazik, W. (1982). Watching TV: Four Decades of American Television. New York: McGraw-Hill. 314 pp.
• McNeil, Alex. Total Television. Fourth edition. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-024916-8.
• Brooks, Tim & Marsh, Earle (2007). The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows (9th ed.). New York: Ballantine. ISBN 0-345-31864-1.