The Big Valley

Name: The Big Valley
Genre: Drama

1965–1969ABCDrama

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Barbara Stanwyck running a Stockton ranch, in the western that gave a woman the top billing.

The Big Valley kept one opening title sequence, 37 seconds long, across seasons 1–4.

At 37 seconds, it opens well under the 50-second median for drama sequences in this catalogue.

It arrived on ABC in 1965, when The Bugs Bunny Show, ABC's Wide World of Sports and American Bandstand were also on the network.

The opening titles

37s

Restored upload. The uploader states this open ran across the whole 1965 to 1969 run.

1960–ITVDrama

The longest-running television soap in the world, opening on rooftops and a cornet ever since 1960.

1965–NBCDrama

"Like sands through the hourglass" — the same sentence, over the same hourglass, for sixty years.

1964–1968NBCDrama

Sixties spy graphics and a brass chart, in the register every subsequent spy show either copied or reacted against.

1965–1969CBSDrama

An animated frontier vignette that pauses on four panels of a comic strip — a western opening built like a title card for a serial.

1962–1971NBCDrama

The first ninety-minute western on American television, and the third longest-running of them all.

1968–2012ABCDrama

Llanview, and the first American daytime serial written around class and ethnicity rather than around a hospital.