Rural purge

The "rural purge" of American television networks (in particular CBS) was a series of cancellations in the early 1970s of still-popular rural-themed shows with demographically skewed audiences, the majority of which occurred at the end of the 1970–71 television season. One of the earliest efforts at channel drift, CBS in particular saw a dramatic change in direction with the shift, moving away from shows with rural themes and toward ones with more appeal to urban and suburban audiences.

Starting with The Real McCoys, a 1957 ABC program, U.S. television had undergone a "rural revolution", a shift towards situation comedies featuring "naïve but noble 'rubes' from deep in the American heartland". CBS was the network most associated with the trend, with series such as The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Mister Ed, Lassie, Petticoat Junction, and Hee Haw. CBS aired so many of these rural-themed shows, many of which were produced by Filmways, that it gained the nickname the "Country Broadcasting System" (or the "Hillbilly Network," a play on the network's original self-proclaimed name of "The Tiffany Network"). By 1966, industry executives were lamenting the lack of diversity of American television offerings and the dominance of rural-oriented programming on all of the Big Three television networks of the era, noting that "ratings indicate that the American public prefer hillbillies, cowboys and spies" (spy shows being a lingering after-effect of the British Invasion).

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