More than 70 years after it first aired, I Love Lucy has officially been ranked the greatest CBSsitcom of all time, a title that feels less like nostalgia and more like inevitability.
When the series premiered on October 15, 1951, it didn’t just introduce audiences to Lucille Ball’s fearless physical comedy and Desi Arnaz’s charismatic bandleader Ricky Ricardo. It fundamentally rewrote how television was made.
Yes, I Love Lucy broke barriers with its interracial marriage at the center of the story. Yes, it famously aired one of the first pregnancy storylines on television. But the real revolution happened behind the camera.
When CBS first approached Ball in 1950, executives wanted her for a new television series—but they did not want her real-life husband, Cuban-American musician and actor Arnaz, cast as her TV spouse. Ball refused.
“CBS didn’t want Desi because they just didn’t think that anyone would want to watch a show with a mixed-race marriage. It was a racist decision,” Dana Sumner-Pritchard, host of The Ricardo Project podcast, previously explained during an episode of TV We Love. Ball walked away rather than compromise.
To prove their chemistry, Ball and Arnaz toured a vaudeville act called "My Favorite Husband." Audiences loved them. CBS relented.
Then came the decision that would change television forever.
Because videotape did not yet exist, most early television shows were broadcast live and lost to history after airing. Arnaz insisted that I Love Lucy be filmed on 35mm film in front of a live studio audience, which was an expensive and unconventional choice. He even agreed to a pay cut on one condition: he and Ball would own the negatives.
At the time, CBS reportedly laughed during negotiations. “Who’s gonna wanna watch them after they air?” executives allegedly asked.
That clause accidentally invented reruns.
By retaining ownership, Ball and Arnaz flipped the business model of television production on its head. Syndication was born. Every time a show airs in repeats or streams today, it follows the blueprint they created.
“Lucy and Desi created television as we know it,” Variety editor Michael Schneider said.
The show’s influence didn’t stop there. Profits from I Love Lucy allowed Ball and Arnaz to build Desilu Productions, which went on to produce The Untouchables, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to head a major Hollywood studio.
On screen, the show’s cultural impact was equally staggering. The 1953 episode “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” which coincided with the real-life birth of Desi Arnaz Jr., remains one of the most-watched broadcasts in American television history, drawing more than two-thirds of all U.S. households with televisions.
Other sitcoms on the CBS rankings list include All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show—all giants in their own right.
But I Love Lucy sits at the top for a reason. It invented TV as we know it today.
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