Walt Disney's wonderful world of color was a huge factor for color tv. (1961 to 1969) This program united the family for the first time in front of a color tv. Sears stores open theirs store on Sundays afternoon just to promote selling their color set with that show. During the show, time stopped inside sears stores. Kids (many, many) were sitting on the floor, the rest were standing, and the salespersons were calling the in house credit dept. for all the sales they did. That was the event. people who did not have the COLOR tv, Sear sunday afternoon was the place. It was magical.

While Wonderful World Of Color was great family programming, remember sports (football especially) drives set sales more than any other single thing.

"Bonanza" was another big draw.

While sports would eventually be the obvious big draw, especially when color sets were installed in bars, the initial problem was there were fewer color sports programs than prime-time shows. Nevertheless, RCA used color sports as one of the main pillars of their ad campaigns.

Actually, it was 1966, NBC touted itself as "The full color Network"

back in the day you got your hands of the weekly TV guide and plotted out color viewing for the next week.

I did that. :-)

I'd related before the story told to me by a repairman who once worked at the local Admiral dealer. They put a color set in the picture window out front with a timer set to turn it on for Bonanza. Folks would gather in the parking lot & watch!

RCA kept Bonanza on when it was about to be canceled by NBC, as it was shot in color. RCA sponsored it to help sell color television. And their sustaining of Bonanza paid off in the long haul in high ratings and advertising revenue.

In 2014, before Ed Reitain's passing, we worked together on a presentation at the ETF Convention regarding the early years of RCA color. Part of that included a comparison of RCA's rosy projections for color TV vs. reality and a snapshot of color TV sales -- and how sales directly correlated to the amount of color TV programming.

Here are a couple of slides from the presentation that make the point...

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1770/...fe7da1bff0.jpgScreen Shot 2018-07-06 at 10.14.17 PM by Dave Arland, on Flickr

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/834/2...e8574679e2.jpgScreen Shot 2018-07-06 at 10.15.15 PM by Dave Arland, on Flickr

"Content is King"

we had a big store called woolco here in columbus ohio.on friday nights,the kids would all sit on the floor around the color sets in the electronic dept to watch the flintstones.saturday morning cartoons was the same.store opened at 10 am and kids would watch cartoons while parents shopped.best babysitter ever!wrestling was also a program that would attract a crowd.of course,it was in b/w

And did it helped increasing the sales? :)

1965 was the year Color really began being mainstream. All big 3 networks began broadcasting color in evening schedules, and sets got reliable enough and prices got affordable enough for consumer confidence. Remember, even in this era, Color TV was still $600 at cheapest (save for the GE PortaColor), sets needed 2-4 repair calls a year on average. A lot of money for the typical working class household. Remember then, the average standard Chevrolet, Ford, or Plymouth Sedan was $2400 brand new, the house my Stepdad bought in Oak Ridge, TN (built in 1956) in 1967 $10,000. Just for a reference of general living expenses. A new Stereo LP was $4.98 list price, usually $3.57 street price, new 45 RPM single $.99 list, $.69 street price.

Yes, and when Color programming was limited, most prospects waited for prices to lower, reliability to improve, screen sizes to increase to acceptably large for living room viewing. And for more color programming to make the added cost worth spending money on. Many early Color TV owners, only used their color sets to watch color programs on. They watched their black and white programs on their black and white set, as it was more reliable, needed fewer repairs, and often larger screen. The black and white set cost them less to own and operate over it's estimated lifetime. And cheaper and easier repaired.

I'd imagine as color broadcasts increased in number their quality followed suit and that must have helped too. I've read plenty of tales of sloppy broadcast equipment adjustment causing poor picture quality and or having to completely readjust the user color controls when switching from station to station or program to program...If the broadcast feed is not excellent it will make the sets on the sales floor look bad, and if those look bad then consumers start to wonder if it is a solid product...A bad demonstration of a product for sale usually does not help.