A Hot Ticket

Imagine that it's December 1970, and you've been offered free tickets to watch the taping of a new sitcom. You don't know much, if anything, about this show, called All in the Family, because it hasn't yet debuted on TV. Maybe you expect something similar to other popular CBS sitcoms of the day, such as My Three Sons, The Beverly Hillbillies, or Here's Lucy. Chances are, none of those quite prepared you for Norman Lear's show, which would soon make TV history.

I'd love to hop into a time machine, and be a fly on the wall of that studio. Were viewers intrigued? Shocked? Impressed? Appalled? One thing's for sure. This show was unlike anything most of them had ever seen on network television.