Bonanza Broke The Mold of Western Television

With the advent of color TV, the NBC execs put out the word that they wanted a bigger than life panoramic epic Western TV show designed to sell color TV sets. The result was Bonanza. Notice that the producers did not cast any of the garden variety western actors. Instead they looked for fresh faces not identified with any previous western show. They got Lorne Greene from Canada.
Dan Blocker was a newscomer. Pernell Roberts had been in many TV shows, but not identified as a western star. Michael Landon had been a drive in movie star, perfect to bring in the young viewers (and the women viewers). Of course they called the spread the Ponderosa and it all worked. In fact it worked so well that it spawned a series of epic color westerns on CBS as well, with Big Valley and The Virginian joining the fray. Of course, all of this played to the benefit of NBC, who's parent RCA sold the color TV sets regardless.