Hillbillies Faced Backlash
The raging success of the Beverly Hillbillies sparked derivative shows. Green Acres focused on an urban couple moving to the country. Petticoat Junction centered on hijinks at a rural train stop hotel. Shows themed around hillbilly life saturated television in the 1960s and early 70s. Eventually, audiences grew tired of back country tales and tuned out.
CBS, home of the hillbilly revolution, cancelled 15 of the shows in the early 1970s in a move called the “Rural Purge.” One of the few shows to survive the purge was Hee-Haw, which ran from 1969 to 1993, but it was a musical variety show rather than a sitcom. Green Acres actor Pat Buttram (Mr. Haney) said “It was the year CBS killed everything with a tree in it.” The hillbilly craze was over. But the popular culture zeitgeist would get even worse for hillbilly culture.
