Although it only aired for three seasons from 1964 to 1967, all 98 episodes of "Gilligan's Island" were shown in syndication for years, garnering the sitcom a devoted following that spanned generations. But if you happen to be of the generation that saw the show when it first aired, you may remember the first season debuting in black and white.

A decade before "Gilligan's Island" hit the airwaves, NBC became the first American network to carry a coast-to-coast color broadcast, broadcasting the Pasadena, California Tournament of Roses parade across the nation on New Year's Day 1954, but the network which would later host Gilligan's Island, CBS beat NBC to the punch when it came to the first US color broadcast. it was not a coast-to-coast broadcast like the 1954 Tournament of Roses parade, the 1951 CBS broadcast of the musical variety special "Premiere" was the first commercial color program shown in American broadcast over a five-station network in the East. coast, the program was perhaps a little premature because at the time no one had the television necessary to watch CBS' field sequential color television system.

By the late 1950s, color televisions were somewhat more common, but even then the majority of US households still watched in black and white. As the 1960s began, NBC regularly broadcast in color, but the other networks remained in monochrome, with CBS airing only the occasional color special. It would take until the late 1960s for mainstream broadcasting to switch to color, and by the mid-1970s, roughly half of US households owned color televisions.

So with Gilligan's Island on the air from 1964 to 67, he became involved in the still-growing shift to color, switching from monochrome to color after the first season. But if most US homes still had black and white televisions at the time, why did it CBS - which wanted to drop the titular island from "Gilligan's Island" - did you make the switch?

Although it was later colorized when shown in syndication, the first 36-episode season of Gilligan's Island aired in monochrome in 1964. However, when Season 2 debuted in September 1965, things changed. First, since the Gilligan's Island theme song from Season 1 was sung by a folk group Wellingtons (who later played the fictional group The Mosquitoes in the series), Season 2 debuted a brand new theme song. However, perhaps more significantly, it marked the series' transition from black-and-white filming to color.

After that, the third season of the series was also filmed in color, as well as the three TV movies: 1978's Gilligan's Island Rescue, its 1979 sequel, Gilligan's Island Virgins and 1981. "Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island" (which almost featured a completely different basketball team). But what made CBS and series creator Sherwood Schwartz switch to color back in 1965, especially when, despite the growing popularity of color television, America was still very much in the black-and-white era?

There seem to be several stories as to why Gilligan's Island was shot in black and white for the first season. According to A ventilatora special featurette included with the show's DVD collection features series creator Sherwood Schwartz stating that it was only due to the fact that "nothing was in color on TV". Meanwhile, however, professor actor Russell Johnson argued that "it's just too expensive" to film in color.

In a way, both applications are somewhat correct. At the time Gilligan's Island aired, color represented the general direction in which TV was headed. On September 24, 1961, "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" debuted on NBC, introducing color to a new generation and convincing more people to go out and buy color televisions. That trend continued into the 1960s and ABC and CBS decided to switch to color in 1965, adding "color" bumpers to the ends of the title cards of their shows. This, of course, was the same year that the second season of Gilligan's Island aired, so it seems that the series simply ended up toeing the line between the old standard and the new.

Meanwhile, as one Redditor He noted that attempts to colorize the monochrome inaugural season left a lot to be desired, with several commentators noting how important color was to the series once it made the switch and bemoaning the lackluster look of the color episodes. Even Sherwood Schwartz himself credited the success of Gilligan's Island to the visual style of the characters, which were most clearly defined by their different colored uniforms. Unfortunately, Schwartz's show turned out to be on the air just a year too early for every season to be filmed in color.