10 Classic Country Music Television Shows Every Fan Should Remember

When Classic Country Ruled the Airwaves

There was a time when Saturday night in America meant one thing in millions of households: country music on television.

Across the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s, a remarkable run of television programs carried classic country music to audiences who might never have made it to Nashville. These shows weren’t just entertainment. They were the primary way most fans got to see the artists they loved — the smiles, the banter between songs, the moments of pure unscripted performance that radio could never deliver.

For many of these artists, a television appearance was the difference between regional success and national recognition. And for country music itself, those broadcasts became something no one planned for: a living archive of the genre’s golden era.

1. Hee Haw (1969–1993)

No country music television program ever reached more people, or lasted longer in syndication, than Hee Haw.

The show debuted on CBS in June 1969 — the same summer man walked on the moon — and was hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark. It combined live country performances with recurring rural comedy sketches: the cornfield gossip segments, the “Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me” chorus, the Pickin’ and Grinnin’ segments with Clark showing off his extraordinary guitar and banjo work.

CBS cancelled it in 1971 as part of what the industry called the “rural purge” — a network decision to eliminate programming that skewed too Southern or too working-class, regardless of ratings. The move backfired. Hee Haw moved into syndication and ran for another two decades, reaching more markets and more viewers than it ever had on the network.

The guest roster across its run reads like the who’s who of classic country: Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Conway Twitty, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Charley Pride. For many of these artists, the show provided a warm and familiar stage where they could perform as themselves — no Vegas gloss, no pop crossover pressure. Just the music.

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2. The Johnny Cash Show (1969–1971)

When ABC gave Johnny Cash a prime-time variety show in June 1969, the network wasn’t sure exactly what it was getting. What they got was one of the most boundary-crossing hours in American television history.

Filmed at the Ryman Auditorium — the Mother Church of Country Music — the show ran for 58 episodes over two seasons. Cash opened the door to artists from every tradition: folk, gospel, rock, blues, and the Americana underground that was just starting to take shape. Bob Dylan appeared on the very first episode, performing “Living the Blues” and joining Cash on “Girl from the North Country.” Kris Kristofferson was a recurring presence. Joni Mitchell, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, and Pete Seeger all passed through.

But the show never lost its country soul. Cash’s prison songs, gospel numbers, and American folk ballads anchored every broadcast. The Ryman itself — its wooden pews, its balcony, its history — gave the show a weight that no studio set could have manufactured.

The recordings that survive are extraordinary documents of an artist at his peak and a moment in American music that has never quite been repeated.

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3. The Porter Wagoner Show (1960–1981)

For 21 years, Porter Wagoner delivered country music to living rooms across America every single week. That run makes The Porter Wagoner Show one of the longest-running country programs in television history.

The show launched in syndication in 1960, airing in over 100 markets at its peak. Wagoner was an established Grand Ole Opry star with a flamboyant rhinestone wardrobe and a gift for connecting with a rural audience that felt, genuinely, like he was one of them. His theme song — “Trademark” — opened every episode to the same crowd every week.

In 1967, he invited a young Dolly Parton to join the show as his female vocalist. She stayed for seven years. Their on-screen chemistry and vocal partnership produced some of the finest country duet recordings of the era — and their backstage tension, documented in Parton’s later songs, became one of the defining dramas of 1970s country music. You can watch their early television performances and see the whole complicated story written on their faces.

The Wagoner show introduced more artists to national audiences than almost any other program of its era. It was the proving ground, the launching pad, and for many viewers the most reliable place to find traditional country music at a time when Nashville was experimenting with pop crossover sounds.

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4. The Wilburn Brothers Show (1963–1974)

Teddy and Doyle Wilburn were established Grand Ole Opry performers when their syndicated television program began airing in 1963. But the show’s most lasting contribution to country history had nothing to do with the brothers themselves.

Loretta Lynn first came to national attention through this program. The Wilburns had signed her to their management company and booking agency, and they featured her regularly as a featured guest. Her television appearances on this show — before she had a string of major hits — gave her a national platform that accelerated her rise in a way that radio alone could not have done.

The show also documented a wide cross-section of Nashville’s working artists during the era when the Nashville Sound was at its height: smooth, polished, reaching for mainstream audiences without abandoning the country foundation. Watching these broadcasts today is a window into how the music industry worked before the era of MTV and algorithmic playlists.

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5. Pop! Goes the Country (1974–1982)

Ralph Emery had already built a reputation as one of Nashville’s most trusted broadcasters when Pop! Goes the Country went into syndication in 1974. The show combined live performances with relaxed, conversational interviews that gave viewers something rarely seen in country television: access to the personalities behind the hits.

Emery was a natural interviewer — comfortable, unguarded, Southern in the best sense of the word. He could coax a story out of a reticent artist better than most, and the show’s informal atmosphere made it feel less like a production and more like a visit. Artists came on and talked like they were sitting on someone’s porch.

Tom T. Hall eventually took over hosting duties, bringing his trademark storytelling sensibility to the format. The show ran for eight years and documented a remarkable range of artists during the period when country music was expanding its audience significantly — from the outlaw movement to the Urban Cowboy era.

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6. That Nashville Music (1970–1985)

Less flashy than Hee Haw and less personality-driven than the Emery programs, That Nashville Music occupied a quieter but genuinely important place in the country television landscape.

Produced in Nashville and syndicated nationally, the show presented artists in stripped-down studio settings — small groups, acoustic arrangements, performances that put the musicianship front and center. There were no cornfield comedy sketches here. Just the craft.

For viewers who wanted to hear what the songs actually sounded like when the studio embellishment was peeled back, That Nashville Music was the destination. It ran for fifteen years, quietly documenting the genre through the transition from the Nashville Sound era through the outlaw movement and into the early neotraditionalist stirrings of the 1980s.

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7. The Grand Ole Opry Television Broadcasts

The Grand Ole Opry had been radio’s most important country music institution since 1927. When television cameras finally turned toward Nashville, the Opry was the first and most obvious subject.

Various televised versions of the Opry appeared across the decades — an NBC series in the mid-1950s, syndicated packages through the 1960s and 1970s, and later cable broadcasts. Each brought something different: the particular acoustics of the Ryman, the community atmosphere of the new Opry House, the unscripted energy of a live stage where artists weren’t performing for cameras but for an audience that had bought tickets to be there.

What these broadcasts preserved was something deeper than individual performances. They captured the Opry as an institution — the way artists joked with each other in the wings, the way the crowd responded to a fiddle introduction before a word was sung, the way the whole thing felt less like a television program and more like a Saturday night tradition that had been going on for decades. Because it had.

Also on Classic Country TV: Rare Moments from Classic Country TV Shows

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8. Ozark Jubilee (1955–1960)

Before Hee Haw, before the Porter Wagoner Show, before any of the programs that would define country television — there was Ozark Jubilee.

Broadcast from Springfield, Missouri, on ABC beginning in January 1955, it was country music’s first major prime-time network presence. Red Foley hosted, and the show featured a rotating cast of country performers at a time when the genre was still fighting for mainstream credibility. That it aired on ABC — one of the three major networks, in prime time — was itself a statement about country music’s commercial potential.

Artists like Brenda Lee, Webb Pierce, and Hawkshaw Hawkins appeared regularly. The show ran for five seasons and proved something that industry skeptics had doubted: a country music program could hold a national television audience week after week. Every country TV show that followed owed something to what Ozark Jubilee demonstrated in Springfield.

Television didn’t just document country music. It proved that a country music program could hold a national audience week after week — and that changed everything.

9. Nashville Now (1983–1993)

By the time The Nashville Network launched in 1983, cable television was beginning to transform how Americans consumed entertainment. Ralph Emery was there again — this time hosting a daily talk and performance show that ran five nights a week for a decade.

Nashville Now operated like a late-night talk show set in Music City: monologue, celebrity interviews, live music, call-in segments from fans. It was looser and more conversational than the syndicated variety shows of earlier decades, and Emery’s ease in front of a camera made even the most guarded artists relax into something real.

The show bridged the gap between the traditional country audience and the newer fans coming in through the Urban Cowboy era and the neotraditionalist movement. Artists like Randy Travis, Reba McEntire, and Alabama made regular appearances. The program ran until 1993, when changing cable economics and shifting formats ended its run — but by then it had produced a decade’s worth of live country music television that no streaming service had yet thought to archive.

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10. Country Style, U.S.A. (1957–1961)

Perhaps the most unusual entry on this list, Country Style, U.S.A. was produced by the United States Army specifically to entertain American troops stationed abroad. It aired on Armed Forces Television and reached soldiers in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere who had no access to domestic broadcasts.

The show was filmed in Nashville and featured rising and established country artists performing their current material. For many young soldiers from Southern and rural backgrounds, it was a genuine piece of home. For others from different backgrounds, it was their first sustained exposure to the music — and for some, it sparked a lifelong connection.

What makes Country Style, U.S.A. historically interesting today is the window it provides into early Nashville television production and into a roster of artists captured at specific points in their careers. It’s a small show in the overall landscape of country television, but it matters — because every document of this era matters.

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Why Television Changed Everything for Country Music

Radio could carry the sound. Television carried the person.

For fans who lived hundreds of miles from Nashville and had never attended a live show, seeing Buck Owens laugh, watching Roy Clark’s fingers fly across a banjo neck, catching the moment when Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton looked at each other mid-song — these were intimate experiences that radio simply could not provide. Television made the artists human in a way that changed the relationship between performer and audience permanently.

For the artists themselves, television exposure transformed regional careers into national ones. A hit record could travel far. A television appearance traveled further and stayed longer in a viewer’s memory. These shows weren’t just promotional vehicles — they were part of how the music was passed down.

And for preservation, they are irreplaceable. The recordings that survive from these programs represent live performances that were never intended as archives. Nobody filming Ozark Jubilee in 1955 was thinking about historians in 2026. But those cameras were rolling, and what they captured has become part of the permanent record of American music.

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Why It Still Matters

Most of these programs survive today only in fragments — partial recordings, kinescope copies, fan-made compilations, and institutional archives that are only beginning to be digitized. Each year, more of what was recorded gets preserved. Each year, some of what wasn’t gets a little harder to recover.

The broadcasts that do survive are not just nostalgia. They are historical evidence — of how the music sounded live, how it felt in a room, how the artists who made it carried themselves when the cameras were rolling. They’re the closest thing we have to time travel back to the era when classic country was being made.

At Classic Country TV, keeping these stories visible — the shows, the moments, the people behind them — is exactly the work we’re here to do. These programs built an audience for country music that has never fully gone away. Remembering them is part of keeping that audience alive.

Which of these shows did you grow up watching? Tell us in the comments — and tell us which performance you still think about.

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Further Listening and Reading

Country Music USA — Bill C. Malone
The definitive scholarly history of country music, with substantial coverage of the television era and the programs that shaped it.

Hee Haw — The Music Collection (Vinyl)
A cross-section of the performances that made Hee Haw the most beloved country music variety show in television history.

The Essential Johnny Cash
The best starting point for understanding the artist whose television program redefined what country music television could be.

Porter Wagoner — The Essential Collection
Wagoner’s recorded legacy across the years he hosted the longest-running country TV show in history.

From the CCTV Shop

Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes? — The Legends Tribute Hardcover Journal — $24.85
A tribute to the artists who built country music — including those who made these television stages famous.

The Rhinestone’s Gone Dark Tee — $29.99
For the fan who knows what those rhinestone suits meant — and misses the era that wore them.

As an Amazon Associate, Classic Country TV earns from qualifying purchases. Disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, Classic Country TV may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Sources

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum — Historical archives covering the development of country music television programs https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org

PBS Ken Burns Country Music Documentary — Comprehensive documentation of country music’s television history https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/country-music

Encyclopedia of Country Music — Oxford University Press — Authoritative reference on major artists and television programs

Billboard Magazine Archives — Historical industry reporting on country music programming and ratings