Trivia Question: Why was The Joey Bishop Show unique in the history of television?
Trivia Answer: It was the only series to have ever started out black-and-white, then switch to color, then revert to black-and-white for its final season.
The show debuted in black-and-white on NBC in 1961. Then it switched to color in 1962. NBC canceled the series after the 1963 season.
CBS picked it up for the ‘64 season, but ordered the episodes in black-and-white. It only lasted one season on the eyeball network.
Speculation is that CBS was still pouting over losing the color format battle to RCA (NBC’s parent company at the time)
The RCA system was in many ways far superior to the CBS system. CBS deserved to lose the battle.
But that was in the very early 50s.
I think they were just pinching pennies in this case.