Westerns on television

Part of a series on
Westerns
Media Film Television Literature Visual arts Dime novels Comics Wild West shows
Subgenres Acid Western Australian Western Contemporary Western Dacoit Western Epic Western Fantasy Western Florida Western Gothic Western Horror Western Northern Ostern Revisionist Western Science fiction Western Singing cowboy Space Western Spaghetti Western Weird Western Western romance Zapata Western
Lists Lists of Western films List of Western fiction authors List of Western television series Golden Boot Awards
Terms Old West Cowboy culture Cowboy Gunfighter Outlaw Quick draw Saloon Manifest destiny

Television Westerns are programs with settings in the later half of the 19th century in the American Old West, Western Canada and Mexico during the period from about 1860 to the end of the so-called "Indian Wars". More recent entries in the Western genre have used the neo-Western subgenre, placing events in the modern day, or the space Western subgenre but still draw inspiration from the outlaw attitudes prevalent in traditional Western productions.

When television became popular in the late 1940s and 1950s, TV Westerns quickly became an audience favorite, with 30 such shows airing at prime time by 1959. Traditional Westerns faded in popularity in the late 1960s, while new shows fused Western elements with other types of shows, such as family drama, mystery thrillers, and crime drama. In the 1990s and 2000s, slickly packaged made-for-TV movie Westerns were introduced.