The Muppets marked 50 years since The Muppet Show first aired in 1976, after a difficult path to television that nearly kept Jim Henson’s creation unseen.
01Summary
- 01The Muppet Show first premiered in the UK on 5 September 1976, with local US stations choosing their own launch dates that autumn.
- 02Lisa Henson said it was “such a hard road” to get the show made, after two failed ABC pilots and unsuccessful development work at CBS.
- 03British producer Lew Grade backed the series with $125,000 for a 30-minute episode on the condition it was made in the UK.
- 04Variety reported in February 1976 that the show had already sold to 60 markets before the NATPE conference opened.
- 05Jim Henson died in 1990, but Lisa Henson said the characters endure because they are “multi-dimensional, fallible, funny”.
02Why it matters
The story shows how close one of television’s best-known puppet franchises came to never existing, and how a UK deal helped launch a global cultural brand. It also explains why the Muppets still resonate decades later.
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