53 years ago today on Sunday, September 17th, 1972 at 8PM ET, M*A*S*H premiered on CBS. Nobody watching could possibly have imagined how successful the show would become or how long it would remain on the air. Today, more than five decades after it debuted, M*A*S*H remains popular both with viewers who watched it during its original run on CBS and those who discovered it long after it went off the air.
If you’ve never seen it, why not celebrate today’s anniversary by watching the M*A*S*H segment from the 1972 CBS Fall Preview special? Or learn about how CBS promoted the series premiere on television and in print? Or read four full reviews of the pilot episode and excerpts from nine more? Or check out my Episode Spotlight of the series premiere, originally published in December 2014.
If that’s not enough, there’s also my overview of all the music heard in the pilot episode, an excerpt from Larry Gelbart’s script for “M*A*S*H — The Pilot” describing the location of the series, and Gelbart’s original list of characters for the pilot.
Were you watching 53 years ago when M*A*S*H premiered? If not, do you remember the first time you saw the pilot episode?
I have always watched MASH in Australia. From 1970’s to 1996 it was always on the 0-10 network.
I first got into MASH in 1981/82, starting with reruns of certain episodes (usually seasons 6-9) and the first season premiere I saw was that of season 10 in 1982.
After season 10 finished its premiere run, the next week 0-10 went straight back to the start with The Pilot. Boy, talk about a change of tone!!
It was very very interesting to see The Pilot, partially due to its radically different style to season 10, partially due to seeing a very young Alda and Swit, partially due to the fact that Pilots are always interesting to see anyway, and partly due to the novelty that a Pilot made in 1972 would not ordinarily be shown in 1982.
Since then, The Pilot has always come up in reruns in Australia, and for many years when MASH was in continuous rotation, now season 11’s “As Time Goes By” would typically be followed directly the next day by The Pilot. Always interesting to see the change in style so starkly, but nothing beats that original viewing in 1982.
[By the way, it is interesting that in rerun seasons, the MASH pilot is routinely included, but GFA is routinely not. It is also rare for pilot episodes of any show to routinely be bundled in with reruns – NB – I draw a distinction between a pilot and an actual episode one.]