Lost ‘Bonanza’ comfort food episodes reign supreme on INSP channel

When classic western fans tune into premium cable network INSP, 171 lost “Bonanza” episodes air daily. Learn all about the series that was in the Nielsen Top Five for an astoundingly consecutive nine years illustrated with 12 photos and videos. Presenting the latter-day cast of “Bonanza,” the most popular television series of the 1960s. Michael Landon, Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker, and Mitch Vogel are seen on the new Ponderosa soundstage at Warner Bros. studio in the summer of 1971. Blocker succumbed to an unexpected pulmonary embolism a few days after undergoing routine gall bladder surgery on May 13, 1972, about a year after this photo was taken. He was only 43 years old. Photography by Gary Null / NBCUniversal

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Should you be searching for comfort food TV in this era of divisiveness, uncertainty, distraction, and encumbrance, 171 “lost” episodes of Bonanza, not seen since Starz’s Encore Westerns channel last aired them at the dawn of the twenty-tens, air daily on INSP, a premium cable network available on both DISH and DirecTV. Two episodes are transmitted weekdays at 3 and 4 p.m. with extra doses on Saturday afternoons at 5 p.m. and 1 a.m. on Sunday morning. All times are Eastern Standard.

The episodes, which have been edited for commercial allotment, commence after Pernell Roberts [Adam Cartwright]’s departure from the series at the end of season six in May 1965 and continue until the show’s cancellation in January 1973. So why do all of the Roberts-era and subsequent scattershot Bonanza episodes only appear on TV Land and MeTV? After the series was unceremoniously dumped from NBC’s Tuesday evening lineup, the network was faced with the task of syndicating the most popular series of the 1960s for U.S. airplay on local television stations.

They chose 201 episodes from the first six years, arguably the show’s most enduring era, and a random 59 others through the 1969–70 season. Apparently the bean counters forgot…