Andy Griffith Show started sucking when it went color

[Syrinx]

Why is that?

[elperromagico]

1. Don Knotts left the show at that time too.

I think that was a major contributor. And black and white does have an air of fantasy to it. Mayberry in color looked horribly... bland.

[Norbert]

4. They picked Jack Burns to replace Don Knotts.

and that just did not work. Also I guess color was like Maybeery was being modernized in a way and really Mayberry was always twenty years behind the times which was part of the mystique. B&W fit better.

[BrotherBuzz]

2. I didn't know it went color...

but then again, I had a black and white set. Hey, there's an idea...

[elperromagico]

3. The Incredible Hulk is green, y'know.

And Michael Jackson is black.

Really, I think people ignore the color years of The Andy Griffith Show; most of the episodes from those years are just piss-poor, kind of like the Dick Sargent episodes of Bewitched.

[BrotherBuzz]

5. Hey, that ain't right

I've got a color TV now, and I can tell you Michael Jackson is not black!

[elperromagico]

6. Okay, I admit it. He's cream.

[Faygo Kid]

7. Howard Sprague, Goober, Emmitt the Fix It Man

New characters were bad news. Opie got older; Andy got crankier. No Barney, of course. Only Aunt Bee stayed the course. A much different show from the first five glorious years.

[terrya]

8. Andy did get crankier, didn't he?

I noticed that when the show went to color. Like he didn't any patience with anybody else.

And also Otis disappeared around that time.

[Lindsey]

9. I agree 100%

since I quit watching the news (except cspan) in Oct. of '02, I often have TV Land on (that's where they show all of the old favorites). When I turn it on and Andy's in color, I switch the channel.

[elperromagico]

11. Me too.

Andy without Barney is just a drag. And Helen Crump... ick.. never could stand her. I got the feeling she wanted to beat the shit out of Opie. When Barney left, Helen Crump took Andy's soul. It's as simple as that.

[CMT]

13. Andy got crankier

you really hit it on the head. I watched an episode last night from the first season (the Christmas episode) and Andy was laid-back and humorous, by season eight he was grumpy to everyone including Opie and Aunt Bee.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

10. Could be the pressure to contain costs in order to pay for the

very expensive color stuff.
It was really more of a gee-whiz thing then. Only shows with sponsors who wanted color, or shows like AGS with legs were done in color.
I think they got a new executive producer who did color work, and it was not the happy little family it had been previously.

[regnaD kciN]

12. I don't think so...

They only switched to color around the same time as every other B&W show on television -- they weren't one of the pioneers. In any event, the only difference in cost would be for film stock and processing, which isn't that much of a factor in a network show with at least one big star's salary.

More likely it was just a matter of the show jumping the shark. Lots of shows seemed to get worse when they went to color, but that is only because the B&W episodes were the earlier ones when the concept and execution were fresher. By the time any of these shows switched to color, they had been around a few years and were starting to run out of ideas.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

14. Possible, but there was a HUGE increase in costs with color

then. Not just film stock.
Sets had to be done more better, as B/W is much more forgiving than color. Designers realized that pink shirts no longer looked tan, light blue shirts did not look tan, et cetera.
Where there had been maybe 10 set people on a B/W show, especially one like Mayberry where they were outside some of the time, now there were 100 or more.

True they were not one of the pioneers. But the success of the show was counted on to fund other shows which were struggling, I am sure.

[ProfessorGAC]

15. Cast Changes, Mostly

And, i think Andy was walking through it. He only re-upped because the money was so good, he couldn't walk away from it.

Don Knotts thought Andy was quitting the show, which is why he went and signed that movie contract. (With Universal, i think.) Had he known Andy was returning, he would returned too, he's said.

Then Floyd the barber had the stroke, Jim Nabors got his own show, and the continuity fell aside.

So, add all that up, along with the fact that Andy was just marking time, and the show hit the wall all at once.
The Professor