Harve Bennett, Director of ABC’s West Coast development, felt that they needed a cartoon show for the early evenings. If the rights could be acquired ABC would have gone with Dick Tracy, but they were outbid by NBC. They needed something else.

Yale Udoff, who was the director of late night programming went the Edgar Sherick, who was the director of programming in New York; Udoff told him that they should go with BATMAN. Sherick said “We threw him out of the office, but he was persisted, and we decided to look in to it.

ABC, at the time was the third-rated network, and had success with THE ADDAMS FAMILY and BEWITCHED. BATMAN seemed the way to go. ABC went to 20th Century-Fox for production because they knew a studio their size could handle the cost. FOX gave BATMAN to Bill Dozier. At first Dozier thought it was crazy to do a live action BATMAN. But after three months, it was being called “Bill Dozier's BATMAN. Bill admits that he had never heard of Batman. HE was never allowed to read comics, so naturally he wouldn’t have. Bill bought tons of Batman comics and after reading, thought how could they do this? He felt it was to juvenile. Then it him. To make it funny for adults and stimulating for kids, they would use live actors.

ABC loved the idea and the BATMAN crew went to work. They created a bright pop art world that were filled with ideas and colors that had never been seen on T.V. Instead of the normal wisdom where the villains would be dastardly emulate, the show turned the tables. The villains were entertaining and colorful and Batman was a bore. Now with the story, the ideas and the plot, they needed the actors. On January 12th, 1966 BATMAN premiered to the public.

Batman aired for three seasons and 120 Episodes. A Fourth season was called for from CBS but was canceled when it was found that ABC had bulldozed ALL the sets.