Comic Book Legends Revealed: It's Batman Week!

[CBR News]

This week is Batman TV series theme week! How did the Playboy Club help Batman out? What comic strip character did ABC want instead of Batman? And discover the strange origin of the Batman TV series cliffhangers!


Full article here.

[Captain Jim]

Well, I learned something here. Didn't realize the 1966 Batman show was originally intended to be one hour long and that the first few episodes were actually shot that way. And I was even around at the time.

[Namtab]

so Batman was broken up into two half hour spots and the cliffhanger concept was born.

So the '66 show invented the cliffhanger? That's pretty awesome, if true.

[Ginkasa]

Uh, no. He was saying just the concept for the show was born. Cliffhangers were popularized (if not outright invented; not sure) through the movie serials of the mid-early 20th century. They used cliffhangers to get the audience to return to the theatre each week. Batman '66 was, as the article states, inspired by the old Batman serials, so its always been assumed it was always plan for the show to emulate those classic cliffhangers. The legend is that it just sort of happened out of necessity.