45 Years On The Tube

Who can forget those famous faces and wacky antics?

The Beaver, Samantha and the Cartwrights are like members of the family for the Baby Boom generation. And now there's an opportunity to view the whole gallery of your favorite characters.

CBS This Morning anchor Jane Robelot spoke with Steven Reddicliffe, Editor-in-Chief of TV Guide about an exhibit at the Museum of Television and Radio called "A Television Diary: 45 Years of TV Guide Covers".

Made up of 400 magazine covers, the exhibit chronicles how far television has come over two generations. With a circulation of 1.5 million when it began, the magazine now boasts 13 million readers, making it the largest-selling weekly magazine in the country.

Special covers are displayed, such as those commissioned to Al Hirschfeld, Andy Warhol, Peter Max, Salvador Dali and Charles Addams. The most valuable cover — valued at $3,000 dollars — is the very first one, which appeared in 1953 picturing baby Desi Arnaz Jr. A close second is George Reeves as "Superman," also from 1953. The most popular subject of all was Lucille Ball, with 31 of her own covers.

According to Reddicliffe, TV Guide seeks to make its covers "energetic" with subjects umping up or caught in mid-move. But the magazine also has covered serious topics such as the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, along with many issues regarding television itself, such as an examination of sex and violence on TV and what it's doing to our kids.

The "television family" has gone through many incarnations over the years, and the exhibit devotes a section to "The Changing Family." There are covers ranging from the clean, organized, sterile look of Ozzie and Harriet and The Beaver to the chaotic household images of Roseanne.

"A Television Diary: 45 Years of TV Guide Covers" will be on display in New York City at the Steven Spielberg Gallery until August 31, and will open in the Bell Family Gallery in Los Angeles September 10 through December.