Entertainment

Rare TV Ads From 120 Years of Variety: ‘I Love Lucy,’ ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Square Pegs,’ ‘The Golden Girls,’ ‘Freaks and Geeks’ and More

January 3, 2026

Jan 3, 2026 12:17pm PT Rare TV Ads From 120 Years of Variety: ‘I Love Lucy,’ ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Square Pegs,’ ‘The Golden Girls,’ ‘Freaks and Geeks’ and More By Cynthia Littleton Plus Icon Cynthia Littleton Business Editor @Variety_Cynthia Latest CBS’ ‘New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash’ Special Faces Mid-Show Outage 3 days ago Warner Bros. Discovery Board Poised to Reject Paramount’s Latest Offer, Stay the Course With Netflix 4 days ago Snoop Dogg, Lainey Wilson, Huntr/x and Andrea Bocelli Deliver Christmas-Themed Halftime Show for Netflix’s NFL Lions-Vikings Telecast 1 week ago See All Variety At first, we called it “radio movies.” Variety has covered every aspect of the television business since the first flickers of the powerful medium emerged out of radio infrastructure in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The first use of the word “television” came in our Jan.

Square Pegs the Sopranos

Credit: Variety

Key Highlights

12, 1927, edition.
As we explained back then, “Television is a process of making possible the viewing of a broadcasting artist in one’s own home no matter how far away the broadcasting station may be.” Even in this moment of radical, AI-fueled transformation, it’s still worth pausing to celebrate the miracle that inventors Philo T.
Farsnworth, Vladimir Zworykin, John Logie Baird and others found the way to make pictures fly through the air — and land on a box in one’s own home.
To celebrate the business we love covering, as part of Variety‘s 120th anniversary retrospective, here’s a rich gallery of fabulous advertisements for great television shows, networks, studios and personalities that have graced our pages since 1949.
For clarity, please note that the year cited in the headers for each entry reflect the year the ad ran in Variety.

News Variety Freaks And Geeks I Love Lucy Star Trek The Golden Girls

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Rare TV Ads From 120 Years of Variety: ‘I Love Lucy,’ ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Square Pegs,’ ‘The Golden Girls,’ ‘Freaks and Geeks’ and More

This quick summary is automatically generated using AI based on reports from multiple news sources. The content has not been reviewed or verified by humans. For complete details, accuracy, and context, please refer to the original published articles.

Rare TV Ads From 120 Years of Variety: ‘I Love Lucy,’ ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Square Pegs,’ ‘The Golden Girls,’ ‘Freaks and Geeks’ and More

Key Highlights

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