Bonanza series's long run. In 2002, "Bonanza" was ranked No. 43 on "TV Guide"s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, and in 2013 "TV Guide" included it in its list of The 60 Greatest Dramas of All Time. The time period for the television series is roughly between 1861 (Season 1) and 1867 (Season 13) during and shortly after the American Civil War. During the summer of 1972, NBC aired reruns of episodes from the 1967–1970 period in prime time on Tuesday evening under the title Ponderosa. The show chronicles the weekly adventures of the Cartwright family, headed by the
Bonanza 1857), "Bonanza" is also set in what in real life would have been Utah Territory. Several early episodes have fallen into the public domain. These episodes have been released by several companies in different configurations, with substandard picture and sound quality, edited, and by legal necessity with the copyright-protected Evans-Livingston theme song replaced with generic western music. In 1973, NBC licensed the distribution rights to the series, along with the rest of its pre-1973 library, to National Telefilm Associates, which changed its name to Republic Pictures in 1986. Republic would become part of the Spelling Entertainment organization in 1994 through