Roots [1977] (7 discs)
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• This was originally to be a four hour presentation airing on two nights, this turned into a twelve hour presentation airing during six nights.
• Ernest Thomas, who plays Kailuba, screen tested for the role of Kunta Kinte.
• One ABC executive explained the blockbuster ratings by saying "One third of America was snowed in, one third of America is black and one third watches ABC anyway"
• Georg Stanford Brown (Tom Harvey) and Lynne Moody (Irene Harvey) are the only actors to reprise their roles in Roots: The Next Generations.
• Originally broadcast on ABC as eight programs. Four 1-hour and four 2-hour episodes apiece, as follows: Episodes 1, 2, 6 and 8 were two hours apiece. Episodes 3, 4, 5 and 7 were one hour apiece. Presented on VHS, DVD, and re-broadcast as six two-hour episodes.
• The series takes place from 1750 to 1870.
• LeVar Burton (Kunta Kinte) and Louis Gossett Jr. (Fiddler) would later reprise their roles in Roots: The Gift.
• The installment which aired in 30 January 1977 in the USA was the most-watched TV show in US history (since surpassed by the [M*A*S*H] finale in 1983 and {Who Shot J.R.?} episode of [Dallas]) in 1980. In the US 36.38 million households or 51.1% watched it giving it a Neilsen share of 71%.
• The show was programmed by ABC to air on several consecutive nights in prime time. It was considered a revolutionary approach to programming a mini-series, since most minis were aired once or twice a week over several weeks' time. It was revealed years later that the reason the network did this was so that they get the show "out of the way" in a hurry because they felt, nobody would watch the story if it aired over a longer period of time.
• The author Alex Haley was sued successfully for plagiarizing by novelist ^[?] Harold Courlander. The works he plagiarized led to the book that served as the basis for the mini-series [Roots]. Haley paid $650,000 in an out of court settlement.
• In {The Big Bang Theory: The Tenure Turbulence}, the socially inept main character, Sheldon Cooper, gives Mrs. Janine Davis, an African-American woman working as the Human Resources Administration (HRA) at Caltech, a copy of [Roots] as way of an apology the bad first impression he made on her.