How I Love Lucy Invented the Modern Sitcom

I Love Lucy changed television production forever. Desi Arnaz insisted the show be filmed in Hollywood with three cameras on 35mm film before a live audience, instead of broadcasting live from New York with kinescopes.

The result looked sharp, could be rerun, and could be sold to independent stations. Ball and Arnaz kept the film rights, traded them to CBS for the show, and built Desilu, the studio that later produced Star Trek and Mission Impossible.

Every sitcom since films the Lucy way..