The classic television series BONANZA was conceived as a way for NBC to help sell color television sets for its parent company RCA (the electronics giant needed pigment-rich outdoor scenes to showcase its new color technology). But what began as a clever marketing ploy morphed into long-running success (1959-1973) for the epic western centered on family patriarch Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) and his sons Adam (Pernell Roberts), Hoss (Dan Blocker), and Little Joe (Michael Landon) on their Ponder