Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
The October 15–21, 1967, issue of TV Times out of Bay City, Michigan documents one of the more genuinely exciting moments in the history of the Batman television series: the debut of Batgirl. Yvonne Craig joined the cast of ABC's Batman at the start of its third season in September 1967, playing Barbara Gordon — the daughter of Gotham City Police Commissioner Gordon — who secretly operated as the crime-fighting Batgirl. Her addition to the show was a deliberate creative and commercial decision by the producers, intended to broaden the series' appeal and inject new energy into a program whose ratings had declined after its extraordinary first-season peak in 1966. Craig's Batgirl became immediately iconic: her purple costume, her independent operating style, and her dynamic with Adam West's Batman and Burt Ward's Robin gave the third season a distinct identity. A regional TV listings magazine putting her on the cover in mid-October 1967 — just weeks into that new season — reflects how quickly the character had captured viewer attention. For collectors tracking vintage TV Times issues, a Batgirl cover from the character's debut season is a specific and meaningful find.
Yvonne Craig brought genuine physical presence and comedic timing to the role — she had a background in ballet and had appeared in several films before Batman — and her version of Batgirl holds a distinct place in the history of female superheroes on American television. She was one of the very few women in 1960s primetime television to function as an action hero in her own right rather than as a supporting character defined by her relationship to male leads. That distinction was not widely recognized at the time but has been increasingly acknowledged in retrospect, making Craig's Batgirl a subject of serious interest to both comics historians and television scholars. The regional nature of this publication — a local TV listings supplement serving Bay City, Michigan — adds a layer of documentary specificity that national magazines cannot provide: it shows how the Batgirl debut was being marketed and presented to ordinary Midwestern television audiences in their own community publications.
Regional TV supplements like this one are among the more underappreciated categories in vintage periodical collecting. They were printed in enormous local variety, had limited distribution almost by definition, and were treated as disposable by virtually everyone who received them — which means survival rates are low compared to national magazines. A Bay City, Michigan TV Times from 1967 would have been read and discarded by the overwhelming majority of households that received it. That the cover features Yvonne Craig as Batgirl — a subject with a dedicated and active collector base — makes this particular regional supplement a crossover item of real interest. Collectors building out a collection focused on 1967 magazines will find regional TV supplements from this year particularly scarce compared to national titles from the same period.
About the Publication
TV Times was a regional television listings supplement format that appeared under various local and syndicated mastheads across the United States throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and beyond. The Bay City, Michigan, edition served the local television market in that region of the state, providing weekly program schedules alongside feature articles, cover stories, and entertainment news oriented toward the shows and personalities appearing on network and local television that week. These regional supplements were typically distributed through local newspapers or as standalone newsstand publications, and their editorial content combined nationally syndicated features with locally relevant programming grids. Their audience was the general television-viewing public of a specific geographic market — which in 1967 meant essentially every household with a television set.
Key Highlights Inside
- Cover feature on Yvonne Craig as Batgirl, timed to the character's debut season on ABC's Batman — making this a primary document of how the new character was introduced to regional television audiences in the fall of 1967.
- Local television program listings for the Bay City, Michigan, market covering the week of October 15–21, 1967 — a granular record of what American network and local television programming looked like in a specific Midwestern market at this moment.
- Specific interior articles and features beyond the cover story are unconfirmed for this issue; content details should be verified against the physical copy.
Condition & Rarity
A newsstand copy of a regional TV supplement from 1967 presenting with no address label is already in the upper tier of what typically survives for this category of publication. Label-free newsstand copies are preferable to subscription copies across all periodical collecting, and for regional supplements — where subscription distribution was common and newsstand copies were a smaller portion of total circulation — the distinction carries additional weight. Minor wear including small rips, edge wear, creases, and marks is consistent with a Good grade on a publication of this age and original intended lifespan. The plastic protective sleeve indicates the copy has been in collector hands and has been shielded from further casual deterioration. Regional TV supplements were printed on newsprint-grade paper stock rather than the coated stock used by national magazines, making them more vulnerable to tanning, brittleness, and edge deterioration over time — a factor that makes structurally intact copies from this era more notable than equivalent condition in a coated-stock national publication.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
Regional TV supplements with strong cover subjects from the 1960s are genuinely difficult to locate — they survive in far smaller numbers than national magazines, and a Batgirl cover from the character's debut season narrows the field considerably. The full TV Times archive at OriginalMagazines.com is the best place to explore what is currently available across different markets and years. For collectors working through the remarkable television landscape of the late 1960s more broadly, the 1967 magazine collection spans multiple titles from a year that produced some of the most culturally distinctive programming in American television history.