One might reasonably wonder why Rod Serling would acquiesce to the demands of the network to change the show’s format when “Twilight Zone” certainly didn’t need any help, becoming one of the most influential shows ever made. For one thing, Serling knew that he was in CBS’ debt in being allowed to make the show in the first place, and for another, “Twilight Zone” was not the runaway success it may be assumed it was; in fact, it found itself canceled on two separate occasions.
So, Serling was more or less at the network’s mercy, even if he and others could see from the get-go that making such a change as shooting on videotape would be detrimental to the series. Although the show’s production company, Cayuga, ended up saving $5,000 per episode on the videotape eps, the visual and artistic hindrances proved too much to bear. As chronicled in Marc Scott Zicree’s “The Twilight Zone Companion,” Serling made his feelings on the matter plain during a 1972 interview with Douglas Brode in Show Magazine:
“I never liked tape because it’s neither fish nor fowl. You’re bound to the same kind of natural laws as in live TV, but they try to mix it with certain qualities of film … on ‘Twilight Zone’ we tried six shows on tape, and they were disastrous.”