The series first aired for a half-hour every week, but was expanded to an hour in January 1965. In the fall of 1965, the show split into two half-hour telecasts, on Thursday and Saturday nights. Shindig!'s premiere episode was taped in Britain with The Beatles as the guests. The series featured other "British invasion" bands including The Who and The Rolling Stones. Shindig would continue to broadcast episodes from London throughout its run. Many popular performers of the day played on Shindig! including Sam Cooke, Lesley Gore, Bo Diddley, and Sonny and Cher. The show, which premiered less than three months after the Mississippi civil rights workers murders, featured both black and white acts during a time of racial segregation in the United States. Shindig!'s success prompted NBC to air the similar series Hullabaloo starting in January 1965. By October 1965 the show was having ratings problems (Time magazine said "early-season tide [was] running against the teen scene") and in January 1966, Shindig! was canceled and replaced in its Thursday time slots by Batman. wikipedia.org, GNU Free Documentation License