And then got saddled with a bad time slot and a screwy airing order. 
Now that I think about it, Asimov and others actually brushed the Cowboy/SciFi thing fairly often in a lot of older stories. It tended to get a lot more play in stories oriented towards younger audiences, or anything with a colony on Mars.
'Course, the most obvious example that comes to my mind isn’t exactly what I’d call “Space Opera”, but the “Lucky Starr: Space Ranger” series was pretty much pure Cowboy/SciFi.
