I, too, keep TVLand and Nick at Nite on in the background, as I’m cooking, cleaning , even reading. I mean, how much concentration does it require to take in most of the shows they air.
I was around (but very young) when Green Acres first aired. I never noticed until I started catching it on TVLand, here and there, how creative the wacky, offbeat premises were. As tacky as the show could sometimes be, some of the set pieces were positively surreal.
Though Good Times is still just as stereotypical and badly acted as I ever thought it was, I watch it religiously; I love the nostalgic memories it stirs up for me of my formative years. Also, their theme song is still on of my favorites. (It took TVLand to finally help me figure out the “hanging in a chow line” line. I’ve been trying to get that for over 30 years.)
I’m also a sucker for Leave It To Beaver and The Andy Griffith Show. There’s just something about those corny, simplistic, B&W television shows that, even as I’m rolling my eyes at the sappiness, I’m eating it up. This is pretty much why I’m not the biggest fan of when TAGS went to color.
Can anybody please tell me (off-topic) why the hell Nick at Nite plays 150 episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel Airevery day?
While I’d watch almost everything you’d program (the idea of watching the Grammys new bores me, let alone watching an old ceremony) how many other people would? Enough to make the channel attractive to advertisers? Enough to attract sufficient subscribers to a pay channel? As usual, the bottom line is money.
There was a cable station I used to have several years ago that was like TV Land-lite. They’d run stuff like the old Abbott and Costello show and Combat! and other much less common older material. I’d love to have that channel back.
To add a “cool” factor to Night Court, the second-season public defender, Billie, was played by Ellen Foley, who sang along on “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” from Bat Out of Hell with Meat Loaf.
In a fit of…something, I sent an email to TV Land via their website. I expected to get a bot response, but an actual human wrote back and suggested I post to their programming suggestions message board, because the programming department reads everything posted there. I did, but it looks like that board is full of folks asking for the same thing. Otto, I wonder what their advertising would be like with more varied or “smarter” programming–it seems like 80% of their advertising time is spent with Wilford Brimely telling me all about dia-beetis, various folks selling me life insurance with premiums that “never go up due to age” and shysters shilling limited-mobility-curing-scooters.
I am clearly not their target audience, and very few of their advertisers are reaping my spending bucks–although in forty five years maybe I’ll find myself uncontrollably flinging handfuls of cash at ol’WB and preaching the dia-beetis gospel. I guess I just can’t picture the business model that says targeting the blandest viewership amongst the senior set, specifically, is more profitable than a varied and pop-historical lineup that would appeal to a much wider audience. I also imagine there are plenty of seniors who’d like to see other good stuff they remember seeing the first time around, although I suppose there are plenty who would complain about not seeing the same episodes of the same shows they’ve been watching for the last thirty years.
I imagine a channel that’s halfway between the history channel and today’s TV Land–I’d watch the variety and talk shows for the social history and anthropology of the thing as much as general entertainment. I’d love it if they showed snippets of news reports at commercial breaks as “breaking news!.. in… 1956!” in the same tongue-in-cheek way they show “retro-mercials”.
What I’d like to see is a Lost Characters Marathon. It could feature the episodes of Happy Days that included Chuck Cunningham, the episodes of My Three Sons that included Mike Douglas, and even the episodes of Eight Is Enough that included the original mother (the actress died in real life).
And how about showing the original pilots both of now familiar series, but also the ones that were never picked up as a series? (I think another cable channel showed the latter a few years ago, but I didn’t get that channel.)
If anyone’s still reading, what I found out is that TV Land is gradually moving away from the model of “classic TV” and is aiming at attracting a 30-55 audience with a roster of shows in 2008 including Murphy Brown, Roseanne, Mad About You, Just Shoot Me, and… I am totally not kidding about this… Scrubs.
Yes, I love Scrubs, but it’s running on, what, three? other stations right now and still in production.
Goodbye, TV Land… I hardly knew ye
Anyone in the market to start up a TV channel with all classic programming? Seems like there might soon be a vacant niche.
Trio (which I believe no longer exists) had a series called “Brilliant but Cancelled” which showed pilots and also short-lived series. Trio also had fascinating shows about tremendous show business flops, one of which, including a segment on the spectacular mess that was “Carrie: The Musical,” I would pay good money for. I never had Trio on my cable system so I was reduced to begging friends of mine to let me watch on their satellite.
Something else I would love to see…Linda Ellerbee’s series “Our World” which was murdered by ABC as counter-programming to the relentlessly mediocre “Cosby Show.”
When TV Land was just a toddler, I remember Adam West doing promo spots, saying, “Life’s too short to watch crap.”
Somebody needs to thwap the network boss in the head with that line.
On either TV Land or Nick at Night, there was an original network series called, “Hi, Honey, I’m Home.” It was HILARIOUS. Bring it BACK.
In the late 80s, there was a series called “The Charmings.” Prince Charming and his wife, Snow White, were put into a deep, deep sleep by the Wicked Stepmother, and they woke up at the end of the 20th century. Paul Winfield was the magic mirror.
And I can watch MASH, any time, any place, any where.
~VOW
MeTV has replaced TV Land for me. They have all of the shows TV Land ought to be running. Rawhide, The Rifleman, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart (the old show where he plays Bob Hartley), the Odd Couple, Perry Mason, The Untouchables, Route 66, Taxi, Bosom Buddies. They also have plenty of Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and Twilight Zone. And Get Smart. And Batman. And Car 54 Where Are You? And Phil Silvers. Need I say more?
They’re on an over-the-air digital sub-channel in many places. However, check your local cable system, as Comcast carries the MeTV affiliate in my area.
MeTV is fantastic! I can’t tell you how overjoyed I was to find it! I love being able to see Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke, Bob Newhart, and so on. I also love Gunsmoke, and being able to see the earlier episodes is great. I started with later episodes, then found the radio show with William Conrad on the internet. So being able to see the stuff that came in between those years is pretty neat. And before I found MeTV, I hadn’t seen Taxi since it had been on Nick at Nite years ago!
We don’t get MeTV, but we used to get RTN/RTV as a digital subchannel to ABC until recently, until suddenly one day it was replaced with a bunch of decorating/lifestyle type crap.
But then another local station started Antenna, which is similar in nature. I haven’t watched it too much, except on the weekends when they run the Monkees.
I think Antenna TV is the one that carries Jack Benny, which really makes me wish I got that station in my area. But any of these channels are better than the current TV Land line up. And on top of that, they’re free over the air channels. Finding that almost made me cut the cable right then.
