Here I am snowbound for a couple of days. Channel surfing. Nick-at-Nite. OK, I can see some of my favorite sit-coms from the 60’s and 70’s. Nope, I see George Lopez, The Nanny, Everybody Hates Chris. Lets go to TV Land. What do I see there but Groundhog Day. Movies, on TV Land?
Where is Bewitched, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Gilligan’s Island, I Love Lucy, etc?
Damn it, I want Classic Classic Nick-at-Nite back.
Everybody Hates Chris is funnier than any you listed.
We need a TV LAND 2 or a TV LAND BW for the older shows.
HELL YES! I remember seeing everything from “Donna Reed” to “Laugh-In” on the original Nick at Nite, and wish cable would keep the older shows alive. It’s pretty odd that WGN (on its Sunday night “retro” block) considers “Newhart” and “Alf” retro programming. Even better was the nighttime block CBN (now ABC Family) aired in the late 80s–“Jack Benny”, “Burns and Allen”, “You Bet Your Life” with Groucho Marx, and a half hour of Laurel & Hardy shorts. Maybe the best two hours of programming in TV history.
In Chicago MeTV now shows a lot of those shows, as well as “Peter Gunn”, “Naked City” and “Route 66”. It’s on channel 26 and its subchannels. Actually, those are the channels I watch the most. Of course, many of those shows are on Hulu or other sites.
It’s interesting to watch “Naked City” and see early performances by Dustin Hoffman, William Shatner, Robert Duvall, and others.
Umm, those shows are 25 years old. In pop culture, that’s solidly retro–when I used to watch Nick at Night in the 80’s they were showing stuff from the 60’s, ie things that were about 25 years old. Another way of putting it is this: when I was a kid, the retro programming blocks were of things that aired when my parents were kids/teens. Now my niece is approaching the age I was when I first became aware of TV shows being retro, and the retro blocks are showing…well, stuff that aired when her parents were kids.
It’s just the way of things–after 20 years or so, something becomes retro and enjoys something of a revival. You remember color blocking coming back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, and coming back again in teen bedding right now? You remember bell bottoms coming back in the late 90’s? (Yes, they called them “flares” but we all knew they were bell bottoms.) Hemlines and necklines rise and fall in a roughly 20 year cycle, and pants narrow and widen on about that same cycle.
Sign me up too. I love the shows that were current and in re-runs during the 70s. That’s why I like WGN; they play Barney Miller.
And WKRP.
“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
You might check and see if you can get RTV (Retro TV). “Daniel Boone” is on right now–before that it was “Robin Hood” and “The Rifleman”. During the week they show “Marcus Welby, M.D.”, “Ironside”, and lots of the other old shows. LOL–I certainly don’t work for them, I’m just a 50s, 60s, and 70s TV fan! The channel just showed up on my cable after the digital switch.
I’ve never heard of RTV, but we have MeTV which runs all the old Dick Van Dyke/Mary Tyler Moore/Taxi/Newhart/The Bob Newhart show/Gilligan’s Island/The Man From UNCLE/Gunsmoke/Get Smart/etc etc etc. I’m not sure if it’s a regional thing or national though. Here’s their website for Milwaukee, but changing Milwaukee to Chicago pulls up a similar sight, so I know it’s more then just local.
good post.
also, the old NAN commercials were almost as amusing as the shows themselves.
hh
Hmph. I guess The Third Eye is more Classic Classic Classic night time Nickelodeon. I suppose it predates that new fangled “Nick-At-Nite” anyway.
You know I put a lot of time in to getting this lawn just right, and I don’t do it so that you ruffians can come along and mess it up. You hear me?
Agreed with the OP…Nick at Nite as we once knew it is basically dead. When was the last time they played an episode of “I Love Lucy”, or anything in black and white for that matter? At least when they play shows like “Roseanne” or “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” I understand that those shows are roughly as distant from today as shows like “The Bob Newhart Show” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” were from the mid-90s, when I was at my Nick-at-Nite watching peak. But now half their line-up is shows from the past decade: “Everybody Hates Chris” aired it’s series finale last year, fer Chrissakes! I still watch (hey, it’s a good show…), but it’s a shame that that classic TV niche has evaporated.
Also, remember how good their promos used to be?
Most of the reason lies for this in the way TV markets itself.
The find the audience that can sell the greatest number and then go after it.
One poster mentioned “Me-TV” which is in Chicago and does excellent. But this is because WCIU-TV which owns it, has a different marketing scheme. On the main channel WCIU they still broadcast with traditional marketing.
But on the subchannels (which air low power stations WWME-CA which is Me-TV) they changed deals. Instead they went after advertisers that would be left out of TV ad because of the cost. Then they lowered the ad cost and went to seek out these people.
In other words Me-TV brought the advertisers to the shows. That’s not how it’s done and it doesn’t always work well. Yeah on Me-TV you will see an ad for a place that does funerals for pets. Ever see that on TV before? No, and it couldn’t be done on a national level, most likely.
Changes in the business model also prevent this. In the last 15 years, revenue maximization has become the norm. Now you not only have to make a profit, but the MOST profit.
For instance, if you ran “Gilligan’s Island,” and made 100.00 profit, you wouldn’t get a pat on the back, you’d have to justify to corporate WHY you didn’t make $101.00 profit. And if “Roseanne,” could get you 101.00 and “Gilligan” got you 100.00 you’d have to go with Roseanne."
Why? Because a buck’s a buck and you must maximize profit.
Older shows bring in money, but they don’t bring in enough to satisfy revenue maximization.
When you look at it like that, then it’s easy to see why the older shows don’t show up most of the time.
RTV schedules and shows will vary by market, though, so don’t get upset if you can’t get the exact same shows even if you get the channel.
I used to watch Leave it to Beaver and Kate and Allie reruns on RTV until it became obvious they only had about 2-3 dozen random episodes of each show they kept playing over and over, rather than the entire series. You can only watch Beaver’s pigeons or Chip’s pet funeral parlor (hey, I smell crossover!) so many times before enough is enough.
I would love to have those 50s and 60s shows back. And I would like to know what deal the unbearable George Lopez made with Satan.
Meg Griffin: Chris, change the channel. I want to watch George Lopez
Chris Griffin: That show just furthers the stereotype that George Lopez is funny!