I agree that Mad TV is sort of inexplicable. I like some older episodes, but I don’t know anybody who actually watches the darn thing. Does anybody have any idea what kind of ratings it gets or if it’s simply a cheap show that works well in its time slot?
Now, SNL is a no-brainer. I don’t remember the last time I thought that show was funny, but they have the most popular music acts in the world performing on their show every week, along with wildly popular guest stars and a lot of momentum from having been on the air so long. The digital shorts like “Lazy Sunday” and “Dick in a Box” are wildly popular, and several of their older skits are practically iconic.
I’m not sure exactly what its ratings are, but its longevity isn’t at all surprising at this point.
When it aired originally, the show had terrible Nielsen ratings. A lot worse than many shows that were swiftly consigned to the trash can of history. But the basic ratings didn’t reveal everything. Apparently the show was wildly popular with middle aged women - a demographic that is hard to reach for a prime time TV show. The ratings never really picked up, but the studio got their money back via niche advertising.
E.R.- Don’t get me wrong, it was actually an excellent show in its day, and even after Clooney left it did just fine, but then it just lived on and on and on and on, and for me it jumped the shark when it decided to be “but seriously folks, what’s up with Africa?” Message Show. I know longer watch it regularly but catch it occasionally and it’s like Phyllis Diller- still around but visibly older and scarier and more fragile than the last time I saw her whether that was a week or a year before.
Falcon Crest- By the last few seasons I don’t even think they remembered they were set in wine country.
Alice- never understood the years and years and years of popularity of this show, especially after Flo (it’s most popular character) left. How many “Mel’s a bad cook” “Vera’s an airhead” jokes and “45 year old single mom stuck in a dead end low pay job in a Phoenix greasy spoon and with [and I’m being charitable] moderate talent and looks… of course you’re a shoe in for a show-biz/music career!” plots can you have? (And yet sadly they were the last sitcom appearance of Desi Arnaz.)
That 70s Show- another “not bad in its day” but the notion they could survive after the two stars left was ludicrous. (And isn’t it amazing how whenever a cast member leaves his cousin/friend/neighbor who’s never been mentioned before suddenly moves in with his parents? Happened on Happy Days, Facts of Life, My Three Sons, The Carol Burnett Show’s Eunice sketches- hell, it even happened in another dimension only accessible through the Greatest Earthquake Ever Known in The Land of the Lost.)
It’s weird how Uncle Jesse evidently had about 10 brothers, all of whom had one child and died young. I’m thinking it was some sort of fratricidal priesthood “There can be only one” thing like, perhaps, the family of Peter O’Toole’s mad king in Stardust. Perhaps Bo, Luke, Coy, Vance, Daisy, Jeb, and the other cousins who were on various episodes were all descendants of Christ or something and Jesse (who kept himself pure and obviously never shaved) didn’t want to dilute the blood by too much interbreeding so he poisoned their squeezin’s once they’d reproduced. (Jesse— that was the name of David’s father in the Bible… Jesus was of the House of David… Boss Hogg was played by Sorrel Booke who was a rabbinical scholar and a CIA agent earlier in his life… I think there’s a code hidden in that comedy.)
The English soap Coronation Street has been running uninterrupted in prime time since 1960. Watching it is like being forced to eat your grandmother’s musty old sofa bite by dusty suffocating bite, only to have it reappear whole, like Prometheus’ liver, every evening. They change the cushions ocasionally, but it’s still like gnawing on a fifty year old hard, lumpy, ill-sprung moth-eaten old monstrosity that smells faintly of boiled cabbage and old lady pee.
The residents of Coronation Street seem to live in a parallel universe. Only there can you buy and sell houses in a couple of weeks, when in reality the process takes about three months. People with no qualifications can suddenly become managers of travel-agents or owners of pubs, and women just walk in off the street and instantly become skilled machinists at the underwear factory.
I didn’t know that. It was a Sunday afternoon show on Aussie TV a few years ago. My teenage son and I used to love it. They showed many more than 4 episodes - it ran for months. But that explains why such a quality show wasn’t ever shown here at a better time. I believe the show that preceded it in the Sunday lunch spot was American Dreams which we also liked.
They only ever made 13 episodes (a half-season, by American standards). The fatal mistake for the show was being picked up by Fox Network, which is the literal Death of Good Television. They’re notorious for not giving any non-reality show a chance…if it doesn’t have an audience in two episodes, it gets pulled by the fourth. Of course, they give reality shows (and incredibly trashy ones, at that) fifty chances. Fox is the network that premiered “Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire”, after all…
It’s pretty odd if you tune in, now. I think that they’ve maybe tried to respond to youTube by doing things that youTube can’t, or just doesn’t.
They do montages more involved than anyone at youTube would do.
They do a bit where they photoshop Bergeron’s head onto people in the videos.
But, the “best” thing they do is play a game called “head, gut, or groin”. They roll a video of something – swinging at a pinata, or pitching a whiffle ball, skateboarding – then stop the video and ask the contestant to guess whether it’s going to end in a head-shot, gut-shot, or groin-shot. Yes, this is proof that Mike Judge’s Idiocracy is already here.
As to why it’s still on. . .the show has no production costs. I agree that people who watch it probably don’t know what youTube is.
And, fuck it – I don’t care how many times I see it, a groin shot on TV is fuckin’ funny.
AFV is lackluster, but part of what makes it funny is the commentary they add to the videos, which you rarely see on YouTube–a lot of those videos wouldn’t be funny without it. And it’s amusing enough when there’s nothing else on.
Sabrina, on the other hand, did go a bit too long. The first season was mediocre, but in the second it hit its stride. It should have gotten cut when she went to college though–too many dynamics changed at once.
My nomination? The Simpsons. That’s still on after well over a decade, and wasn’t overly funny to begin with, yet Futurama got cut after four seasons–what is wrong with people?