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Usa network earlier years

T

theoldguy

Guest
i know that those days are gone but does anyone miss the days on the usa network when it had more cult programing?
 
I was a regular viewer of:

Commander USA's Groovy Movies (usually terrible grade-z horror & scifi movies),
Saturday Nightmares (slightly better grade-z horror & scifi movies, with a few classics thrown in here and there)
Night Flight (mish mash of music videos/cult movies/comedy skits)
USA Cartoon Express (almost exclusively lower-tier Hanna-Barbara cartoons from the late '60s/'70s than ran one season on Saturday mornings)
Calliope (educational cartoons and film shorts)

Later the network was home to reruns of some short-lived/obscure sitcoms that didn't run more than one, two seasons at the most, like "Sanchez of Bel-Air", "Throb", "Double Trouble", "My Sister Sam", and "It's Your Move".

And who could forget the Canadian import, "Check It Out", with Don Adams.

Not to mention game show reruns of "Joker's Wild", "Name That Tune", and "Press Your Luck".
 
Loads of game shows during the afternoons, and who could forget Night Flight in the 1980s? Great show. They also had "The Late Mr. Pete" for a while circa 1992, I have a tape chock-full of Mr. Pete off USA.

-crainbebo
 
USA in the early years also broadcast college football, including the epic 1982 Cal-Stanford game.

I think at one point they also had NBA preseason basketball; the sports documentary "Magic vs. Bird: A Courtship of Rivals" showed a clip of one game featuring the two superstars.
 
I miss the USA network's game show lineup with a passion. They had such great shows like Pyramid, Sale of the Century, Scrabble, Press Your Luck along with many others. It was a game show paradise back in the day.
 
i remember the old days of USA i miss the movies on saturday night like the toxic avenger halloween friday the 13th and others, plus the USA CARTOON EXPRESS which aired shows like Superfriends, Super Mario Bros., Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mighty Max, Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog, Gargoyles, and many others. I also miss the great shows like American Gladiators, Miami Vice, and Quantum Leap that aired on the channel. and if i remember right USA Network was the first cable network to air the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies (1 and 2)
 
I had a fondness for the USA shows of the '80s and early '90s. "Commander USA's Groovie Movies" whose host had a superhero costume with painted-on mask, and "Up All Night" hosted by Rhonda Shear (whose voice went up to a squeak on the word "Up" in the title) and Gilbert Gottfried. They did indeed show some cheesy Z-movies.
And do I miss "Night Flight." They tried to syndicate it after it ended its USA run.
"Calliope" was kind of a free-form hodgepodge of kiddie material, shown without commercials.
 
johnnya2k6 said:
USA in the early years also broadcast college football, including the epic 1982 Cal-Stanford game.

I think at one point they also had NBA preseason basketball; the sports documentary "Magic vs. Bird: A Courtship of Rivals" showed a clip of one game featuring the two superstars.
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USA also carried NBA regular season basketball as well as selected postseason games between 1981 to 1984, before the NBA began its broadcast relationship with Turner Sports. They shared some cable coverage with ESPN during most of that time.

USA Network traces its lineage back to the Madison Square Garden Network, as a national version of the latter network before the two split-up in 1979-80 after changes in ownership.
 
During the 80s they were running kinescopes of the classic sci-fi action-adventure series "Space Patrol." I wish one of the oldies cable channels or OTA sub-channels would pick it up again.
 
I loved those early cable days; no one knew what might work on this new form of TV, so they tried damn near anything, and USA was no exception. Remember "English Channel" Sunday nights? Shows from Great Britain and Australia, opening with a pretty good Aussie-made musical variety show starring the Serendipity Singers.

Night Flight also included the 50's anthology "Tales Of Tomorrow"...sci-fi done LIVE, sometimes with movie horror greats like Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. Another Night Flight feature was "New Wave Theatre," an anarchic L.A. punk-rock show that ended tragically with the murder of its host, Peter Ivers.

Commander USA's Groovie Movie was one of my faves; at its best with goofy dubbed Mexican wrestlers-vs-monsters flicks. The good Commander's most prized souvenir was a battered fedora he claimed was "Abel Salazar's hat." Remember the Commander's "sidekick" Lefty...a smiley-face drawn on his hand with cigar ashes?

Cartoon Express offered everything from the pretty funny Hong Kong Phooey to the just plain pretty Jana of the Jungle, maybe Hanna-Barbera's sexiest heroine, in fairly plausible adventure stories. She was created by Doug Wildey of "Jonny Quest," which may have accounted for both her good looks and good scripts.

Cable programmers then had to substitute ingenuity for money to fill air time. Now they can afford to buy this year's big off-network hit, so they do; and load the rest of the schedule with crappy reality shows...

(Unrelated but irresistable: Anyone remember the Bill Tush variety hour on Superstation TBS? Jan Hooks of SNL and Bonnie & Terry Turner, creators of 3rd Rock From The Sun, came off of that great little show.)
 
edward1978 said:
I miss the USA network's game show lineup with a passion. They had such great shows like Pyramid, Sale of the Century, Scrabble, Press Your Luck along with many others. It was a game show paradise back in the day.
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Earlier today, I heard that this Black Friday, GSN is going to show some of Jim's syndicated $ale! Just wanted to pass that along in case you didn't know it.
 
Up All Night was awesome, as were the sitcoms that never lasted long. "He and She," "The Girl With Something Extra," "Sandy Duncan Show" and they had a quite a few sitcoms from the 60s that didn't last long.

"Duet" the Fox show was pretty good for a Fox show, at least at that time, it was above their usual lowbrow humour of the time. Actually "Duet" ran 54 episodes over three seasons and it's spin off "Open House" lasted another 24 episodes. About one season short of a syndicated 100 run.
 
since i asked the question ,i will now chime in.my favorite part of the USA network programing was USA UP ALL NIGHT(all hosts). COMANDER USA and any other shows with cult movies. i liked NIGHT FLIGHT which had cult movies and a great hodgepodge of programing.

there were many more shows and programming i liked but can`t remember.

it is a shame that the economics of the business caused a great cult channel to become so mainstream.
 
theoldguy said:
it is a shame that the economics of the business caused a great cult channel to become so mainstream.
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While there is programming I miss (and programming I missed because cable had not yet come to where I lived back then), in all fairness there is a good deal to like about today's USA. In particular, I enjoy many of their "characters welcome" dramedies. Burn Notice. Royal Pains. White Collar. Monk. Plain Sight. It's strange that USA (and co-owned Universal) can produce good and well-received shows economically and parent NBC keeps striking out.
 
Wonder what would happen if Monk and Burn Notice were NBC network shows? Either they would be great, or they would be gone within a month.

-crainbebo
 
Rhonda Shear, the blonde bombshell of USA's UP ALL NIGHT, has gone on to great success as the designer, manufacturer and promoter of the Ahh Bra; and hosts her own widely-seen infomercial for that product.
 
FredLeonard said:
While there is programming I miss (and programming I missed because cable had not yet come to where I lived back then), in all fairness there is a good deal to like about today's USA. In particular, I enjoy many of their "characters welcome" dramedies. Burn Notice. Royal Pains. White Collar. Monk. Plain Sight. It's strange that USA (and co-owned Universal) can produce good and well-received shows economically and parent NBC keeps striking out.
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yeah, too bad the cool B-movies are not still on.
 
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