St. Elsewhere was on Bravo and TVLand (I think) during the '90s, but probably nowhere lately. The show was great, but it, too, probably has quite a bit of "dated" material in it.
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Long-Running (at least 4 years) Shows whose reruns never get shown anymore
- Thread starter Tim from Springfield IL
- Start date
I wouldn't be surprised to see some popular basic cable shows like "Pawn Stars" or "Man Vs. Food" or even scripted dramas like "Mad Men" or "Breaking Bad" pop up in reruns on broadcast channels eventually, which would further marginalize classic network shows. Speaking of which, the one show I never thought would disappear from view was "Gilligan's Island". That show, after "I Love Lucy" and maybe "Perry Mason", was in reruns longer than any show in TV history, and I don't think any major cable outlet carries it anymore.
TheWB.com streams episodes of 'Gilligan's Island'...just watched the original pilot on there last week.
'Amen' follows 'The Jeffersons' on TVOne's early morming lineup.
'The Cosby Show' has never done well in reruns. I think there was a bit of a backlash against it even while it was still airing on NBC. There was a lot of hype/saturation advertising for the first-season reruns, and I guess most people didn't need a daily dose of the Huxtables. Ironically, those first few years were the best,
TV Land burned out that show, as it has so many others. I've discussed this here and elsewhere, but about midway through the rub, the show started getting a bit preachy and self-conscious...with increasingly wimpy male characters being put in their place by the women. That, coupled with the kids growing up, and the inevitable loss of 'cuteness', made the later episodes tough to watch, but as quickly as TV Land tore through them, they got overplayed.
'Barney Miller' did OK in reruns in the early '80s, and so did 'Three's Company'...but by the middle of the decade, more recent shows like 'Cheers', along with first-run non-sitcom fare, were starting to squeeze some of the relatively recent sitcoms out. 'Barney' prety much disappeared from syndication by 1988, and was nearly forgotten outside of a blink and you missed it run on Nick at Nite, and the yearlong WGN America 'Outta Sight Retro Night' schedule a couple of years back.
'Family Ties', like 'Murphy Brown', was very topical at the time, making them both too dated to catch on in reruns. Michael J Fox's other show, 'Spin City', has been forgitten in the crush of newer sitcoms entering syndication, and 'Third Rock From the Sun' was apparently recalled to the home planet!
'Amen' follows 'The Jeffersons' on TVOne's early morming lineup.
'The Cosby Show' has never done well in reruns. I think there was a bit of a backlash against it even while it was still airing on NBC. There was a lot of hype/saturation advertising for the first-season reruns, and I guess most people didn't need a daily dose of the Huxtables. Ironically, those first few years were the best,
TV Land burned out that show, as it has so many others. I've discussed this here and elsewhere, but about midway through the rub, the show started getting a bit preachy and self-conscious...with increasingly wimpy male characters being put in their place by the women. That, coupled with the kids growing up, and the inevitable loss of 'cuteness', made the later episodes tough to watch, but as quickly as TV Land tore through them, they got overplayed.
'Barney Miller' did OK in reruns in the early '80s, and so did 'Three's Company'...but by the middle of the decade, more recent shows like 'Cheers', along with first-run non-sitcom fare, were starting to squeeze some of the relatively recent sitcoms out. 'Barney' prety much disappeared from syndication by 1988, and was nearly forgotten outside of a blink and you missed it run on Nick at Nite, and the yearlong WGN America 'Outta Sight Retro Night' schedule a couple of years back.
'Family Ties', like 'Murphy Brown', was very topical at the time, making them both too dated to catch on in reruns. Michael J Fox's other show, 'Spin City', has been forgitten in the crush of newer sitcoms entering syndication, and 'Third Rock From the Sun' was apparently recalled to the home planet!
A Youtube account known as 'The Gunmoke Channel' has most, if not all, episodes uploaded:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheGunsmokeChannel?blend=1&ob=video-mustangbase#p/u/765/aWpZqRnJelA
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheGunsmokeChannel?blend=1&ob=video-mustangbase#p/u/765/aWpZqRnJelA
F
flashback
Guest
i have no problem with tv shows being topical.i look at tv shows and movies as video and audio time capsules.if people just appricate them for the time they were made they would enjoy them just fine.you dont have to have been around when they were made to enjoy them that way.
flashback said:
problem is younger viewers that advertisers want would not get the jokes
Count me in as another who thought that Gilligan would never leave the airwaves. Ditto The Brady Bunch. I remember a local TV station near me would run a block of Gilligan and Brady Bunch reruns every afternoon. It made for great after-school viewing! 8) But I suppose that The Brady Bunch (especially) would seem dated now. As for Gilligan, watching him always meant that you had to "check your reality at the door." ;DCorky Marlowe said:
C
cd637299
Guest
As to "The Cosby Show," I can tell you that many of those first-season episodes were based on his early stand-up routines, which I heard on his records....and they were hilarious. Especially when he talked about families. It was as if everybody had a family member like the ones he related.
He took that to the small screen for that first season, and it clicked.
IMO I felt that nobody ever expected the show to be the monster that it was, and when they exhausted the early-stand-up angle, they had to really improvise---and they certainly managed for the next 7 years, amazingly to me!
One thing they did was to adjust the family structures (Sondra getting married, also the adoption of Olivia)---It was parodied on an episode of the cartoon "Tiny Toon Adventures"---I think the episode was called "Acme Cable TV" where they had "The Gogosby Show" starring Gogo the Dodo, who had a Cosby voice just for that episode (on the phone: "Hello, Central Casting? Send us another child!").
cd
He took that to the small screen for that first season, and it clicked.
IMO I felt that nobody ever expected the show to be the monster that it was, and when they exhausted the early-stand-up angle, they had to really improvise---and they certainly managed for the next 7 years, amazingly to me!
One thing they did was to adjust the family structures (Sondra getting married, also the adoption of Olivia)---It was parodied on an episode of the cartoon "Tiny Toon Adventures"---I think the episode was called "Acme Cable TV" where they had "The Gogosby Show" starring Gogo the Dodo, who had a Cosby voice just for that episode (on the phone: "Hello, Central Casting? Send us another child!").
cd
About 75% of the jokes in the first episode came from stand-up routines(all of which were included in the performance film, Bill Cosby: Himself). And the final episode was dominated by a lengthy flashback to most of the pilot. A reminder of where the show had come from, I guess...but it still made for a rather weak finale.
Part of the reason why we don't see some of the classic shows we'd like to see is because of "bundling" by the syndicators. Let's use Barny Miller for example: if a TV station or cable channel wants to buy it they may forced to acquire other shows with it. In Barney's case it's Columbia (Sony) so they may be forced to buy The Love Boat or Charlies Angels. Twos show they may not want or have room for. Now that's the way it used to be. Maybe with all the outlets things have changed.
anotherguy said:
WKRP's problems with syndication are related to the cost of music licensing. The episodes were so full of the popular music of the day that it is cost prohibitive to pay the license fees to the owners of the music that is required to air the episodes. When WGN America aired them a few years ago (summer of 2008, I think), the episodes were grossly edited, most of the music was replaced with stuff from the public domain, and whole scenes were cut out when the music could not be easily dubbed over.
I think "The Twilight Zone", "Night Gallery" and "The Sixth Sense" were all bundled in 1 package years ago.
therealjm12 said:
Points taken, although in the case of The Love Boat and Charlie's Angels, those shows are under CBS ownership (in fact, the whole Aaron Spelling library is under CBS ownership, as it inheirted the library after the restructing of CBS and Viacom). I actually always though that Fox owned the rights to the those shows, since many of the 70s/80s Spelling shows were filmed at 20th Century Fox; Metromedia, before its absortion into Fox, had the distibution rights to Dynasty (another show we can add to the list, since SoapNet dropped the rights a few years ago). Dynasty, much like its rival Dallas, didn't do so well in off-network reruns, as did another nighttime serial from that era: Falcon Crest.
Now that I think about of it...I can't think of any Aaron Spelling series that lasted as long and well in syndication, maybe outside of maybe Charlie's Angels (currently airing on Universal HD) and The Love Boat. They tend to do well more on cable than broadcast TV for whatever reason.
ShawnHill1 said:
Metromedia did had the distribution rights to "Dynasty", which was later inherited by Fox around 1985; sometime in the early 2000s, the series' rights were sold to Sony Pictures.
In the case of some Spelling shows such as "Charlie's Angels" and "Starsky and Hutch", Columbia Pictures TV had syndication rights in the US and Canada, while Metromedia / Fox held rights in overseas markets -- Sony would later gain worldwide rights to these series.
onairb said:
Sitcoms with family have a short life, they jump the shark when the kids get old.
therealjm12 said:
They don't have room for those shows because of infomercials. Infomercials are easy cash. You couldn't air them 30 years ago but you can have a whole channel now.
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