Basic Cable Bros: The Vintage Cable Networks thread

[King Kamala]

Hell, we already have it for most of the networks. Celebrate the days when cable hosted trash and syndicated reruns and not prestige television.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1529599501828247552

https://youtu.be/GjYDBLnHE1Y

 

[Incandenza]

Just the other day, I came across something that reminded me of the existence of the short-lived (13 episodes) Mel Brooks-created sitcom from 1975 called When Things Were Rotten. It was a parody of the legend of Robin Hood. 18 years later, Brooks would revisit the material with Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

Why I mention this here is I hadn't seen a minute of When Things Were Rotten since maybe 1991, when Comedy Central came to town. Desperate as they were to fill up airtime, they'd run all manner of TV shows forgotten to history, this one included. And when I was reminded of the show's existence, and in spite of not having heard it in 30 years, *I remembered every bit of the theme song*. You can hear it and watch the opening credits below:

 

[Incandenza]

It's possible Comedy Central ran the show in 1993 due to Brooks having a new Robin Hood movie and I saw it then, but really, that's almost 30 years now! How the fuck do I still remember that?

 

[strummer]

Comedy Central ran a SOAP marathon sometime in 1994 to introduce the show into their rotation. I remember watching a bunch of it over that weekend.

I can remember watching the third Cannonball Run film (which John Candy inexplicably agreed to star in) on CC around that time.

 

[alkeiper]

I still remember Comedy Central promos for their summer lineup featuring Don Rickles. SPF 100!

 

[Incandenza]

I watched Comedy Central religiously from 1991 to... couldn't give you an exact end date, but sometimes I see something online mentioning CC original programming from the early aughts and it's a bunch of TV shows I never heard of

 

[Incandenza]

Comedy Central running Police Squad! in the early 90s is how I first saw that show, which is a huge credit in their favor.

 

[strummer]

It's been almost 20 years since CC lost the rights to SNL reruns. Honestly network hasn't been the same to me since.

 

[King Kamala]

I feel like Season 3 of Chappelle's Show debacle is when I really started losing interest in Comedy Central.

 

[alkeiper]

Kids In the Hall and Whose Line Is It Anyway? reruns.

 

[King Kamala]

Nickelodeon starting its broadcast day with Mr. Wizard reruns at 6 AM.

In elementary school, me, my dad, and my brothers would watch Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist reruns before school. It was my first exposure to so many legendary stand up comics (yet our favorites somehow ended up being Kevin Meany and Fred Stoller) but in retrospect, how the hell was I able to enjoy watching low key dry comedy mixed in with neurotic stand up clips so much as an 8 year old?

 

[alkeiper]

Dom Irrera was king in our household, at least for our household. My younger sister and I don't have many interests in common, but we'll always share a laugh at "Dr. Katz! Cha Cha Cha!"

 

[King Kamala]

Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist also deserves praise going down for introducing the world to the greatness of H. Jon Benjamin.

 

[Czech]

Sunday nights in 1999-2000, they'd run a block of Strangers with Candy, Upright Citizens Brigade, South Park, The Critic, Dr. Katz, and a show I don't remember called Bob and Margaret. Good stuff.

 

[King Kamala]

Stuff I thought(wished) were part of Mandela Effect...sitting through an entire CableACE Award ceremony for a few brief appearances by the nWo.


Also it's weird that the CableACE Awards stopped before cable actually got good but IIRC, they partly existed so Ted Turner could pat himself on the back for awesome TNT original movies

19th CableACE Awards - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

TIL Kel Mitchell beat Garry Shandling, Rip Torn, and Jeffrey Tambor (and Robert Wuhl) for Best Comedic Actor at the CableACE Awards.
9 year old me probably thought it was an obvious choice.

 

[BUTT]

TV Land circa 1999 was the bomb. Not just the regularly scheduled shows like All in the Family and Dragnet but they would also frequently air one-offs of forgotten, never-syndicated programs like the Ferris Bueller sitcom or the Stephen Collins drama Tattinger's. Also their website at the time featured a searchable database with the text of Alex McNeil's Total Television (a book which my dad owned in its original 1978 publication but I bought a used copy of the 1996 revision off of eBay many years ago; the seller had highlighted every instance of Connie Selleca's name in the book).

I just turned on TV Land right now and they're in the middle of a several hour Two and a Half Men marathon. Fuckin' penis.

FAKE EDIT: At 2:30 they're airing a season 2 episode called "A Low, Guttural Tongue-Flapping Noise." Didn't know Kamala wrote for this show when he was in high school.

 

[Valeyard]

I really miss Trio.

 

[King Kamala]

Irony about Trio is it was most known for Brilliant But Canceled but even when I was a teenage Two and a Half Men staff writer I knew that the channel itself was too good to last. I mean are you really expecting viewers to pile in for a TV series version of the cult documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot ? It was probably the last great new cable network.


Xers will never shut up about when MTV played music videos but a smaller group of millennials will remember when MTV2 launched on the basis of "Hey! We still show music videos all the time!" There was also the brief, forgettable challenge from MuchMusicUSA/Fuse and HOLY CRAP...Fuse still exists? It even has its own PlutoTV. Amusingly, it just seems like a lower rent version of what MTV was doing 5-10 years ago before it became massive blocks of Ridiculousness and random movies repeating.

 

[snuffbox]

I watched a lot of Nick at Night/TV Land from the early 90s up to whenever they started near-exclusively airing recent shows I didn't want to watch in the first place.

And agreed about the late 90s/early 00s blocks on Comedy Central. I wish the Critic could've had a couple more seasons.

 

[Epic Springs]

Yeah, there was still an appetite for an all-music programming channel as late as the mid 2000s. MTV stopped playing music so MTV2 was the fix then they went the same way. I remember being really into VH1 Classic around this time but even that morphed into nothing but That Metal Show repeats (sorry Eddie!).

 

[King Kamala]

God, VH1 Classic was really great in its day and played some obscure stuff. Me and my friends definitely liked getting toasted and watching first run episodes of That Metal Show in the early 2010s since IIRC the new episodes aired at 11 PM or midnight on Saturdays. Go to Hell, Bill Hader!

cc @Mickey Massuco

 

[Valeyard]

Trio was so good.

 

[King Kamala]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1541134647844798464

 

[BUTT]

FAKE EDIT: At 2:30 they're airing a season 2 episode called "A Low, Guttural Tongue-Flapping Noise." Didn't know Kamala wrote for this show when he was in high school.

Actual 2.5 Men episode title that aired earlier today on FX: "Love Isn't Blind, It's Retarded." I know woke-ass Kamala didn't write that one.

 

[King Kamala]

Yesterday I learned that HSN was successful enough to buy The USA Network in 1997. Seems weird that the home shopping

I did know that Bud Paxson, the guy who found HSN, made so much of the sale that he was able to start his own network PAX but that's another thread.

 

[BUTT]

It was Barry Diller’s company which owned HSN at the time and also bought USA, but it was a strange deal. Seagram’s had spent so much buying MCA/Universal and then buying out Viacom’s half of USA Networks (necessitated by a lawsuit they filed after Viacom violated a pact not to start any new cable networks by starting M2 and TV Land) and they had to temporarily unload their cable assets. There was a provision in the deal that Universal could buy the networks back by 2001, which they did since by that point they were owned by Vivendi and had tons of cash to spend.

 

[King Kamala]

WB/UPN thread crosspost

Folks! I'm pleased to report that The Surreal Life is on Paramount Plus. Not every season though apparently. I finished Season 1 and it skipped to season 3. I assume Season 2 is missing cause Ron Jeremy is on there. It's too bad because I wanted to relive Tammy Faye Baker getting Vanilla Ice to come to terms with his past and letting go of his anger!

I will season 1 holds surprisingly well. There's some oddly touching and poignant moments and Corey Feldman and MC Hammer getting stuck in a row boat is just as hilarious as I remembered!

 

[Valeyard]

Just wanna know if it has pissing midgets, X-Pac, Balki, or the lost Miss Cleo/Randy Savage season.

 

[King Kamala]

Yes, yes, yes, sadly no.

 

[King Kamala]

It's the Kenan & Kel sketch that we've waited almost 20 years for @Fall of Epic !