6. Nick at Nite
The 10:00 pm start time for Vault Disney was off-limits. Thankfully, the good people at Nickelodeon started their Nick at Nite television block a little bit earlier. Nick at Nite, which began in the mid 80s, was a place for TV shows from the Golden Age of television to have a showcase and be appreciated; a kind of TV Smithsonian, if you will. The brainchild of ad men Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert, Nick at Nite, from the early 80's throughout the mid to late 90's, was a place were you could go and see shows like I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Dennis the Menace The Munsters, The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. It was great watching those old shows, because they featured great writing and entertainers who showed what can be done without going the way of TV-MA. Also, it was a time for my parents to wax nostalgic and tell us about how they watched this episode or that episode when it first aired. This was kind like what happened in
Back to the Future when Marty recognized the Honeymooners episode that was on (in our case, time travel was not involved). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krem5VodvcY Now I know what a lot of people are probably saying right now. "Hey, Nick at Nite is totally still around!" In its current state, Nick at Nite is the place were you can go see shows like Friends, the George Lopez Show, My Wife and Kids, and Yes, Dear. Shows like this may have a place on television, but not in a time slot that was originally designated to showcase the great classic sitcoms from yesteryear. What constitutes "classic status" for a TV show should be common sense, but I'll try and define it, anyway. A TV show should only be defined as such when the conventions and customs showcased in the show have changed/passed away and people of a new generation can view the old content with fresh eyes and come to a new understanding about it. I know the 90's were a different time, but Friends went off the air in freaking 2004. Thankfully, when I was growing up, the people who ran Nick at Nite were still in their right minds and aired shows that were actually classic. The kids of today may have their new Nick at Nite, with its bogus original programming and faux-classic shows, but I'll forever have memories of old-school Nick at Nick, and its truly classic programming. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl9gHrmNoDI