Nick at Nite
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| Nick at Nite | |
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| Type | Cable network (sitcoms), broadcast over Nickelodeon |
|---|---|
| Country | United States, Latin America |
| Availability | National (but not available in all markets) |
| Slogan | We Play Favorites |
| Owner | MTV Networks (Viacom) |
| Key people | Gerry Laybourne - President, Nickelodeon
Debby Beece - Executive VP, Programming, Nickelodeon & Nick-at-Nite Alan Goodman & Fred Seibert - Format creators |
| Launch date | July 1, 1985 |
| Past names | None |
| Website | http://www.nickatnite.com/ |
Nick at Nite (sometimes spelled Nick @ Nite, by its current logo) is the evening programming block broadcast over Nickelodeon Sunday–Thursdays from 9 PM–6 AM and Friday–Saturdays from 10 PM–6 AM Eastern and Pacific Standard Time. Nickelodeon is known for its kids' shows during the day, while Nick at Nite appeals to adult audiences with a lineup of classic television; largely Viacom-owned syndicated sitcoms, shown with about a ten-year lag. At the choice of Viacom, and despite being aired on the same channel as Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite is treated in the Nielsen Media Research as a separate television network, similar to Adult Swim, a programming block on Cartoon Network.
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[edit] Brief history
Nick at Nite debuted at 8pm on July 1, 1985, replacing what was originally the ARTS channel (now A&E), which had leased the time from Nickelodeon. Its initial programming (running from 8pm-6am, seven days a week) was a block of old sitcoms such as The Donna Reed Show and Dennis the Menace and classic drama Route 66. As Nick at Nite grew it would add to its library of shows branching out to rerun sketch comedy, such as original Saturday Night Live episodes as well as the Canadian SCTV. It also briefly reran the 1970s mock local talk show Fernwood 2Night. As the years went by, the channel's sitcom library swelled to over a hundred shows. For the station's 20th birthday celebration, an episode from almost every series that had appeared on Nick at Nite was shown.
[edit] Commercials
Nick at Nite has used a myriad of unusual and sometimes down right bizarre commercials, logos and, promotions. Goodman & Fred Seibert assembled a team of highly imaginative writer/producers, modeled on their original 1981 creative team that had launched sister channel MTV: Music Television. Including Scott Webb, Jim Levy, Dave Potorti, Jay Newell, Will McRobb, and Tom Hill, the group was guided towards created a series of internal campaigns to emphasize the seeming paradox of a contemporary network setting that programmed reruns from the 1960s. A series of five "promises" were organized into four 30 second spots each hour, each emphasizing an attribute of the innovative programming format.
In the late 1980s the channel began running a few different animated 10 second channel identifications with a similar premise that all had vastly different endings, produced by Eli Noyes & Kit Laybourne, and the Fred/Alan agency. One of them was of a couple who would bring objects for a living room onto the screen including a couch and a television then sit down in front of the TV. The male would click the remote and something bizarre would happen, such as a gorilla appearing. Before the commercial was over the Nick at Nite logo would appear somehow tied to the premise of the commercial.
During the early 1990s, Nick at Nite started running a wide variety of commercials. These were made with almost every imaginable technique from limited animation, to claymation and stop motion, to original live action and stock footage. Almost every commercial had a different jingle professing Nick at Nite as being "A TV Viewers Dream" for "the TV generation" and as coming from a place called TV Land ("Hello Out there, from TV Land!"), and promoting "Better Living Through Television" and, proclaimed itself curator of "Our Television Heritage", although these claims were always somewhat tongue in cheek. They would also create sarcastic commercials for shows on their network: an announcer's voice would discuss the series, accompanied by clips and music, sometimes the show's theme song. The commercials would use an actor's line or expression and take it out of context to create a new subversive meaning. The channel still uses this technique today, although often in a more hybrid way. One memorable promo, for The Facts of Life, featured series star Charlotte Rae clad in sunglasses and leather, claiming that the entire series, even "Cousin Jeri" and "the 80s" were all part a virtual reality created by aliens.
The early '90s also saw the addition of Nick at Nite's mascot, Trixie the TV Land Pixie, for a few years. For a time they would also play a short bumper called "Milkman", about a milkman who would distribute wholesome advice to customers on his milk delivery route. In 1995, on the occasion of the network's 10th anniversary, a tribute to the commercials throughout the network's existence was aired and hosted by former network President Rich Cronin.
The channel also had a unique way of telling viewers what shows were about to play next. Beginning as only an announcer reading off that evening's block of shows and the times they would be on while the list was displayed and music was played, this simple concept would be revised and rerevised many times over. At one point a television with objects and people from the show scrolling by (for instance, for Get Smart a shoe phone, gun, and Max and 99) would appear on the screen while the announcer read off the show and time. The time that the show was on would be displayed in another box. This continues to be changed and updated.
Also in the late 1990s, Nick at Nite began displaying a data sheet before rerun episodes telling the name of the episode, number in the series and usually an interesting fact or bit of history about the episode.
The station also had a wide variety of "bugs" or logos displayed in the corner of the screen during a show.
[edit] Marathons
Programming marathons were an innovation that began with Nick-at-Nite in 1985. Working together in college radio at WKCR-FM (Columbia University, New York) Fred/Alan's Alan Goodman & Fred Seibert saw the ratings success of radio marathons featuring Ludwig van Beethoven, John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus. As the Nick-at-Nite "oldies" format was adapted from radio, they suggested the multi-hour (sometimes multi-day) marathon might also work with television programming. Succeed it did, handily, and marathons became a ratings boosting staple of cable television networks for over two decades.
During the week of Halloween 1990, the network held a special contest, hosted by legendary Game Show host Wink Martindale, in which a marathon of the show Alfred Hitchcock Presents was shown. The at home viewers were supposed to keep a running total of the total number of deaths on the show. At the end of the marathon the persons who had gotten the total number right were entered into a drawing to win a prize. As Martindale said "It's kind of like guessing the number of jellybeans in a jellybean jar, but instead of jellybeans, you're using cadavers!"
When new shows are added to the line-up, they are usually accompanied by some kind of marathon complete with logo and sometimes hosted by an aging star from the show. For instance, when Newhart was added, the channel also acquired Bob Newhart's short-lived third sitcom Bob and showed a programming block entitled "Bob's Bob, Bob Newhart, Newhart Marathon" and showed the two shows and The Bob Newhart Show which it already had the rights to, in a programing block hosted by Bob Newhart. When some older shows were retired they would also frequently have a marathon send-off. For instance, when a long rerunning show on the channel Mister Ed (from the channel's inception in 1985 to 1992) was finally retired, there was an all-weekend marathon of the show called "Au Revoir Mister Ed!" Also during the 1990s, on Saturday nights, they would air an entire night dedicated to a certain theme, dubbed "Very Very Nick at Nite." Each night's theme would include the name of the theme. For example, one night's theme was paranoia, therefore the evening was called "Very Very Paranoia." A group of people in a snow globe, dancing around, composed most of the Very Very commercials.
During the summer months of the late 1990s the station for a while created a programing block called "Vertivision" (later, "Block Party Summer") during which a different series was shown in a three-hour block each night of the week. In the first year, commercials referred to the nights as "Mary Mondays, Lucy Tuesdays, Bewitched Be-Wednesdays, Jeannie Thursdays, and Sgt. Joe Fridays" (for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I Love Lucy, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and Dragnet, respectively). With the passing years, the summer blocks shifted to include series newly in the Nick @ Nite repertoire.
Other seasonal scheduling blocks were also not uncommon such as Christmas-themed blocks during late December, Thanksgiving-themed blocks in November, and Valentine's themed episodes in February. From 1989 until 1998 on New Year's Eve, the channel would host "Nick at Nite's (year) Rerun/Classic TV/TV Hits Countdown" hosted by longtime countdown radio DJ, Casey Kasem. Casey would spend noon until 12:30am on New Year's Eve Day "counting down" the 25 "most classic" episodes of the TV shows currently airing on Nick at Nite, supposedly voted on by phone by the viewers at home, revealing the #1 episode at midnight. Viewers could even dedicate an episode to a person they knew. The scheduling was different in a few years. In 1995, they counted down 5 episodes a day for 5 days from Christmas until December 30; because Nickelodeon had its own New Year's special in 1996 and 1997, they aired the entire countdown on the 30th instead of the 31st.
[edit] Original Programming
Nick at Nite has also occasionally experimented with creating its own shows, sometimes with bizarre and surrealistic results. In the late '80s the channel had a contest where viewers could create their own sitcoms and send them in and the winner would supposedly get their own show.
In 1988, the channel aired a 30-minute animated Christmas special the pilot for what was to be an animated series entitled Tattertown, created by animation legend Ralph Bakshi. The series never emerged, but the special, later renamed Christmas in Tattertown, was aired every Christmas on Nick at Nite for several years.
In 1990, the channel briefly aired a show called On the Television,[1] a mock TV critic show hosted by Siskel and Ebert-type characters and featured bizarre sometimes disturbing clips from parodied TV shows supposedly beginning that week. For instance, "The Gigantic Herman's Playground" a parody of Pee Wee's Playhouse hosted by an unusually large obvious parody of Paul Reubens' character "Pee Wee Herman", which took place in a playground rather than a "playhouse". As a parody of Pee Wee's "word of the day" where kids at home were encouraged "to scream real loud" when they hear the secret word, the Gigantic Herman would encourage children to "scream until you spit up blood" when they heard his word of the day. "On The Television" was unsurprisingly short-lived and it is almost impossible to find any information on today.
In the early 1990s, a special made up of old TV commercials was aired only once, but the idea of showing old commercials would be rehashed by the network on several other shows and eventually become a staple of offshoot channel TV Land. There was one special that was promoted as a TV dad quiz. The host walked through a "Typical TV Home" and quizzed the viewers at home with trivia about classic TV dad clichés. At one point, the host told the viewers to connect pictures of TV dads with their appropriate TV moms displayed on the screen with a magic marker. At the end of this segment he mentions that he forgot to tell the viewers to place a piece of plastic over their screen while doing this and made jokes about the viewers futilely trying to clean the magic marker off their screens for the rest of the show.
In 1991, Nick at Nite created its own sitcom based around the rerun genre it had pioneered. The sitcom, named Hi Honey, I'm Home! after the cliché phrase used by TV dads addressing their TV wives when returning home in the evenings from work, was about a 1950s sitcom family, the Nielsens. The family's show has been removed from syndication and they are forced to leave TV Land and move into a real 1990s suburban neighborhood. Once there, the family is repeatedly confronted with culture shock. The show aired on ABC on Fridays and then went into "Reruns" on Nick at Nite on Sunday nights. The show was also unpopular and Nick at Nite was reluctant to create original programming for the next ten years.
[edit] 10th Anniversary
In 1995 Nick at Nite celebrated its 10th Anniversary with a week long event. All week they showed "hand picked episodes" supposedly of every shows ever aired on the network. However, this did not include "On The Television". Each episode was introduced with its history, its episode number, and how long it ran on Nick at Nite. The 10th Anniversary on-screen bug was shown at the bottom left corner of the screen for 10 seconds once per half hour show, it was used for the entire year of 1995 as was the 20th Anniversary logo in 2005.
[edit] Nick at Nite Today
The lineup now mostly consists of 1980s and 1990s hits such as The Cosby Show, Roseanne, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Full House, Growing Pains.
The past few years Nick at Nite has received a good deal of criticism due to that fact that they introduce new shows and after a few weeks or a few months they move the shows to very late/very early morning time slots or they remove the shows all together.[citation needed] Viewers also criticize the fact Nick at Nite will air the same program multiple times in a row each night and then a few hours later air the same program again in the same night.[citation needed] Fans say this makes the episodes cycle through too quickly causing more frequent repeats and making the shows seem "stale" fast.[citation needed]
In 2004 Fatherhood, an animated series based on the book by Bill Cosby was also added to the line up. In April 2005, Nick at Nite premiered a reality series, The Search For The Funniest Mom In America," in which mothers from across the country competed to win $50,000 and a chance to develop a show for Nick at Nite. The winner of the competition was Darlene Westgor. In August 2005, another original series, Hi-Jinks premiered, where parents pull pranks on their children. A recent second installment of "Funniest Mom in America," hosted by Katey Sagal aired, beginning April 12, 2006. Nick at Nite also began broadcasting a new mini-sitcom entitled "At The Poocharelli's" in mid 2006.
Nick at Nite still tries to target adults who like to revisit old sitcoms and enjoy programming that used to come on television. However, since the channel shares a space with the children's network Nickelodeon, many children have grown up watching them as well.
Nick at Nite has also spun off a niche network, TV Land, which features a variety of rerun programming and vintage commercials. The networks were operated together until December 17th, 2006, when Nickelodeon began overseeing Nick@Nite. Gone are the days of "Nick-at-Nite's TV Land."
Nick at Nite currently holds some of the best ratings of all cable stations in America. Nick at Nite would hope to keep that up, with future shows such as George Lopez premiering in Fall 2007, America's Funniest Home Videos premiering in April 2007, Home Improvement, premiering this September and The Nanny coming on February 2009.
On February 13, 2006, the Latin American version of Nickelodeon started broadcasting Nick at Nite for the first time, including shows like ALF, Mork and Mindy, The Addams Family, The Munsters, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Growing Pains, The Facts of Life, Diff'rent Strokes and Perfect Strangers (since Jaunary 2007), which have been broadcasted in Latin American local networks and other cable channels. Although the Latin American Nickelodeon was born in the mid-1990s, it had never carried the Nick and Nite block before.[2]
[edit] Nick at Nite UK
Curiously, Nick at Nite was one of the planned - and advertised - stations as part of Sky's new Multichannels package, but was never launched.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Offical Site
- Classic Nick at Nite Jingles
- Classic Nick at Nite Commercial
- 1985 Nick at Nite schedule
