So Long Nick At Nite, I Knew You Well – I Guess We’ll Always Have TV Land

In 1985, Nickelodeon got the idea that they were probably going to have to do something at night, being that they were a channel dedicated to children's television.  Nick at Nite was born, and I remember watching it the first night the shindig started (actually, I remember watching Nickelodeon when that started too).  Someone got the idea of going after "classic" television shows, and someone in a suit discovered it wasn't all that expensive, so we got a green light.

It would have been hard for Nick at Nite to start off better... for me.  Route 66 and My Three Sons were on the air, and certainly weren't in syndication anywhere else, and the whole thing kept getting better as time went on.  Soon it was Mr. Ed, I Spy, and Green Acres, and the fact that Nick at Nite had shown up was too cool for words.  And... yes, I was 14 when Nick at Nite hit.  I'm odd.

Pretty soon you had Bewitched and Lassie, and Nick at Nite was growing in popularity.  During these early years, Nick at Nite began welcoming you to TV Land.  It was a special little world that paid tribute to some of the greatest shows that ever graced the small screen.  TV Land was a wonderful little escape for a while.  A serious part of my life.

As we moved into the 90s, Nick at Nite turned things up a notch, building from its own success.  I'm guessing there are shows you can get on the really cheap as a beginning idea, but once the '90s hit, Nick at Nite could afford to really become what it was aiming at.

Soon we had: Dragnet, Get Smart, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Adventures of Superman, I Love Lucy, The Bob Newhart Show, Taxi, and many more.  It was like a little piece of heaven.  It was like there was someone out there who really got me, and made this little half-time network just for me.  For a couple of years they even had Welcome Back, Kotter.

Then, 1996 happened.  It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.

In 1996, fueled by the incredible success of Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon opted to make a whole, all day channel out of it, and TV Land moved from catch phrase to actual network.  TV Land is/was great, but some funny things started happening with semi-abandoned Nick at Nite.

A lot of great shows stayed around for a while, but other things started turning up on Nick at Nite.  Things like Phyllis.  Seriously, Phyllis.  Right out of the gates in '96, there was Phyllis.  And The Betty White Show.  The '90s didn't close out all that bad in the big picture, what with TV Land and Nick at Nite sharing some shows and so on, but even though we had solid shows (Newhart, All in the Family, and WKRP in Cincinnati among them), things felt different.

When 2000 hit, it was like Nick at Nite just didn't know what to do with itself anymore.  The whole theory seemed up in the air, because our original theory had its own channel now.  A number of shows came and went so fast that things were a bit confusing, and some things were on quite a while, but with a pretty small number of episodes cycling through.  Cheers, The Cosby Show, and Three's Company had pretty good runs, but there was a lot of Different Strokes, Coach, and Perfect Strangers types popping up.  You had to start wondering about this whole, "best of television" idea.  And Full House only died recently... that show was on Nick at Nite almost as long as it was really on.

As we turned the corner into the middle of '00s, Nick at Nite was almost a total loss.  Sure, Roseanne was on, and The Cosby Show was still going strong, but the whole Nick at Nite theory had started going goofy.  Mad About You popped up, and that was great, but Designing Women and A Different World told you that this was surely the beginning of the downward spiral.  But, Nick at Nite tried to keep you around.  It threw you a bone once in a while to see if you'd just stay around... enough.  They tossed out Growing Pains real quick, only to suck it back again.  NewsRadio showed up, and while I didn't get what happened to any scheme about great television, I liked that show... enough.

For a while, I was pretty irritated, especially because it seemed they were going to change the name to The Fresh Prince channel at one point, but there were a few things I liked.  Home Improvement isn't too bad, but it gets a bit old.  George Lopez didn't make a damn bit of sense to me, because it finished its "real" run, and began its Nick at Nite run in the same year, and that made my whole Nick at Nite sense go into convulsions... but I like that show pretty well.

So, going into '08, things were annoying, and I felt like I had been abandoned, but it wasn't horrible.  Here's the thing though.  Let's take George Lopez as an example case.  Now, I have my bedroom Tivo set to record George Lopez.  It's set to record up to 25 episodes.  There are no episodes on my Tivo right now though.  You know why?  Because if it's an episode that has aired in the last 30 days, Tivo won't record it!  In three weeks of a show that airs two episodes a day, you're out of shows!  And, don't think those three weeks were all different episodes either.  Not by a longshot.  There are 120 episodes of that show!

Anyway.  So that's all irritating, and Nick at Nite is losing me.

Then, it happened.  Family Matters.  Urkel.  The place that brought me all those great shows, where I watched Dragnet, and The Dick Van Dyke Show, and All in the Family... had Urkel on it.  It was almost too much to bear.  It was actually too much to bear, but I did the only thing I could do.  I ignored it.  I went into denial.  I'd just watch Cosby and Roseanne, and if Fresh Prince came on I'd have to deal with it, but that other thing was on some other channel.  The hell with reality.

But now...  I'm out.

On May 10th Nick at Nite is going to start running The Nanny, and that's too much.

We were so close once, you and I.  Didn't I tell people to watch you?  Wasn't I your biggest fan?  

What happened to us?

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About Marc Eastman

Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.

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