It\'s been discussed several times about when GSN\'s best years were, but what about cable &/or satellite in general? This isn\'t just limited to when the best game show programming was on cable, but all genres.
My vote for cable TV\'s best era was a year or so either side of 1988: USA had a great line up of game show reruns and cartoons (and as bad as some of their original Canadian imports were they don\'t look so bad when you pair them up against some of the more modern disasters originals). CBN aired some game shows, and other cable channels like Lifetime & MTV/VH1 created some decent original shows.
Nick @ Nite brought us some great vintage programming without 2-5 hour blocks of the same show, and there was also a great niche channel, Ha!, that gave us even more TV show rerun options.
Other choices for best cable era???
/Thank goodness channels like AntennaTV and MeTV still have the Nick @ Nite spirit of the late 80s.
I\'d have to go along with 1988-90. That\'s when I really discovered cable, and like you said, you had a nice mix of originals and reruns for the game show buffs. But the one thing I love about that era is that cable channels had more variety and took more chances. Instead of the same stuff on 12 different channels, each network had its own niche programming, and even showed the obscure one-season wonders from time to time.
That being said, I wouldn\'t mind seeing cable in its more experimental era, i.e. the late-70s/early-80s.
I would say cable television was at its best from 1980 to 1995.
I would say cable television was at its best from 1980 to 1995.How would you know? You weren\'t even born yet!
Okay then, 1987 to 1995.
It was at its best right before USA started putting a transparent version of their logo on-screen for 15 seconds going into and out of commercial breaks, and ruined everything.
Then they changed it so that the logo would stay there for the entire segment.
Where have you gone, Danger Mouse? We miss you, Todd Donoho and \"Time Out For Trivia.\" Oh, The Learning Channel, when did you give up on the joys of education? Robin Meade, you\'re a hottie, but you\'re no Lynne Russell. When MTV didn\'t stand for Moronic Teens Vomiting. When my converter box would fill HBO\'s off hours with C-SPAN. So long, Cubs and Braves every day during the summer, AMC, you were TCM before TCM. I remember sitting in a bar with our news editor, and we were both able to sing the Nick at Nite \"My Three Sons\" commercial. FROM MEMORY. There was experimentation, not sameness, not brand extensions. There were not 17 Discovery Channel spinoffs, 12 Fox Sports Channels, three C-SPANS, ESPN 8 \"The Ocho,\" or Skip Bayless, for that matter. There was CNN\'s Crossfire, the only example of talking heads shouting at each other, something that now fills entire networks. There was Australian Rules Football!
It was tremendous, my friend.
The saddest thing about this discussion is the sweet spot so many people are talking about - the late \'80s to early \'90s - was the exact same period of time that our household didn\'t have cable. (We unsubscribed in 1990; didn\'t get it again until about \'94.) So I missed out on most of the fun. By the time we got it again, Nickelodeon and MTV had already started their downward trends, and USA was about to phase out the game show reruns. As an \'80s kid, those were the only two channels that really mattered to me.
Ah, yes! The late 1980s/early 1990s were the best as far as varied programing goes. It wasn\'t relegated to cable. When our house had satellite in 1985, it was great to see what movie channels were around before they got \"scrambled\"(we later had to subscribe to those channels to \"unscramble\" them). I mean, where else can you see movies like The Gods Must Be Crazy during the day & some \"B-type\" movies late at night. This all came before PPV & on-demand were common.
As far as game shows, USA & CBN were the best at their afternoon blocks. On satellite, I\'ll never forget watching Trivia Trap on a channel called TV Heaven. The Nostalgia Channel had one called Let\'s Go Back which was neat to see.
And whereas MTV & VH-1 filled my musical needs, Video Hits USA on satellite did the same thing.
Even sports was a thing of beauty. Fron Aussie Rules Football to beach volleyball, sports was second behind game shows for most viewed on satellite(with movies at #3). And when some of the sports channels went off the air, sometimes I hear some music that\'s often associated with the \"Sports + Network\" ticker. Those were fun times.
The saddest thing about this discussion is the sweet spot so many people are talking about - the late \'80s to early \'90s - was the exact same period of time that our household didn\'t have cable. (We unsubscribed in 1990; didn\'t get it again until about \'94.) So I missed out on most of the fun. By the time we got it again, Nickelodeon and MTV had already started their downward trends, and USA was about to phase out the game show reruns. As an \'80s kid, those were the only two channels that really mattered to me.
\'94 was when we got rid of cable, and it stayed \"off\" for six years. I still have some fond memories from 1994-99 (watching it at my grandparents\' places), including FAM\'s daytime block of reruns in summer \'95.
I may be in the minority, but I consider the downward spiral at the point networks started squeezing credits and inserting pop-up ads to get more advertising in. That was 1999 or 2000.
Being among a bunch of geeks, was I the only one who watched the original Prevue Guide channel for entertainment?
I remember watching Nickelodeon in the late 80\'s and a few minutes after 8pm, I would get snow as it would cutover to Nick at Nite which for whatever reason, we were unable to get. (assuming it was a separate subscription)
I would have to say when CBN started the game show blocks in 82 or so; USA expanded on the idea in 84-85 and lasted until 95, when the niche channels came into being. I\'m too old to have appreciated the NICK blocks, but I\'m sure they brought great joy to kids.
I may be in the minority, but I consider the downward spiral at the point networks started squeezing credits and inserting pop-up ads to get more advertising in. That was 1999 or 2000.
Excuse the hyperbole...\"downward spiral\" is a bit much, and I typed that before my cup of coffee. You know I\'m sane. :-P
/Still don\'t like it though
Being among a bunch of geeks, was I the only one who watched the original Prevue Guide channel for entertainment?
The best time for cable in my opinion was also the mid-90\'s. We had niche channels that appeared, showing us some shows and things that hadn\'t appeared on TV in years, and those channels were absolutely dedicated to them. Examples:
* GSN (of course!) Literally back then, \"all play, all day\". One could go 6am to midnight (until \"Late Night Games\") with no repeats, and no original shows (unless you count the phone-in games). Many short-lived shows thrown in there, too.
* TV Land. Another channel that dusted off some short-lived shows every once in awhile. Like a 24-hour N@N (which was its intention, no?), even commercial-free at the start. I did a double-take the first time I saw an old \"In the News\" from CBS\'s Saturday Morning days on there.
* Cartoon Network - back before they started with their original shows which eventually took over most of the schedule, this was another place to see shows that hadn\'t been on in awhile.
One last thing, nothing to do with the mid \'90s, but more like a decade earlier - I remember the early days of N@N, enjoying Dennis the Menace (which I hadn\'t seen in a few years) and being introduced to the Donna Reed Show (at 10 1/2 I had no idea who she was). I could have sworn, however, that Nickelodeon was testing those late-evening waters with their OWN shows before it became N@N. I specifically remember an episode of \"Lights, Camera, Action!\" coming on at like 9 or 10 in the evening. Anyone else remember them doing that?
The best time for cable in my opinion was also the mid-90\'s. We had niche channels that appeared, showing us some shows and things that hadn\'t appeared on TV in years, and those channels were absolutely dedicated to them. Examples:
* GSN (of course!) Literally back then, \"all play, all day\". One could go 6am to midnight (until \"Late Night Games\") with no repeats, and no original shows (unless you count the phone-in games). Many short-lived shows thrown in there, too.
* TV Land. Another channel that dusted off some short-lived shows every once in awhile. Like a 24-hour N@N (which was its intention, no?), even commercial-free at the start. I did a double-take the first time I saw an old \"In the News\" from CBS\'s Saturday Morning days on there.
* Cartoon Network - back before they started with their original shows which eventually took over most of the schedule, this was another place to see shows that hadn\'t been on in awhile.
One last thing, nothing to do with the mid \'90s, but more like a decade earlier - I remember the early days of N@N, enjoying Dennis the Menace (which I hadn\'t seen in a few years) and being introduced to the Donna Reed Show (at 10 1/2 I had no idea who she was). I could have sworn, however, that Nickelodeon was testing those late-evening waters with their OWN shows before it became N@N. I specifically remember an episode of \"Lights, Camera, Action!\" coming on at like 9 or 10 in the evening. Anyone else remember them doing that?
I do believe you are correct. Some of the other originals I can recall were \"Turkey Television\" and \" On the Television\" with Tim Conway Jr., among others.
I\'ll also vote for the mid-90s. I got a C-band dish in \'92 and finally had access to Nick @ Nite, USA, FAM, eventually GSN, etc. Even ESPN, which carried the NHL back then!
As others have mentioned, the lineups of all of those channels were (mostly) great. Around the late \'90s, most of those shows started disappearing from those channels - in many cases never to be seen again.
I haven\'t used my C-band dish in a few years now because everything\'s gone digital, and I never upgraded to that type of receiver. Based on what those channels are airing now, I\'m not really missing a lot.
The \'90s were the best!
I\'ll also vote for the mid-90s. I got a C-band dish in \'92 and finally had access to Nick @ Nite, USA, FAM, eventually GSN, etc. Even ESPN, which carried the NHL back then!
Ditto for C-Band. It had virtually everything you could get on cable, plus the unscrambled \"wild feeds\" for just about anything. Before the move to Ku-Band/Digital/HDTV, you could often find a feed for any sport, any game, and either team. And C-Band gave us a few oddities as well.
Being among a bunch of geeks, was I the only one who watched the original Prevue Guide channel for entertainment?
I\'ll see your Prevue Guide, which I was amused by as well, and raise you THE WEATHER CHANNEL. Especially the local forecasts and that music (which is how I discovered Mannheim Steamroller, among others).
I\'d say late \'80s/early \'90s too. Some of us like to think everything was best in the \'80s (but I *am* biased...), but parts of the following decade had bright spots. You could see the chinks forming in the armor (MTV with more non-music programming, for instance) but it seemed like there was still a happy medium. 1991-92 is a particular nostalgic part of the \'90s for me, mostly cause there were still some decent game shows on USA (I even LIKED TJW and TTD \'90 then!), Raccoons on The Disney Channel, and wrestling (the mainstays like Prime Time and All-American on USA, the weekend 6:05 slots on TBS, and GWF daily on ESPN). Plus the classic reruns hadn\'t gone away yet, so I could still watch Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and others.
\'97 had some good points too, as that\'s when I first got GSN and Sci-Fi (where MST3K was restarting), back when they were really good. I know, 1997 prob. couldn\'t hold a candle to the earlier Laura Chambers et al days, but it was still awesome. Little did I know, October 1997 was coming, and in retrospect, even that wasn\'t THAT bad.
Now, wonder if this could spin off into the best era of LOCAL television? For the New York area, I\'d say \'70s and \'80s, but again, I *am* biased. (I am mulling over writing a book about that subject and time period, for the NY area, which is why this cable topic made me think of the other)
Local television was best in mid 60\'s through the late 70\'s. Shows were seldom shown more than once-a-day. More varied shows in syndication. Checkerboards, 4:30 movies, One half hour of news at 6pm and another at 11pm was enough to keep you more than informed.
Local television was best in mid 60\'s through the late 70\'s. Shows were seldom shown more than once-a-day. More varied shows in syndication. Checkerboards, 4:30 movies, One half hour of news at 6pm and another at 11pm was enough to keep you more than informed.
I concur with that. It seemed that with the 5 commercial channels we had, when there weren\'t any game shows on the Big 3 networks, you could go over to the UHF side and go back & forth between the two indies for either old cartoons or sitcoms which always seemed to be the counterprogramming to soaps. In Cleveland, it was Channel 43 vs. Channel 61 and if the weather conditions were right, I could add channels 20 and 50 from Detroit into the mix.
Loved those days of being home sick and having my eyes glued to the TV from sunup to sundown.
I remember watching Nickelodeon in the late 80\'s and a few minutes after 8pm, I would get snow as it would cutover to Nick at Nite which for whatever reason, we were unable to get. (assuming it was a separate subscription)
Your cable system probably still had the old arrangement where the Nickelodeon signal would get swapped for the A&E signal around 8- which to the best of my knowledge was commonplace for several years, even after they obtained separate channels for both networks. That\'s my guess.
That was the case for my hometown as late as 1998. It was VH1 during the day, and at 4pm, it became Comedy Central. The cable setup was weird here in that Chesapeake used TCI (which had the VH1/Comedy Central setup)...Norfolk, Va. Beach, and I think Portsmouth were Cox. Other cities used other cable systems as well (Charter in Suffolk, can\'t remember what the other two cities used).
Chesapeake finally became part of the Cox system in September of \'98.
The late 80s into early 90s were the best for me. Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite was awesome: fresh kids stuff in the day, old school classics at night. As an 8-year-old, I loved it...the latter moreso than the former at times (thank you Mr. Ed!) MTV had their videos and shows that, if they didn\'t play videos, were about videos and music. Everything else had that \"something for everyone\" type of vibe. HBO and Showtime were not so expensive and each had one channel. I even looked forward to the free previews of the Disney Channel when it was a premium network.
The 90s were weird for me. TCI of Northwest Indiana dropped Lifetime and MTV (thanks largely to then-fresh Beavis and Butthead) from their lineup in late 1993, but Nickelodeon kept me afloat. The advent of SNICK was a convention-breaker to me; I was always taught that Nickelodeon ended promptly at 7 to make room for Nick at Nite. However, it gave me Roundhouse and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, so that was a huge plus.
Count me as one of the people who actually watched the Weather Channel religiously. I remember Mike Bono, Jeanetta Jones, Dave Schwartz (I miss that guy), Jeff Morrow (whom I think was still around), and Vivian Brown (who is still around), among others. I miss the old-school graphics, music, and jazz selections. MTV still held its own (I moved to an area temporarily in 1994 where MTV and Lifetime were still intact), but I sensed the shift of identity when MTV came back to NWI.
After 1996, that\'s when things went downhill to me. Channels started to pile up, quality started to water down. When media conglomerates started buying up the networks I grew up watching, I knew it was time to move on. I won\'t even get into detail about MTV, because I know what\'s up.
Those 10 years from 1987 to 1996, to me, was cable at its finest.
The Inquisitive One
That was the case for my hometown as late as 1998. It was VH1 during the day, and at 4pm, it became Comedy Central.
GSN and the Playboy Channel. Interesting share.
Suddenly I\'m curious to see if there was ever a stranger arrangement.
I distinctly remember C-SPAN 2 sharing with EWTN, a Catholic-based network, on my cable system (I think it was Time Warner at the time). Separation of church and state be damned! :)
Anthony
Talk about strange channel switches, NYTCable(which later became Garden State Cable) had a rather odd switch. They had the Weather Channel from about 1 AM to about 7 PM for 18 hours. Then. it switched over to the black entertainment channel BET at 7 PM(except on Sundays). This forced me to watch the local news cast if I wanted to know what the weather for the next day was before I went to bed. Fortunately after a few years, both got their own 24/7 slots. I can understand the switch because I was living in an area that has a pretty good concentration of Affrican-Americans living there(if you wanna call 20% a good concentration, so beit).
I only rarely got to experience the \'80s-\'90s cable time frame (at home for less than a year in 1984 and over 2 more years via a big dish from \'85 to \'87). For the first one, I and my siblings mostly watched Nickelodeon and the L.A. indies when we didn\'t have the San Diego locals on. For the second it was almost always The Disney Channel (received free via sat, and later test-scrambled for about 2 hours every afternoon).
From December 1987 to March 1989 we had no TV at all (except during times when both my parents were out of the house and I would sneak in the small portable black-and-white from their closet to watch syndie Double Dare with my siblings).
From March 1989 to September 1998, all TV at home was exclusively OTA Huntsville (Orlando-Daytona Beach from June 1991 to September 1992) locals.
In September 1998, my parents (having grown tired of having to adjust, or having me adjust, the antenna for just about every channel) finally bit the bullet and re-subbed to cable. From this point until Februrary 2001, it was just broadcast basic containing the Huntsville locals, WGN and TBS Superstations, and the Prevue Channel (the latter moved to another channel when WHDF, the former WOWL, went market-wide with a UPN affiliation).
Our household finally re-obtained full basic cable roughly 16.5 years later. Over the next couple of years, as my siblings were marrying and moving out, my viewing of cable channels was scattered between Cartoon Network (for the classics, The Powerpuff Girls, and later Dexter\'s Laboratory), Disney Channel (though it was much different than the last time we had it, I still enjoyed a lot of their offerings like a quite good movie library, including originals, and series like Even Stevens , Lizzie McGuire , and later Kim Possible), and, later, Game Show Network (which quickly pushed most of the others away until a year later when we moved and lost GSN).
From about that move on, I started being less entertained by the cable channels and started watching and collecting DVDs (particularly Star Treks The Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine, as well as Farscape). I still had some favorites in that timeframe, like Iron Chef, Good Eats, the early seasons of Spongebob Squarepants, and the aforementioned Kim Possible (which was the only good series on Disney Channel by then; the original movies were still pretty good up until the post-High School Musical period). For a while I also watched the fading/zombie Nick GAS just to watch some of the old Nick game shows I never got to see when they first ran. In the last year before I moved to my current location, I got G4 for about a month, during which I discovered Ninja Warrior.
In conclusion, while the general state of TV may not be too great right now, and I never really got to experience cable in the \'80s and \'90s, from my reference point the early 2000s were the best I\'ve experienced. But even now I can still find a few favorites to latch onto (especially in the current age of HD and the DVR, the latter of which without it, I might hardly watch TV at all since I can\'t stand the high commercial loads anymore).
Here\'s an early 90\'s channel I\'m curious if anyone remembers...
The Box
Here\'s an early 90\'s channel I\'m curious if anyone remembers...
The Box
I remember it quite well. When we didn\'t have cable in the late-90s, this was the alternative, so I got my fix of music videos there.
/Could never convince my mom to let me call the 1-900 request number tho...
I had TCI for awhile and don\'t remember a VH1/Comedy Central pairing. Then again I wasn\'t really going too far down the channel listings- most of the channels I watched were in the 2-40 range.
Might not have been in my market though- although I think on the weekend for a little while one of CC\'s predecessors shared the Nickelodeon frequency. Could be wrong but I do remember it switching at least once.
Here, for much of the early \'90s, we had a combo of NJN (New Jersey Network, now NJTV and owned by WNET, like ALL the PBS stations here...) and Comedy Central. I would get PO\'ed because the NJN signoff would almost always cut into the 12 am airing of MST3K. On the other hand, NJN\'s signoff song \"Positively New Jersey\" became a meme in our house as a result.
/And we never got the new weekend episodes because NJN was on at the time!
Here\'s an early 90\'s channel I\'m curious if anyone remembers...
The Box
We got that off of our analog channel in Chicago. I believe that was 28, which aired Korean soap operas from Noon to 11 (or midnight), and then Music Television from Midnight to Noon.
Of course, when The Box became MTV 2, it got more access time throughout the day, moving the Korean Channel to 41.
The Box
.....
Of course, when The Box became MTV 2, it got more access time throughout the day, moving the Korean Channel to 41.
Okay, I was trying to remember, but you\'ve confirmed it. For a time in college, I didn\'t have cable in my dorm room, but I did remember getting MTV2, and was trying to remember whether it was a replacement for The Box, or part of the cable lineup (every student had to get cable starting my junior year).
It was apparently the former, as I remember watching music videos on MTV2 sophomore year. IIRC it was a very similar setup, with you calling a 1-900 number. Occasionally they\'d have two videos; the one that got more calls would be shown next.
/An MTV channel showing nothing but videos, then changing to generic entertainment programming
//Never heard that one before!
/An MTV channel showing nothing but videos, then changing to generic entertainment programming//Never heard that one before!
And the funny thing was, when MTV2 debuted in \'96, I remember them making a big deal out of the fact that they would be a throwback to the original MTV, with all videos, all the time...
/An MTV channel showing nothing but videos, then changing to generic entertainment programming//Never heard that one before!
And the funny thing was, when MTV2 debuted in \'96, I remember them making a big deal out of the fact that they would be a throwback to the original MTV, with all videos, all the time...
See also: Fuse, the \"alternative\" to mainstream music television.
The late 80s into early 90s were the best for me. Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite was awesome: fresh kids stuff in the day, old school classics at night. As an 8-year-old, I loved it...the latter moreso than the former at times (thank you Mr. Ed!) MTV had their videos and shows that, if they didn\'t play videos, were about videos and music. Everything else had that \"something for everyone\" type of vibe. HBO and Showtime were not so expensive and each had one channel. I even looked forward to the free previews of the Disney Channel when it was a premium network.
The 90s were weird for me. TCI of Northwest Indiana dropped Lifetime and MTV (thanks largely to then-fresh Beavis and Butthead) from their lineup in late 1993, but Nickelodeon kept me afloat. The advent of SNICK was a convention-breaker to me; I was always taught that Nickelodeon ended promptly at 7 to make room for Nick at Nite. However, it gave me Roundhouse and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, so that was a huge plus.
Count me as one of the people who actually watched the Weather Channel religiously. I remember Mike Bono, Jeanetta Jones, Dave Schwartz (I miss that guy), Jeff Morrow (whom I think was still around), and Vivian Brown (who is still around), among others. I miss the old-school graphics, music, and jazz selections. MTV still held its own (I moved to an area temporarily in 1994 where MTV and Lifetime were still intact), but I sensed the shift of identity when MTV came back to NWI.
After 1996, that\'s when things went downhill to me. Channels started to pile up, quality started to water down. When media conglomerates started buying up the networks I grew up watching, I knew it was time to move on. I won\'t even get into detail about MTV, because I know what\'s up.
Those 10 years from 1987 to 1996, to me, was cable at its finest.
The Inquisitive One
Likewise, I was a Weather Channel groupie in it\'s earlier years. My fave was Kam Carman (no relation to Kammie Carman, Denver sportscaster), who is still doing weather in Detroit and still looking good. I was always a weather junkie and should\'ve minored in that in college.
How many people had cable systems with the time & weather information/community bulletin board channels and would watch them just to watch the graphics get drawn in the same way they were drawn on \"Catch Phrase\"?
I also got hooked on the Weather Channel right from the time it was added to our cable system, although I couldn\'t figure out at first why they kept breaking away to a blank blue screen with music, until I kept watching and found out the local forecast was supposed to go there...
How many people had cable systems with the time & weather information/community bulletin board channels and would watch them just to watch the graphics get drawn in the same way they were drawn on \"Catch Phrase\"?
I\'ll see you and raise you. In the earliest days of our town\'s first local channel, 20 hours of \"no local programming\" was a Lazy Susan-like turntable of a thermometer, a hydrometer, a barometer and a anemometer. The turntable moved to the next position and stopped for 15 seconds, then on to the next gauge.
Needless to say, it broke down quite often which became the only fun part of having that station on.
I remember when Nick at Nite started, they had a jingle that went:
At eight o\'clock
When the moon is bright
Nickelodeon becomes
Nick at Nite.
A fellow TV fan recalled something else about Nick at Nite when it started. He said that when it started in 1985, they used to show everything they aired uncut (half-hour programs were roughly 25-26 minutes without commercials, and one-hour ones were 52-53 minutes during the 50s and 60s). He recorded many of those programs throughout 1985 off of Nick at Nite, that\'s how he knows.
Then in 1987, they acquired Make Room for Daddy (only seasons 5 to 9 of its 11-year-run were syndicated), and they were cut to around 22 minutes. Nobody complained, and as a result, Nick & Nite began cutting EVERYTHING they had shown in the past down to 22 minutes or 44 minutes.