Nick At Nite Celebrating 10 Years Of Giving New Life To Old Series
Who knows old TV shows had such value?
Even the programming execs at Nickelodeon didn’t recognize what they’d stumbled across when, 10 years ago, they started plugging old-time television favorites into the cable channel’s prime-time schedule.
To mark its 10th anniversary, beginning tonight Nick at Nite offers a weeklong airing of its programming past and present.
You see, Nickelodeon, once known primarily as a children’s network, needed child-safe evening programs that also would draw in adult viewers.
So, on July 1, 1985, the cabler added “Donna Reed” and “Route 66” to its lineup and dubbed the abbreviated programming block Nick at Nite (NAN).
It wasn’t a novel idea - stations across the country had been burning off long-gone series in their nonprime hours for years. But NAN took it a step further by advertising the shows with off-beat promotions, marathons and quirky theme nights.
Before long, NAN was adding more shows and expanding its hours. Soon, the kids net had earned a reputation for being cable’s home for classic TV shows.
The rest, you could say, is TV using TV history to make TV history.
In the decade since, NAN has breathed new life into old shows like “My Three Sons,” “Ann Sothern,” “The Monkees,” “Mister Ed,” “Lancelot Link,” “Taxi” and “The Partridge Family,” to name but a few. And, in the process, it has helped turn old shows into hot commodities.
“When we started out, these shows were not really revered in the same way classic movies are,” said Rich Cronin, NAN’s senior vice president and general manager. “But these are some of the greatest cultural artifacts of the last 30 or 40 years in America.
‘I Love Lucy’ is a national treasure, as are the ‘Dick Van Dyke’ and ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ shows, and others. … The fact that we were able to elevate them and get good ratings out of it meant that now we’re in a bidding war every time there’s a show up for sale.”
NAN’s competitors include TNT, which currently houses shows like “Starsky & Hutch,” “Medical Center” and “Wild, Wild West”; TBS, which sports “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Brady Bunch,” among others; and SciFi, which now features “The Twilight Zone” and recently announced the acquistion of “Star Trek.”
The growing number of interested outlets has driven up prices.
In 1985, the average cost for an oldtime show ranged from $3,000 to $5,000 an episode. Today, cablers pony up between $10,000 and $25,000 apiece.
Cronin says NAN’s acquisition department keeps a database of every show ever made, with notes on where (and if) it’s currently running and when it will become available.
Then there’s the hit list, made up of shows NAN execs are hot to acquire.
Recent NAN additions include “The Munsters,” which joins the lineup July 3; “Hill Street Blues,” which begins running in November; “Mary Tyler Moore Show” spinoffs “Rhoda” and “Phyllis” (which star Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman, respectively), and “The Betty White Show,” all of which join in April; and “Happy Days,” which starts spinning in September 1996.
xxxx ‘VERTIVISION’ Nick at Nite’s “Vertivision,” as the cable channel dubs it, begins July 3 and continues through Labor Day, with six episodes of the same show featured on weeknights. Here’s what will be on when: “The Munsters” - Mondays “I Love Lucy” - Tuesdays “Bewitched” - Wednesdays “I Dream of Jeannie” - Thursdays “Welcome Back Kotter” - Fridays Los Angeles Times