TV Land

[Don Howard]

Not sure if this qualifies for the birthday and obits section since it's a cable network anniversary, but it was at 8pm Eastern time on Monday, April 29th 1996 when Nick At Nite's TV Land (as it was then known) began broadcasting. The opening night brought us classic commercials ["Mamma Mia, that's a spicy meatball" and many others] and first episodes of such series as That Girl, The Addams Family, Petticoat Junction, Mannix, Honey West, Green Acres {which featured narrator John Daly}, My Mother The Car and much more. For the opening years, rarely repeated shows were the order of the day (Owen Marshall Counselor At Law, Have Gun Will Travel, Dick Powell Theater, etc.) but now the channel shows mostly often repeated programs such as The Brady Bunch, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Three's Company, etc. and movies. How far it's come. Or how far it's gone. But in those early years, my VCR was rolling tape on that station very often.

[rigsby]

I saw the subject line and thought maybe it had finally died.

[Ian Wallis]

I absolutely loved TVLand when it first signed on.  Outside of GSN, that was the No. 2 channel my dish was always pointed to!  I really liked the fact they aired rarely-seen series - and in the beginning didn't edit very much out of them.  Like everything else, things change.

[Jimmy Owen]

I saw the TV Land preview the first night and thought it was great, but by the time my cable company added it regularly it had gone to the Shows That Are Or Had Recently Been On Other Cable Networks format.

/Love the show, but is there a rule that every cable net has to run "Bonanza."?

[BrandonFG]

[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' post=\'185120\' date=\'Apr 30 2008, 02:14 PM\']
I saw the TV Land preview the first night and thought it was great, but by the time my cable company added it regularly it had gone to the Shows That Are Or Had Recently Been On Other Cable Networks format.

/Love the show, but is there a rule that every cable net has to run "Bonanza."?
[/quote]
The last time I actually watched TVLand regularly, they felt an obligation to run "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie", which I noticed on all the other cable networks. Sister station Nick at Nite (oh, excuse me, Nick@Nite) is even worse, with constantly showing "Cosby Show" and "Home Improvement", which I can find everywhere else.

Don't even get me started on "George Lopez" airing there...

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'fostergray82\' post=\'185126\' date=\'Apr 30 2008, 02:47 PM\']
[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' post=\'185120\' date=\'Apr 30 2008, 02:14 PM\']
I saw the TV Land preview the first night and thought it was great, but by the time my cable company added it regularly it had gone to the Shows That Are Or Had Recently Been On Other Cable Networks format.

/Love the show, but is there a rule that every cable net has to run "Bonanza."?
[/quote]
The last time I actually watched TVLand regularly, they felt an obligation to run "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie", which I noticed on all the other cable networks. Sister station Nick at Nite (oh, excuse me, Nick@Nite) is even worse, with constantly showing "Cosby Show" and "Home Improvement", which I can find everywhere else.

Don't even get me started on "George Lopez" airing there...
[/quote]

They aren't so sister anymore, since TVL is in MTV Networks' Entertainment Group with Spike and Comedy Central and Nick at Nite (the "at" got spelled out again when they changed the logo to match the mothership) is in the Nickelodeon group with Nick, Noggin, NickToons and The N.  The channels are not under the same chief, and so NAN has become more concerned with flowing out of the Nick prime time lineup, while Larry Jones at TVL is obsessed with his "total entertainment for 35-60 Boomers" concept.

Now I expected that sooner or later NAN would be jumping ahead in decades, as they did, but not all the way to airing "George Lopez" right off the network.  Seems to me that I read that they are getting good ratings off of it, but it seems to me that NAN should always be where shows go *after* they've ended their cash-plus, double-run syndication route, not at the beginning.