A recent TV show had a comment that we are now living in a generation that will have no nostalgia, because our collective memory is available on the web, for everyone to share....
Well, first of all... Nostalgia isn't based on whether memories are unavailable, because actually memory is required to feel nostalgic for how things used to be. But, I get the point that there's a drastic difference because the entertainment we used to enjoy is now available for younger generations to experience for their first time. We shouldn't kid ourselves that this is the first time it happened, tho...
Remember Back to the Future ? When Marty McFly watches The Honeymooners with his future grandfather? He comments on the show, making the others wonder how he knew what was going to happen.. Marty then drops a remark about catching it in reruns... which no one had ever heard of. Imagine a time when TV shows hadn't rerun episodes!
Hell, I remember a time when the most popular TVs were only 19 in. Black & White portables. Color TVs were available, but were too expensive, and most shows weren't filmed in color. What's more, you had a knob to set the stations, there were 13 VHF channels you could set to, but only three networks. Only NBC, CBS and ABC affiliates. My family was lucky. We lived where the broadcast stations from Massachusetts and Rhode Island overlapped.
Then, everything changed. A second knob was added, allowing UHF to be available. In my area, this added three more stations, all independent of the networks. And, of course, this was also when PBS started broadcasting, adding a fourth network... So, now we had more choices. But what were we to choose from?
As with most public mediums, the problem was content. If you were to attract the viewers, you had to have a product that drew attention... Syndication had been created earlier, so that independently produced shows could be sold to networks for other than prime time viewing. Some game shows were syndicated, as were talk shows like Merv Griffin, Lawrence Welk or Mike Douglas. With the advent of UHF, syndication expanded the use of reruns. Some VHF stations already had been showing reruns of prime time shows between 3pm and 6pm. Now, UHF stations were using old favorites like Andy Griffith, Leave It to Beaver, or The Dick Van Dyke Show to fill their schedules. Especially popular shows were Star Trek (whose rerun career was more popular than it's initial NBC run), Batman, Get Smart, The Addams Family, and of course I Love Lucy.
The other counter programming move that UHF stations used was to rerun old movies during prime time. Sick of Dragnet, Mannix, Ironsides, Gunsmoke or Adam 12 (all soon to be reruns)? Then you could watch Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. Or John Wayne in The Searchers.
Now, here's the funny thing about the generation growing up in front of the TV at that time. While some shows were definitely period-set costume dramas, all the fashions you saw on the 'modern shows' weren't that dissimilar to those of the earlier shows. Rotary phones still looked pretty much the same (more on that in later blogs), stoves the same. You still saw women wearing sun dresses that Lucy, Donna Reed, or Barbara Billingsly might wear. As a kid, you weren't that sensitive to changes in style. You just thought Ricky Ricardo dressed funny. Our sense of what was the 'now' elongated....
Now, one of the independent UHF TV stations in my viewing area was WSBK TV 38. This station had the rights to show the Boston Bruins & the Red Sox. Of course, the vagaries of sports programming back then (before ESPN) often meant unscheduled delays, postponements, or other wise, time to fill quickly.. They'd often have tapes of shows ready to push in at a moment's notice. Or, they'd show an episode of Ask The Manager , which was the only attempt, locally to actually answer viewer's questions about TV in general, and their programming specifically.
What did I learn watching Ask The Manager ? That TV shows Had Legs. Having "legs" meant that a show was very popular and could be counted on for good ratings for some time. They were timeless, because their subjects weren't time period specific. A show like Murphy Brown, with it's humor based on politics of the time, had short legs. M.A.S.H., on the other hand, though actually running longer than the war it was set in, had long legs because it was a period piece with eternal themes. Thus, some shows, in order to be successful in syndication actually had to be syndicated while the original show was still in production. This started sometime in the late seventies, after cable had appeared.
And what a game changer cable was! Even more channels, all hungry for content. And all vying for the same programming that UHF had used. But, with bigger purses to buy shows with. It should also be noted that the infamous 'infomercials' began to appear at this time. They offered the independent stations a way to subsidize buying the shows they needed, by selling some of their overnight programming time.
As cable TV grew in popularity, things changed again. Paramount studios had considered starting a new Broadcast network, but couldn't fund it. Still, they wanted to test the waters. So, they created Star Trek: the Next Generation specifically for syndication. Meanwhile, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell created the 700 Club and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Then came Fox Broadcasting as the fourth network (fifth, actually, counting PBS). Soon, Warner Bro.s & Paramount would join the fray, only to later combine as the CW... Independent stations began to be bought up, or added as second stations to the traditional affiliates. Some stations tried (and failed) to copy TBS, the 'superstation' that straddled broadcast and cable networks.
I should note here that a lot of this had to do with deregulation by the FCC as to just what corporations could own stations & how many stations a single owner could have available in an area at a single time.
Let's also look at what recording technology did. The VHS and Beta video recorders were marketed in the 80s, becoming an almost essential appliance. Soon, not only could you record and collect your favorite shows, but they'd also become marketable properties sold as tape collections. And so were the movies. Both new releases and old favorites from a studio's vaults could be sold as new products. As the formats changed (laser disc, DvD, Blu Ray) this process was repeated again and again, refueling the market for properties and content.
Next: You Tube and video streaming... Now, because you could format snippets of favorite programming to a file that could be shared by computers, you could also alter them, mash images, make them personalized, use them in a new context. The age of the prosumer caught up with it. (more on prosumerism, in the future).
Btw- I'm sorry I haven't included imagery. I promise I'll try to include images in the future.
So, where was I? Refuting the lack of nostalgia? Let's compare shows with long legs... The longest running police procedural is NBC's Law & Order. Reruns are shown on TNT, constantly. You can often tell the year each show was by the 'ripped from the headlines' plots, the changing casts and.... the use of cell phones in the plot. While this show has 'long legs', it also often has very specific product references, especially as to what those products can and cannot do. Which changed constantly as the products grew more sophisticated.
CBS's Gunsmoke was the only other show that ran for 10 years. As it was a western, set before 1900, it had no specific references to any changes in style. Watching week to week, you'd have no other reference to the passing of time besides the aging of the cast. The same could be said about M.A.S.H.
About the only comparable show to Law & Order would be Fox's The Simpsons. Since it's an animated show, it's topical references are sort've tangential to the show's setting. You don't sense the passing of time in the same way,,
Now, we get to the sense of nostalgia. Remember how I said the use of reruns on TV elongated our sense of the 'now'? (yes, way back seven paragraphs into this essay) Well, the current generation is constantly bombarded with it's immediate sense of 'now', because technology is constantly being updated. And because of that technology, this generation has a recall of 'how things were' that is incomparable to what was available in the past. We're able to store more information, and put it into context more easily. We're better at navigating the cultural touchstones that defined an era than ever before. And so much of our conversation is about the significance of those touchstones, even for those who didn't experience them first hand.
I think I'll return to this subject on July 21st.....
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