Better Living Through Television

September 9, 2015 5:24 AM

Here's The Adventures of Milkman, How To Be Swell, The Lost Brady, Phoebe, Classic TV Rewinds, and the "Guy Series" (which has a couple of unexpected cameos), as well as three collections of commercials, all callbacks from 80s-90s Nick At Nite, and that age when MTV's success inspired channels to put more personality into their promotion.

Here's a Nickelodeon & Nick At Nite promo feed from 1990 with some gems scattered throughout it. Here's some more. There's a ton more scattered across YouTube, if you want for some reason to simulate the experience of falling asleep with the TV on from 1995 or so.

posted by JHarris (22 comments total)

I have another (but much longer!) post like this, about classic Cartoon Network promos, coming up soon.
posted by JHarris at 5:25 AM on September 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

The first time I ever heard the tune to "Tom's Diner" was in this I Dream of Genie promo from Nick at Nite, so I still mostly hear those lyrics even when the actual song is playing. I'm sure that song is fine if you're not thinking about Barbara Eden, but imagine how much better it is if you are.

Also "it's kind of like Bewitched" is a genius line.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:37 AM on September 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

The brilliant The Adventures of Pete & Pete also started off as a series of between-show shorts.
posted by Gelatin at 5:53 AM on September 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

MTV and Nick At Nite were both inspired by the same thing: shoestring budgets and archival material laying around.

Twenty years later, the My Three Sons promo where there is a parental warning before Chip lets loose with a "heck" still slays me to this day.
posted by dr_dank at 5:58 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I cannot overstate how important Nick at Nite's marketing was to either shaping my sense of humor or at least confirming that it wasn't alone in the universe.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 6:11 AM on September 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

OMG, I never realized I had the narration from "How to Be Swell" committed to memory.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:29 AM on September 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

The first time I ever heard the tune to "Tom's Diner" was in this I Dream of Genie promo from Nick at Nite

OH MY GOD

This is me too but I never knew why. I would hear Tom's Diner, and always expect it to be a I Dream of Genie song, but it never was.

Thank you.
posted by curious nu at 6:37 AM on September 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

I still have a little pin I got from them for correctly answering a bunch of "Taxi"-related trivia because, duh, "Taxi" rules.
posted by Melismata at 7:18 AM on September 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

JHarris: I have another (but much longer!) post like this, about classic Cartoon Network promos, coming up soon.

Don't you dare. Some of us have things to do today!
posted by dr_dank at 7:46 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

These all kinda live in the same part of my brain as Up All Night, Dinner and A Movie, Liquid Television and both of Joe Bob Brigg's shows.
posted by valkane at 8:06 AM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

both of Joe Bob Brigg's shows.

Something you deeply loved, but worry will turn out to be super offensive on reviewing?
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 8:14 AM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wow -- ~20+ years later, watching "How to be swell: Weenies: Born of Capitalism!" and "How to be swell: Life Has Meaning!" is like my analogue* to yesterday's AskMe: "What novels only intelligible in mid-life?".
*Because, instead of reading the assigned Dickens or Lord of the Flies, I was watching Get Smart and the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
posted by mean square error at 8:32 AM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

dr_dank, I can't make more than one post in a 24-hour period, so "soon" is "sometime in the upcoming weeks." (But yes, most of the post is already written, it just has to be submitted.)
posted by JHarris at 8:43 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Let us all be patient, JHarris will get to it and it will be awesome. Still, I was about to make a more pointed comment than Gelatin did about the woeful omission of the seminal short-form Adventures of Pete & Pete among Nickelodeon promo videos ("Freeze Tag"! "Route 34"! ) - yes, it wasn't Nick AT NITE, but as a young adult cable TV viewer, it was second only to Ren & Stimpy in giving me an excuse to watch that 'children's channel'.

It's just sad to see that the "golden age of cable channel promos" is pretty much over, probably due to the fact that most of it was because of the need to fill large quantities of unsold commercial time and having undersupervised creatives in the network office (neither of which exists today).
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:25 AM on September 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

Pete & Pete was amazing yes, but as foop says, wasn't on Nick At Nite.
posted by JHarris at 11:30 AM on September 9, 2015

Twenty years later, the My Three Sons promo where there is a parental warning before Chip lets loose with a "heck" still slays me to this day.

They've got a daaaaaaaad, his name is Steeeeeeeve
He's got a jobbbbbbbbbb, he's really tallllllllll
And then there's Bubbbbbbbbb, he makes them fooooooooooood
They've got a dogggggggggggg, they're My Three Sons!
posted by Lucinda at 12:38 PM on September 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

Dick Van Dyke is Robert Petry
He comes home
Hugs Laura
And accidentally trips over that thing.
But sometimes he doesn't do that
Because they
Changed it,
Instead he skirts it with a funny little step.
And there's yet another version
He clears the
Ottoman
But then he trips over the rug.

And then, Rob and Buddy and Sally shake hands and the episode title comes on (obscuring Richie), and notice Rob shakes hands with Buddy again...And that's it.

OMG Metafilter you have RUINED me!!!
posted by Melismata at 12:53 PM on September 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm trying to figure out if these were done by the usual Nickelodeon voiceover guy of the time.
posted by dr_dank at 8:48 PM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Perhaps if your Mr. Sartre had watched more television or gone on dates, he wouldn't be such a Gloomy Gus!"

Best How to Be Swell EVER.
posted by bakerina at 11:05 PM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Fred/Alan, Inc., the guys who invented Nick at Nite, have an online archive that might also be of interest.
posted by yjon at 2:19 PM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh wow, I just realized! The "Fred" of Fred/Alan is Fred Seibert, former MTV, Nickelodeon then Hanna-Barbera exec, and the guy who founded Frederator Studios, which produces Adventure Time and Bee & Puppycat and a lot of other awesome cartoons, including running the World Premiere Toons program! You can draw a line through Seibert directly through the most awesome networks at the times when they were most awesome: MTV, Nick, Nick At Nite and Cartoon Network. foop, are you reading this? Do you know anything about the guy? I'm shining the foopsignal.

Here's an article on the page yjon linked on positioning a great forgotten channel, "Ha! The TV Comedy Network." I may just have to make a FPP on that.
posted by JHarris at 3:05 PM on September 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Here are some promo spots for HA!
posted by JHarris at 3:21 PM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]