There is a major anniversary coming up on July 1. It has great significance to a large segment of Americans of a certain age, yet there are no planned celebrations of which I am aware.
The request—along with 200 episodes of “The Donna Reed Show”—was how Nick at Nite was born.
As a child of the latchkey generation, the timing couldn’t have been better. As a tween in the early ’80s, I rushed home from school to devour Nickelodeon each day.
Shows like “You Can’t Do That on Television,” “The Tomorrow People,” and “What Will They Think of Next?” were a staple for me and millions of other kids whose primary babysitter was cable television.
I watched everything Nickelodeon had to offer, until it signed off and boring old Arts and Entertainment occupied its space.
But that all changed with the advent of Nick at Nite.
Laybourne’s idea was to take vintage black-and-white television shows that nobody wanted and somehow make them desirable. Talk about making lemonade from a lemon!
The original line-up included “Donna Reed,” “Dennis the Menace,” and “Route 66.” It soon grew to include “Car 54, Where Are You?,” “Mr. Ed,” “The Patty Duke Show,” and the black-and-white seasons of “My Three Sons” and “Bewitched.”
Prior to this, reruns had been limited mainly to color episodes. Black and white was considered dull, old fashioned, and unwanted.
But the marketing geniuses at Nick at Nite somehow convinced us teenagers that it was now “hip to be square"—that these series were worthy of our time and attention.
We were part of a special inner circle, visiting vintage ’50s and ’60s shows that hadn’t been aired for decades.
It was the magic of the commercials, jingles, and short segments such as “How to Be Swell” and “The Adventures of Milkman” that convinced us.
A typical advertisement for one of Nick at Nite’s offerings, “Dragnet,” offered two formulas of Joe Friday. “Mod” showed Sergeant Friday surrounded by dancing Go Go girls, while “Ultra Mod” sent up our favorite deadpan dick as a Roy Lichtenstein-style painting.
Nick at Nite was like an oldies radio station, but for television. Nothing like it had ever been done before.
And it caught on. Not only for us, but eventually for our boomer parents as well. They revisited their childhood favorites alongside those of us who were viewing those gems for the first time.
Together, we cherished the wholesomeness of an American culture that was already long past.
While Nick at Nite’s ads poked fun at old TV shows, it was never in a mean-spirited or deconstructive manner. A bit silly to be sure, with prime examples being the My Three Sons Sing Along, The Secrets of Mr. Ed, or the Back of Patty Duke’s Head, but always tempered with a healthy measure of esteem and fondness.
And then there was Dixie, Nick at Nite’s own black and white pixie, reminding us to watch “only Nick at Nite brand reruns,” because they were, well, swell!
You could be all alone with Nick at Nite, yet still find comfort in the fact that millions of other viewers across this great nation of ours were doing the same thing simultaneously.
For various reasons, Nick at Nite faded by the end of the millenia. As the internet took off, it spun much of its classic content off to a sister channel, TVLand, which was a pale shadow of Nick at Nite. Eighties and ’90s reruns took the place of the classic shows that had made the channel a household name.
Streaming and channels such as Antenna TV and MeTV have long since filled the niche that Nick at Nite carved out, but they all lack the Nick at Nite secret sauce. No current offering possesses the same combination of humor, community, and marketing brilliance.
The golden age of Nick at Nite was firmly rooted in a pre-internet world and will, alas, never return.
All the more reason to celebrate its 40th anniversary and recall with fondness the kookiness, silliness—and I daresay, love—of traditional American values it exuded, bringing us closer, not only to others our age, but to our parents as well.
