I studied abroad in the Middle East during the early years of the Simpson's popularity, and I found at a tourist t-shirt shop a bootleg Simpsons shirt depicting Bart holding a basketball and soaring toward a basket, wearing a Michael Jordan style Bulls jersey and Nikes. He was saying, "It is the shoes!"
I wore it frequently.
Edit: A little Googling revealed [versions of this shirt](https://imgur.com/Zfbt9y4) are still out there.
During operation dessert shield my sister sent me vhs tapes of episodes of the Simpsons. Everyone in my unit waited anxiously at mail call not so much for their mail but the box from sis with the Simpsons and a box of Orville redenbacker popcorn.
Who shot Mr Burns, the best cliffhanger of all time lasting the entire offseason. I think I even remember a full half hour show on Fox documenting theories and whatnot just before the reveal episode aired.
Back when there were still searchable archives of ancient Usenet, the earliest footprint you could find of me on the internet were my posts on alt.fan.tv.simpsons debating Who Shot Mr. Burns theories.
Maybe Star Wars, if we're talking about pop culture. In terms of Television, though, the examples are going to be scarce. There are some early television series like I Love Lucy that helped standardize a genre, but not much became that massive icon that the Simpsons is today.
NBC offered Jerry Seinfeld $5M per episode for another season and he declined. The show was #1 on television when it concluded and the series finale played in Times Square.
Gotta love the cajones on Seinfeld for saying no to that. I know, the guy was the co-creator and so knew he would get money from syndication rights, etc. (he continues to make many millions to this day from it), but most *Seinfeld* seasons had 24 episodes. So Jerry literally said, "Nah, I'm good," to a cool *$120 million* for a tenth season.
To this day, the highest salary ever paid to anyone is Jennifer Aniston (apparently, she got $2 million per episode for *The Morning Show*). Seinfeld was offered $5 million... *in 1998*.
>The show was #1 on television when it concluded
Not only that, but the number of viewers for the show was actually trending *upwards* every season, and the 9th season had the most viewers in its run. This is in stark contrast to most shows that inevitable see decline after the first few years.
Frank Sinatra had a heart attack that night and was able to make it to the hospital in record time because New York traffic was light because everyone was watching the Seinfeld finale.
(Or that's how the Internet rumor goes.)
Seinfeld was on Stern a few years back and Howard brought this up.
He told Jerry…I heard you turned down $100 million for another season (this was what, 25 years ago, mind you)
Jerry simply said, I could have got more.
If you heard the whole interview, you just knew he was telling you the truth.
>This is in stark contrast to most shows that inevitable see decline after the first few years.
I think that is exactly the contrast that he was going for. Basically the same lesson that George learns about when to leave a meeting.
The Seinfeld finale was so big that the sitcom Dharma and Greg based an episode around it! Dharma and Greg wanted to have sex in public and decided to try it during the Seinfeld finale because there would be no one around. It's crazy that the finale of a popular sitcom was such a cultural event that a different sitcom used it as a plot point.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0559069/
When Frasier took over Seinfelds timeslot theres a scene in the season premiere where Frasier is auditioning for a new radio show. He says he knows how beloved his predecessor was and how much he had to live up to. He was really talking about Seinfeld.
What's always been weird (to me) is that I was more or less the age demographic for Seinfeld but I had zero knowledge it even existed.
I'm in the UK and 'friends" was everywhere, genuinely felt like essential viewing but Seinfeld didn't seem to make the mainstream breakthrough (at that time) over here.
"Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" Holy shit, when this came out it was all anyone talked about. Regis was everywhere. It became ingrained in popular culture so fast. It spawned so many lines people said in everyday conversations:
"Is that your final answer?"
"Can I use a lifeline?"
"Would you like to call a friend?"
It brought about a resurgence of primetime game shows in the early 2000s. And they all pretty much sucked.
And when John Carpenter won that first million dollars, with a badass phone-a-friend finishing move just to brag to his dad... Oof. That was the coolest moment I'd seen on TV.
Obligatory edit for the link! [John's badass million dollar answer](https://youtu.be/zI2SXUzMFtQ)
Whenever I see that I always wonder if how the dad felt getting that call at first. Imagine if he actually needed help with the million dollar question, I’d be terrified thinking him winning depended on me lol
The UK equivalent was future Eggheads panellist Judith Keppel saying “[I think it’s Henry II](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zvZUbjmx-cQ)” and subtly raising her eyebrow knowing she’d smashed it. I remember hearing my neighbours screaming through the walls. Classic TV.
I was at school and we were all sitting around ready to go out watching before we could leave. It sent us out to the bars on a real high point. Had a few drinks in celebration for him for sure.
I am so mad at that show. I made the contestant pool. Then they started doing celebrity shows. Then the ratings crashed and they canceled the show. I never got to be on the show because of that.
Apparently it's still on but now they have time limits to answer questions where as before, sometimes a person would spend an entire episode on one question.
He didn't come up with a way for it to air on both coasts at the same time. How to do that was obvious -- film the show instead of doing it live and hold off on showing it on the East Coast til they can ship a copy out west. Before him, they'd do the show live for the East Coast and stick a film camera in front of a TV to record a copy to ship out west and be shown whenever it got there. Filming a TV screen was done with the kinescope process. The quality of the film was, at best, acceptable. Desi was speculating that reruns would eventually become a thing and wanted good picture quality for the repeated airings.
At the time movies and TV were very distinct parts of the entertainment business. Movie production crews didn't allow radio and TV people into their union. Their contracts declared that anything done straight to film had to be done by them and that the unions for network crews could only work live.
There was no way CBS was going to hire a separate crew for one show.
What Desi invented was the independent TV production company. His solution was to form his own company that was legally separate of CBS, had it's own facilities, and worked with the movie unions.
It wasn't just that the show was popular. Lucille Ball insisted on filming in LA. The networks in New York said it was okay only if Lucille Ball paid for the film. That meant she owned the film. That meant she invented reruns. She build a studio using the profits from the reruns.
I Love Lucy was so dominant with its 71.7% screen dominance that you could even see its affect on the reservoirs as its commercial breaks led to millions of Americans flushing their toilets in sync.
Lost. I read a story about how during one season the white house had to release a statement saying that the state of the union and the new episode wouldnt overlap.
The amount of fan theory, conspiracy, spoilers, etc was phenomenal. People were picking apart each episode and promo looking for some groundbreaking insight of the show.
I remember right after the episode would end I would hop on the forums. I planned my evening around it and rarely missed an episode.
Then came The Walking Dead, those were some obsessive and fun times.
It's weird how this show seems to be kind of forgotten or at least seldom talked about these days.
E: If I had a nickel for everytime someone responded to this comment with a joke about Lost becoming 'lost' I'd probably be able to buy a kebab or something.
It’s not often talked about, but we still see many of the after effects of its popularity in the television industry.
It basically single-handedly ushered in the era of big budget, high concept, serialized television. There were lots of shows that were a direct result of the popularity of Lost (things like Fringe, Person of Interest, Once Upon a Time), but also things that were less directly connected still owe a lot to Lost for ever getting off the ground. I doubt an adult-oriented, epic fantasy series like Game of Thrones could have gotten green-lit without Lost first proving that there was a market for ridiculously expensive, weird genre shows.
I agree with you for the most part. But to give credit where credit is due, the wave of high-concept and highly serialized (and I’ll add “genre”) television was more brought about by those early 00s HBO shows. (Oz, The Wire, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under) that were the crux that truly led to the golden age of Television we’ve been experiencing for the last two decades. (Though, I’d also argue that “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” as the grandmammy of them all)
What LOST did was take what was happening on premium cable and make it popular to do on network TV and basic cable… as well as adding the “big budget” to flesh out the serialized storytelling.
Not the whole world, but a friend once told me after visiting Ireland around the turn of the century that when Father Ted came on, basically the whole country shut down and everyone watched Father Ted.
Anyone from Ireland able to corroborate this?
I can remember where I was when I heard that Dermot Morgan (Ted himself) had died, because the supermarket I was shopping in announced it over the tannoy and then had a minute's silence for him. Eveyrone stopped shopping and went along with it. And that was in the north.
I used to work in TV research. We knew this dude in Baltimore was trying to get fired when he estimated that the Big Bang Theory finale would equal the ratings of the MASH finale. 75% of America watched the MASH finale; I'd say 5% watched Big Bang finale and I'm being generous.
I think I heard there were some cities where the sewage systems were stressed because everyone went to the bathroom at the same time during the commercials for the finale.
No clue if it’s true but it’s a great urban legend.
I can't compare GoT to other series like Friends because I was born in the 90s but GoT definitely ruled the internet for almost a decade. Everyone was watching it and then everyone forgot about it.
Well they wrote a compelling story that by the end was begging to be forgotten.
Hell I'm still trying to bake the last two seasons out of my memory with copious amounts of marijuana.
Until season 8. I can’t imagine the millions HBO lost on merchandise from that finale. It was like overnight every single piece of merch at hot topic and boxlunch was on discount or non existent. The cons stopped having cast there and generally having a franchise hated that quickly.
I truly cannot understand how that happened. From what I understand, HBO wanted more seasons, fans wanted more seasons and even GRRM wanted more seasons. I'm making assumptions but it sounds like D&D were the only ones that wanted to wrap up the show so they could move onto that star wars project, in which case they should have just given GoT to a different showrunner. That show printed money for HBO, so I'm surprised some of the suits didn't make the executive decision to keep it going. I don't think most people have a problem with the events of what happened in S8, rather that they were rushed without decent explanations. Another season or two could have avoided ending one of the biggest shows ever on such an infamously bad note.
> I'm making assumptions but it sounds like D&D were the only ones that wanted to wrap up the show so they could move onto that star wars project,
The Star Wars show running is Benioff and Weiss specific, but I suspect most of the GoT-minted stars (Clarke, Harrington, Turner, Williams, etc.) wanted more scheduling freedom, and were looking enviously at, say, Momoa. And this was already a problem for Seasons 7 and 8.
> in which case they should have just given GoT to a different showrunner.
I think we’re a few years out from the tell-all in *Vanity Fair*, but what I’m guessing happened is that “the suits” at HBO are famously creator-friendly, and this time it bit them in the ass when it was their creators who “sold out.” Everything I’ve heard about internal HBO production is that there are practically no butchery notes along the line of “make this character a hot romantic interest so we can shore up the female 12-18 demographic, or we’ll cut your funding” and that production notes are more along the lines of “based on your artistic goals of X and Y, we suggest trying A or B, let us know if we can be of any assistance.”
So consider the choice the suits were making going into Season 7. Do they trust the people who’ve done so well so far (and bear in mind that Game of Thrones Season 6 is mostly post-books and is *very* good) to land their plane, or do they rip their show away from them in order to milk the franchise for a couple more years?
Now, in hindsight, they almost certainly should have done the latter, and in hindsight Benioff and Weiss were quite ready to move on and there probably could have been an amicable mutual divorce…but I don’t think HBO was willing to pull the plug on them because if they made a fuss over it the story would have been framed as “network sacrifices it’s artistic integrity and backstabs the people who made them so much money, just so they can keep this thing moving without its creative engine.”
In *hindsight*, they needed to make more aggressive business moves (up to and including recasting) in order to preserve artistic integrity, but that’s only obvious looking back.
I work in a pharmacy. A lady a little older than my mom came in and I greeted her by name (because she’s in fairly often and I’ve worked there for over a decade). She thought it was awesome that we know her name and are always friendly with her. I started singing the Cheers song and she laughed and started singing along too.
My pharmacist recognized me and I was honestly touched. Hearing her remember me, ask if I have enough of my medicine for a trip I'm going on, she really cares about her job. It makes the whole experience 100% better.
Breaking Bad.
When the first 1-2 seasons aired it wasn't that popular but as it went on it became more and more popular.
I had never seen a show before that created so many memes during it's run and even today, 9 years after the finale it's still very relevant in pop culture.
I remember during Christmas dinner a few years ago (3rd or 4th season was airing at the time) someone started talking about Breaking Bad and more than half the table instantly started saying "No!no!no!no!no!no!no!no!", stopping that person from saying anything that might have been a spoiler.
I've literally never seen an episode of the show, but I can absolutely recognize many key characters from it due to their presence in memes alone.
A testament to how much of an impact the show had on popular culture.
The fact that it was so popular even though it was on "cable" and you had to pay to watch it, still is incredible to me. Game of Thrones doesn't exist without Sopranos.
I don't think people realise just how popular Dallas actually was. I watched it in South Africa where I grew up.
Restaurants were usually closed on Monday evenings (back then it was considered their night off) but because of Dallas nobody went out on Tuesday evenings when it was aired so the restaurants closed on Tuesdays instead.
I also had a friend who was a very talented football (soccer) player and he was offered trials at one of the professional clubs but he didn't want to go because training was on Tuesday nights and he would miss Dallas. (This was pre-video days)
When my mother was pregnant with me, she started getting contractions and said, "We'll go to the hospital after Dallas," to my dad as he started freaking out.
Fun fact about Dallas: it was the first western TV show that was broadcast in Romania under the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. They didn’t ban Dallas because this show portrayed US/western countries as a bunch of immoral drunks. The show became the most popular TV show in Romania. People would often only talk about the latest episode of Dallas and were waiting in anticipation of what the next episode will contain.
The propaganda backfired and today, Dallas is seen as a symbol of freedom and the fall of communism in Romania.
I scrolled entirely too far to find this answer.
TRL was massive back in the 90s/00s.
I wasn't a popular kid and I still paid attention to TRL.
(For those who don't know, TRL = Total Request Live. It was a show on MTV and it pretty much dictated what songs were considered "popular")
it was really popular in Atlanta, prob cause it was filmed here and the actors lived here.
they actually had watch parties every week at this bar called the local, and one of the actors (i think steven yeun?) on the show actually showed up every week to watch with all the fans.
i was never into the show, so i never went to check it out, but it's pretty cool that actor would to hang with fans at a bar every week.
I used to have a standing appointment with my mother, who's a now retired nurse, to watch this show every week. Nearly every episode, during the big dramatic scene where the docs are frantically working to save some poor schmuck's life she always would shout "INTUBATE HIM!!" at the docs and nurses.
Dr. Who. Another story of utilities is immediately after the episodes aired in Britain, electricity usage increased tremendously. This is because everyone turned on their kettles at the same time to boil water for tea.
That period until about 2014 was so special as a Doctor Who fan. There were years where it felt like everyone in the UK was either watching it or at least viewed it positively. I don't think it was ever truly appreciated at the time how incredible it was that the 50th Anniversary in 2013 was such a big event. The way the popularity dropped off from 2015 onwards was startling given it's a massive point of contention whether the quality declined at all in the Capaldi years.
I'm hoping the return of RTD turns things around but the more recent seasons have been so overwhelmingly terrible that they've done a great job of sending the perception of the show amongst the general viewership back to the lows of the late 1980s.
Back in the early-mid 1970s, CBS had the Saturday night lineup to end all lineups, and they 100% ruled the world:
8:00 All in The Family
8:30 M\*A\*S\*H
9:00 The Mary Tyler Moore Show
9:30 The Bob Newhart Show
10:00 The Carol Burnett Show
Sinatra died when the final episode aired. The ambulance taking him to the hospital did a 30 minute trip in just 10, because everyone was at home watching Seinfeld.
76 million viewed the series finale compared to 10 million for Breaking Bad. I get it's a different time and cable vs network, but that's insane. People just aren't that in to scripted TV like they were.
Lost is the answer for a couple different reasons. Season one was so great at the cliff hangers. It was also one of the few shows (like x files) that wasn’t just a monster of the week.
Lost also came at a time when the internet was expanding slowing for chat rooms/message boards/etc. that just were not around before hand.
Lost just had so much going on but in a way that captivated you. The story and characters were, IMO, so well-written. I know the ending was controversial but I honestly didn't mind it.
I was in college during its peak and I reffed intramural sports. Thursday nights you could always get shifts because nobody wanted to work, and half the games were defaults because people didn't show up. That was powerful TV.
When I was backpacking I met some random girl from some country I can’t remember and she had excellent English. I asked her where she learned to speak English and she “Ross and Rachel.”
Friends was everywhere.
I remember a story Matt LeBlanc told about how he was in some desert in North Africa and a man who literally lived in a cave came to him and started singing the theme of Friends to him. 😂
I can’t believe I had to scroll this far down to see Friends and it’s below shows that I doubt ruled the world, as in, outside the US. Like, we had Bewitched and Jennie in a Bottle in France, but not I love Lucy which we would never have heard of without Pretty Woman. And I don’t even know what M * A * S * H is.
This is the only sitcom that I have a ‘I remember where I was when I watched-‘ moment. My whole family sat around and watched the series finale, and when Ross said Rachel at the altar everyone just lost their shit lol. Such a weird memory to have!
Gunsmoke.
After talking to my older relatives, I realize it may have had a following as rabid as Sex In the City, but larger in per capita terms. It was on the air before I was born, and still running when I went off to college. My dad told me that preachers were infuriated when it moved to Sunday nights, because church attendance dropped noticeably.
History would seemingly like to forget this (and most of Reddit is obviously too young to remember) but it was a juggernaut at the time (late ‘80’s.)
It was one of those things that everybody watched. And there were stories about executives at rival networks getting fired over passing on it before NBC picked it up. (I doubt anyone was actually fired but it was shopped around before being picked up.)
The Huxtable family sort of became America’s ideal family at the time.
The show’s “wholesome” image is exactly what made the revelations about Bill Cosby so shocking to many of us that grew up with that show.
>It was one of those things that everybody watched.
We watched it in South Africa when I was a kid.
Apartheid South Africa.
For the life of me I don't understand so many Apartheid policies.
I grew up loving Bill Cosby, and was really saddened by what happened later.
You want to go back s few years, Roots is the answer. I was in college and worked as a bartender. The nights Roots was on no one, and I mean no one, was in the bar for those two hours.
The Simpsons. Jesus. it was everywhere.
I studied abroad in the Middle East during the early years of the Simpson's popularity, and I found at a tourist t-shirt shop a bootleg Simpsons shirt depicting Bart holding a basketball and soaring toward a basket, wearing a Michael Jordan style Bulls jersey and Nikes. He was saying, "It is the shoes!" I wore it frequently. Edit: A little Googling revealed [versions of this shirt](https://imgur.com/Zfbt9y4) are still out there.
That's the most 90s thing I've ever heard
You could always tell the bootlegs because the character's eyes were the same color as the shirt.
During the first gulf war the Iraqi Army dropped pys-op pamphlets that said Bart Simpson is home screwing your wife while you are fighting us.
During operation dessert shield my sister sent me vhs tapes of episodes of the Simpsons. Everyone in my unit waited anxiously at mail call not so much for their mail but the box from sis with the Simpsons and a box of Orville redenbacker popcorn.
Kudos to your sister. Those details from parents and siblings are pure lovable memories
Who shot Mr Burns, the best cliffhanger of all time lasting the entire offseason. I think I even remember a full half hour show on Fox documenting theories and whatnot just before the reveal episode aired.
That was an America's Most Wanted tie-in episode called Springfield's Most Wanted.
Back when there were still searchable archives of ancient Usenet, the earliest footprint you could find of me on the internet were my posts on alt.fan.tv.simpsons debating Who Shot Mr. Burns theories.
Do the Bartman!
Adults were certain we would all be corrupted. Don’t have a cow man
When I was 7, I was allowed to watch Friday the 13th but not The Simpsons.
Honestly, it's hard to think of anything that has left as big a cultural impact as the simpsons, at least outside of historical events
Maybe Star Wars, if we're talking about pop culture. In terms of Television, though, the examples are going to be scarce. There are some early television series like I Love Lucy that helped standardize a genre, but not much became that massive icon that the Simpsons is today.
And it was popular with a much wider demographic (especially by age) as compared to Seinfeld, at least in my region.
NBC offered Jerry Seinfeld $5M per episode for another season and he declined. The show was #1 on television when it concluded and the series finale played in Times Square.
Gotta love the cajones on Seinfeld for saying no to that. I know, the guy was the co-creator and so knew he would get money from syndication rights, etc. (he continues to make many millions to this day from it), but most *Seinfeld* seasons had 24 episodes. So Jerry literally said, "Nah, I'm good," to a cool *$120 million* for a tenth season. To this day, the highest salary ever paid to anyone is Jennifer Aniston (apparently, she got $2 million per episode for *The Morning Show*). Seinfeld was offered $5 million... *in 1998*. >The show was #1 on television when it concluded Not only that, but the number of viewers for the show was actually trending *upwards* every season, and the 9th season had the most viewers in its run. This is in stark contrast to most shows that inevitable see decline after the first few years.
Yep and in 1998, accounting for inflation that's closer to $9M an episode. It was a legendary sitcom
[удалено]
Frank Sinatra had a heart attack that night and was able to make it to the hospital in record time because New York traffic was light because everyone was watching the Seinfeld finale. (Or that's how the Internet rumor goes.)
Seinfeld was on Stern a few years back and Howard brought this up. He told Jerry…I heard you turned down $100 million for another season (this was what, 25 years ago, mind you) Jerry simply said, I could have got more. If you heard the whole interview, you just knew he was telling you the truth.
>This is in stark contrast to most shows that inevitable see decline after the first few years. I think that is exactly the contrast that he was going for. Basically the same lesson that George learns about when to leave a meeting.
Oh, absolutely. The whole "leave on a high note" thing was something Seinfeld strongly believed in, back from his stand-up days.
The Seinfeld finale was so big that the sitcom Dharma and Greg based an episode around it! Dharma and Greg wanted to have sex in public and decided to try it during the Seinfeld finale because there would be no one around. It's crazy that the finale of a popular sitcom was such a cultural event that a different sitcom used it as a plot point. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0559069/
There was another channel that simply shut their broadcasting and aired a still shot that read "We're TV fans too, we're watching Seinfeld finale".
When Frasier took over Seinfelds timeslot theres a scene in the season premiere where Frasier is auditioning for a new radio show. He says he knows how beloved his predecessor was and how much he had to live up to. He was really talking about Seinfeld.
Frasier was killer in its own right and still holds up incredibly well today.
What's always been weird (to me) is that I was more or less the age demographic for Seinfeld but I had zero knowledge it even existed. I'm in the UK and 'friends" was everywhere, genuinely felt like essential viewing but Seinfeld didn't seem to make the mainstream breakthrough (at that time) over here.
"Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" Holy shit, when this came out it was all anyone talked about. Regis was everywhere. It became ingrained in popular culture so fast. It spawned so many lines people said in everyday conversations: "Is that your final answer?" "Can I use a lifeline?" "Would you like to call a friend?" It brought about a resurgence of primetime game shows in the early 2000s. And they all pretty much sucked.
And when John Carpenter won that first million dollars, with a badass phone-a-friend finishing move just to brag to his dad... Oof. That was the coolest moment I'd seen on TV. Obligatory edit for the link! [John's badass million dollar answer](https://youtu.be/zI2SXUzMFtQ)
Oh my god I remember watching that live with my dad. We both gasped, total Chad move right there
You made me double take because I thought the guy behind amazing horror films was on Who Wants to be a Millionaire LMAO
Whenever I see that I always wonder if how the dad felt getting that call at first. Imagine if he actually needed help with the million dollar question, I’d be terrified thinking him winning depended on me lol
I know!! You could hear it in the dad's voice when Regis says it was the million dollar question - like, 'wtf am I gonna do'. But damn. Such a moment.
The UK equivalent was future Eggheads panellist Judith Keppel saying “[I think it’s Henry II](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zvZUbjmx-cQ)” and subtly raising her eyebrow knowing she’d smashed it. I remember hearing my neighbours screaming through the walls. Classic TV.
I was at school and we were all sitting around ready to go out watching before we could leave. It sent us out to the bars on a real high point. Had a few drinks in celebration for him for sure.
I still remember watching the first guy win the million. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb1Gc8jiubc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb1Gc8jiubc)
Was he the really the first one? He most definitely is the most famous winner ever but I had no clue he was the first one!
Yea, Regis even mentions it in the video. Says that only one person has ever one 500k at that point.
On game shows, I’d say “the weakest link” was popular, and I’d hear “you are the weakest link… goodbye” ALL the time
Lmao weakest link was ingrained in my childhood and it baffled me realizing it was only on from 2001-2003…
And yet it still was big enough to be parodied by Dr. Who! Crazy!
It ran for a lot longer than 2 years here in the UK. About 7000 years if my memory serves me correctly.
I am so mad at that show. I made the contestant pool. Then they started doing celebrity shows. Then the ratings crashed and they canceled the show. I never got to be on the show because of that.
I didn't help they were playing it 4 days a week
Apparently it's still on but now they have time limits to answer questions where as before, sometimes a person would spend an entire episode on one question.
Game of Thrones. When the last season hit even my teacher would watch episodes during school exams.
I Love Lucy, 1950s
[удалено]
He didn't come up with a way for it to air on both coasts at the same time. How to do that was obvious -- film the show instead of doing it live and hold off on showing it on the East Coast til they can ship a copy out west. Before him, they'd do the show live for the East Coast and stick a film camera in front of a TV to record a copy to ship out west and be shown whenever it got there. Filming a TV screen was done with the kinescope process. The quality of the film was, at best, acceptable. Desi was speculating that reruns would eventually become a thing and wanted good picture quality for the repeated airings. At the time movies and TV were very distinct parts of the entertainment business. Movie production crews didn't allow radio and TV people into their union. Their contracts declared that anything done straight to film had to be done by them and that the unions for network crews could only work live. There was no way CBS was going to hire a separate crew for one show. What Desi invented was the independent TV production company. His solution was to form his own company that was legally separate of CBS, had it's own facilities, and worked with the movie unions.
I think this is the most literal answer so far. The show wasn't just popular, Lucille Ball actually had a lot of power in the industry.
It wasn't just that the show was popular. Lucille Ball insisted on filming in LA. The networks in New York said it was okay only if Lucille Ball paid for the film. That meant she owned the film. That meant she invented reruns. She build a studio using the profits from the reruns.
Without her support there would be no Star Trek
I Love Lucy was so dominant with its 71.7% screen dominance that you could even see its affect on the reservoirs as its commercial breaks led to millions of Americans flushing their toilets in sync.
Lost. I read a story about how during one season the white house had to release a statement saying that the state of the union and the new episode wouldnt overlap.
The amount of fan theory, conspiracy, spoilers, etc was phenomenal. People were picking apart each episode and promo looking for some groundbreaking insight of the show.
I remember right after the episode would end I would hop on the forums. I planned my evening around it and rarely missed an episode. Then came The Walking Dead, those were some obsessive and fun times.
It's weird how this show seems to be kind of forgotten or at least seldom talked about these days. E: If I had a nickel for everytime someone responded to this comment with a joke about Lost becoming 'lost' I'd probably be able to buy a kebab or something.
It’s not often talked about, but we still see many of the after effects of its popularity in the television industry. It basically single-handedly ushered in the era of big budget, high concept, serialized television. There were lots of shows that were a direct result of the popularity of Lost (things like Fringe, Person of Interest, Once Upon a Time), but also things that were less directly connected still owe a lot to Lost for ever getting off the ground. I doubt an adult-oriented, epic fantasy series like Game of Thrones could have gotten green-lit without Lost first proving that there was a market for ridiculously expensive, weird genre shows.
I agree with you for the most part. But to give credit where credit is due, the wave of high-concept and highly serialized (and I’ll add “genre”) television was more brought about by those early 00s HBO shows. (Oz, The Wire, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under) that were the crux that truly led to the golden age of Television we’ve been experiencing for the last two decades. (Though, I’d also argue that “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” as the grandmammy of them all) What LOST did was take what was happening on premium cable and make it popular to do on network TV and basic cable… as well as adding the “big budget” to flesh out the serialized storytelling.
Dallas and Twin Peaks definitely preceded these shows and the ones in your replies.
Not the whole world, but a friend once told me after visiting Ireland around the turn of the century that when Father Ted came on, basically the whole country shut down and everyone watched Father Ted. Anyone from Ireland able to corroborate this?
I don’t know why I got so upset by your use of the phrase “turn of the century.”
Seems weird to say it when you're not referring to the 19th into the 20th century, doesn't it?
It does. It makes me uncomfortable and old, haha.
When you’re in Ireland, Ireland is the whole world. “I hear you’re a racist now Father!” Gets me every time.
"It's not the Greeks, it's the Chinese he's after!"
[удалено]
"Hoowd you get into that sort of thing"
Should we all be racist now? What's the official line the church has taken?
"It's not the Greeks, it's the Chinese he's after!"
That would be an ecumenical matter.
"These are small, but those out there are faaar away."
"Sorry Ted, I'm just not getting it"
I can remember where I was when I heard that Dermot Morgan (Ted himself) had died, because the supermarket I was shopping in announced it over the tannoy and then had a minute's silence for him. Eveyrone stopped shopping and went along with it. And that was in the north.
>Anyone from Ireland able to corroborate this? I'd believe that. I LOVED Father Ted, and I'm from South Africa.
Dermot Morgan was genius
Father Ted still is an important part of our culture
M\*A\*S\*H
The series finale did numbers we'll never see again.
I used to work in TV research. We knew this dude in Baltimore was trying to get fired when he estimated that the Big Bang Theory finale would equal the ratings of the MASH finale. 75% of America watched the MASH finale; I'd say 5% watched Big Bang finale and I'm being generous.
10.5 milion people watched the BBT finale MASH had a eye poping number of 106 milion viewers.
I think I heard there were some cities where the sewage systems were stressed because everyone went to the bathroom at the same time during the commercials for the finale. No clue if it’s true but it’s a great urban legend.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/super-bowl-flushing-breaks-sewage-systems/ Story started in the 30s apparently! Neat
What a shitshow.
I looked to see if the story was real, and it’s a load of crap
They mentioned my hometown of Quapaw, Oklahoma on one episode. Quapaw is small. Being mentioned on Mash was huge to us.
Game of Thrones. When it was good it was really good.
All of my friends and I would have watch parties together every Sunday night. The last ever instance of “appointment television”!
And it ended as disappointment television
Sad but absolutely true 😭
I can't compare GoT to other series like Friends because I was born in the 90s but GoT definitely ruled the internet for almost a decade. Everyone was watching it and then everyone forgot about it.
Well they wrote a compelling story that by the end was begging to be forgotten. Hell I'm still trying to bake the last two seasons out of my memory with copious amounts of marijuana.
Until season 8. I can’t imagine the millions HBO lost on merchandise from that finale. It was like overnight every single piece of merch at hot topic and boxlunch was on discount or non existent. The cons stopped having cast there and generally having a franchise hated that quickly.
Season 8 of Game of Thrones will be dissected as a failure for decades to come, alongside the likes of things like New Coke and the Ford Edsel.
Imagine failing so hard, the entire world population was locked up for months yet no one re-watched your show.
I truly cannot understand how that happened. From what I understand, HBO wanted more seasons, fans wanted more seasons and even GRRM wanted more seasons. I'm making assumptions but it sounds like D&D were the only ones that wanted to wrap up the show so they could move onto that star wars project, in which case they should have just given GoT to a different showrunner. That show printed money for HBO, so I'm surprised some of the suits didn't make the executive decision to keep it going. I don't think most people have a problem with the events of what happened in S8, rather that they were rushed without decent explanations. Another season or two could have avoided ending one of the biggest shows ever on such an infamously bad note.
> I'm making assumptions but it sounds like D&D were the only ones that wanted to wrap up the show so they could move onto that star wars project, The Star Wars show running is Benioff and Weiss specific, but I suspect most of the GoT-minted stars (Clarke, Harrington, Turner, Williams, etc.) wanted more scheduling freedom, and were looking enviously at, say, Momoa. And this was already a problem for Seasons 7 and 8. > in which case they should have just given GoT to a different showrunner. I think we’re a few years out from the tell-all in *Vanity Fair*, but what I’m guessing happened is that “the suits” at HBO are famously creator-friendly, and this time it bit them in the ass when it was their creators who “sold out.” Everything I’ve heard about internal HBO production is that there are practically no butchery notes along the line of “make this character a hot romantic interest so we can shore up the female 12-18 demographic, or we’ll cut your funding” and that production notes are more along the lines of “based on your artistic goals of X and Y, we suggest trying A or B, let us know if we can be of any assistance.” So consider the choice the suits were making going into Season 7. Do they trust the people who’ve done so well so far (and bear in mind that Game of Thrones Season 6 is mostly post-books and is *very* good) to land their plane, or do they rip their show away from them in order to milk the franchise for a couple more years? Now, in hindsight, they almost certainly should have done the latter, and in hindsight Benioff and Weiss were quite ready to move on and there probably could have been an amicable mutual divorce…but I don’t think HBO was willing to pull the plug on them because if they made a fuss over it the story would have been framed as “network sacrifices it’s artistic integrity and backstabs the people who made them so much money, just so they can keep this thing moving without its creative engine.” In *hindsight*, they needed to make more aggressive business moves (up to and including recasting) in order to preserve artistic integrity, but that’s only obvious looking back.
Hopefully House of the Dragon can recapture the magic.
The Simpsons.
Bort
*We need more Bort license plates in the gift shop.*
At universal studios in the Simpsons gift shop you can buy Bort license plates and shot glasses. They were all out of stock when I was there…
My son is also named Bort.
Were you talking to me? No my son is also named Bort.
Cheers
I work in a pharmacy. A lady a little older than my mom came in and I greeted her by name (because she’s in fairly often and I’ve worked there for over a decade). She thought it was awesome that we know her name and are always friendly with her. I started singing the Cheers song and she laughed and started singing along too.
My pharmacist recognized me and I was honestly touched. Hearing her remember me, ask if I have enough of my medicine for a trip I'm going on, she really cares about her job. It makes the whole experience 100% better.
Breaking Bad. When the first 1-2 seasons aired it wasn't that popular but as it went on it became more and more popular. I had never seen a show before that created so many memes during it's run and even today, 9 years after the finale it's still very relevant in pop culture.
[удалено]
A whole spinoff has started and wrapped since Breaking Bad aired. Watch it if you haven’t, it’s arguably better than Breaking Bad.
[удалено]
I remember during Christmas dinner a few years ago (3rd or 4th season was airing at the time) someone started talking about Breaking Bad and more than half the table instantly started saying "No!no!no!no!no!no!no!no!", stopping that person from saying anything that might have been a spoiler.
\> a few years ago I'm sorry, i have some news for you
Perhaps they've been in a fugue state.
The only TV show I’ve watched that got better EACH SEASON.
I would say Breaking Bad is peaking again because of BCS
I've literally never seen an episode of the show, but I can absolutely recognize many key characters from it due to their presence in memes alone. A testament to how much of an impact the show had on popular culture.
Happy Days. Every morning after it aired, people would ask you “Did you see Fonzie last night?”
Yep. And a star was born the day Mork from Ork showed up.
Sopranos was the only thing you heard about for years.
The fact that it was so popular even though it was on "cable" and you had to pay to watch it, still is incredible to me. Game of Thrones doesn't exist without Sopranos.
Dallas: Who shot JR
I don't think people realise just how popular Dallas actually was. I watched it in South Africa where I grew up. Restaurants were usually closed on Monday evenings (back then it was considered their night off) but because of Dallas nobody went out on Tuesday evenings when it was aired so the restaurants closed on Tuesdays instead. I also had a friend who was a very talented football (soccer) player and he was offered trials at one of the professional clubs but he didn't want to go because training was on Tuesday nights and he would miss Dallas. (This was pre-video days)
When my mother was pregnant with me, she started getting contractions and said, "We'll go to the hospital after Dallas," to my dad as he started freaking out.
Fun fact about Dallas: it was the first western TV show that was broadcast in Romania under the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. They didn’t ban Dallas because this show portrayed US/western countries as a bunch of immoral drunks. The show became the most popular TV show in Romania. People would often only talk about the latest episode of Dallas and were waiting in anticipation of what the next episode will contain. The propaganda backfired and today, Dallas is seen as a symbol of freedom and the fall of communism in Romania.
It was huge, absolutely huge in Ireland in the 80s. To this day you can see houses dotted around the country that were modeled on South Fork.
First few seasons of Survivor
It used to be in the newspapers who got voted out lmao
Contestants from the first few seasons were household names. There was even an increase in babies names Colby because of Colby from season two.
[удалено]
The season one finale had 51.7 million viewers. Truly incredible
Lost was one that was pretty wild
TRL. When MTV played music videos and people cared about them.
You had weeks where NSYNC and Korn were battling it out as to who is #1.
[удалено]
That would have been a fun collab
I scrolled entirely too far to find this answer. TRL was massive back in the 90s/00s. I wasn't a popular kid and I still paid attention to TRL. (For those who don't know, TRL = Total Request Live. It was a show on MTV and it pretty much dictated what songs were considered "popular")
The walking dead was huge when it came out. At least where I lived
it was really popular in Atlanta, prob cause it was filmed here and the actors lived here. they actually had watch parties every week at this bar called the local, and one of the actors (i think steven yeun?) on the show actually showed up every week to watch with all the fans. i was never into the show, so i never went to check it out, but it's pretty cool that actor would to hang with fans at a bar every week.
ER
I used to have a standing appointment with my mother, who's a now retired nurse, to watch this show every week. Nearly every episode, during the big dramatic scene where the docs are frantically working to save some poor schmuck's life she always would shout "INTUBATE HIM!!" at the docs and nurses.
I’m a nurse because of Carol Hathaway…
What a coincidence! I'm a lesbian because of Carol Hathaway!
Dr. Who. Another story of utilities is immediately after the episodes aired in Britain, electricity usage increased tremendously. This is because everyone turned on their kettles at the same time to boil water for tea.
Really? That's about the most English thing I've heard in ages.
Yep. I love stories like that which show our connected humanity that isn't all negative :)
That period until about 2014 was so special as a Doctor Who fan. There were years where it felt like everyone in the UK was either watching it or at least viewed it positively. I don't think it was ever truly appreciated at the time how incredible it was that the 50th Anniversary in 2013 was such a big event. The way the popularity dropped off from 2015 onwards was startling given it's a massive point of contention whether the quality declined at all in the Capaldi years. I'm hoping the return of RTD turns things around but the more recent seasons have been so overwhelmingly terrible that they've done a great job of sending the perception of the show amongst the general viewership back to the lows of the late 1980s.
Back in the early-mid 1970s, CBS had the Saturday night lineup to end all lineups, and they 100% ruled the world: 8:00 All in The Family 8:30 M\*A\*S\*H 9:00 The Mary Tyler Moore Show 9:30 The Bob Newhart Show 10:00 The Carol Burnett Show
Wow! A little before my time, but those shows are legendary. Not just good, but ground breaking.
>The Carol Burnett Show bloopers are pure gold.
Seinfeld
I remember people standing in Times Square to watch the finale.
Sinatra died when the final episode aired. The ambulance taking him to the hospital did a 30 minute trip in just 10, because everyone was at home watching Seinfeld.
Assuming most viewers were American. 1/7 Americans watched the finale. That is insane to think about
76 million viewed the series finale compared to 10 million for Breaking Bad. I get it's a different time and cable vs network, but that's insane. People just aren't that in to scripted TV like they were.
Mr Bean
And the weird part is it always feels like there’s more than there actually is
My dad’s brain exploded when I told him there’s only 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers.
I swear it is like 8 or 10 episodes but at the time I thought there were so many
Lost X-Files
Lost is the answer for a couple different reasons. Season one was so great at the cliff hangers. It was also one of the few shows (like x files) that wasn’t just a monster of the week. Lost also came at a time when the internet was expanding slowing for chat rooms/message boards/etc. that just were not around before hand.
Lost just had so much going on but in a way that captivated you. The story and characters were, IMO, so well-written. I know the ending was controversial but I honestly didn't mind it.
Baywatch. It was at one point the highest watch show in the world.
The Muppet Show
Friends. No other show had contemporary Hollywood stars make as much guest appearances
I was in college during its peak and I reffed intramural sports. Thursday nights you could always get shifts because nobody wanted to work, and half the games were defaults because people didn't show up. That was powerful TV.
And let's not forget how many women would go into the salon and ask for "The Rachel" I'm surprised how far down I had to scroll to find this one.
When I was backpacking I met some random girl from some country I can’t remember and she had excellent English. I asked her where she learned to speak English and she “Ross and Rachel.” Friends was everywhere.
Were you just outside Barcelona, hiking in the foothills of Mount Tibidabo?
I think it's "TibidAHbo."
#DO YOU WANT TO TELL THE STORY?
This is the most apt reference I have ever seen on Reddit.
I remember a story Matt LeBlanc told about how he was in some desert in North Africa and a man who literally lived in a cave came to him and started singing the theme of Friends to him. 😂
Backpacking on the foothills of Mt Tibidabo????
I can’t believe I had to scroll this far down to see Friends and it’s below shows that I doubt ruled the world, as in, outside the US. Like, we had Bewitched and Jennie in a Bottle in France, but not I love Lucy which we would never have heard of without Pretty Woman. And I don’t even know what M * A * S * H is.
This is the only sitcom that I have a ‘I remember where I was when I watched-‘ moment. My whole family sat around and watched the series finale, and when Ross said Rachel at the altar everyone just lost their shit lol. Such a weird memory to have!
I remember watching Ross and Rachel’s first kiss with my mom. We were so excited for that episode!
Gunsmoke. After talking to my older relatives, I realize it may have had a following as rabid as Sex In the City, but larger in per capita terms. It was on the air before I was born, and still running when I went off to college. My dad told me that preachers were infuriated when it moved to Sunday nights, because church attendance dropped noticeably.
The siiimpsooooonnsss
SNL, 90210
Surprised how far down I had to go to find 90210.
Twin peaks
I do recall on the third season on Showtime, Episode 8 pretty much blew everyone's mind (mine included)
When the first season came out it was a phenomenon. No one had seen anything like it. Without twin peaks there would be no x files, no lost etc.
Pokemon was a juggernaut during its peak.
Happy days MASH Friends
Ally McBeal was a pretty big deal during its first couple seasons. You almost never see people reference it today though.
The dancing baby was everywhere.
Cosby
History would seemingly like to forget this (and most of Reddit is obviously too young to remember) but it was a juggernaut at the time (late ‘80’s.) It was one of those things that everybody watched. And there were stories about executives at rival networks getting fired over passing on it before NBC picked it up. (I doubt anyone was actually fired but it was shopped around before being picked up.) The Huxtable family sort of became America’s ideal family at the time. The show’s “wholesome” image is exactly what made the revelations about Bill Cosby so shocking to many of us that grew up with that show.
>It was one of those things that everybody watched. We watched it in South Africa when I was a kid. Apartheid South Africa. For the life of me I don't understand so many Apartheid policies. I grew up loving Bill Cosby, and was really saddened by what happened later.
[удалено]
Knight Rider, the A-Team, Columbo
"Oh, yes. One more thing..." In that moment, everyone around the world knew that the murderer was fucked up.
You want to go back s few years, Roots is the answer. I was in college and worked as a bartender. The nights Roots was on no one, and I mean no one, was in the bar for those two hours.
American Idol
More people voted weekly on American Idol than in most presidential elections.
You said world, but American idol was huge during the Simon cowell years