Oddity Archive: Episode 223 - USA Networkisms
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 พ.ย. 2024
- Let us take an all-night flight to remember why USA once was “America’s Favorite Cable Network”…
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I just saw yesterday that USA will air NASCAR races again next year for the first time since '85 or so, but this time, the races will be points-paying, and these ones are planned to be on there, and not pushed over there by Olympics coverage or rain.
I liked USA Network back in the 90's and 2000's, when they would have original series like Swamp Thing: The Series, Silk Stalkings, Duckman, Weird Science (based on the 1985 Universal Pictures movie of the same title), Pacific Blue, Lost on Earth, La Femme Nikita, sitcom/drama reruns such as MacGyver, Murder, She Wrote, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Mickey Spillane's The New Mike Hammer, It's Your Move, Double Trouble, The Partridge Family, Just the Ten of Us, Quantum Leap, American Gladiators, Major Dad, Parker Lewis, The Facts of Life, Wings, Magnum, P.I., Knight Rider, Renegade, Highlander: The Series, Walker, Texas Ranger, Love Connection, The People's Court, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Gimmie A Break!, Perfect Strangers, Saved by the Bell: The New Class, The Jeff Foxworthy Show, Hearts Afaire, Something So Right, the Bob Saget run of America's Funniest Home Videos, Martin, Living Single, Veronica's Closet, My Two Dads, Doctor, Doctor, and Net & Stacey. I saw their Cartoon Express (and later Action Extreme Team) lineup of cartoons reruns, such as shows from the Hanna-Barbera library, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo and its various spin-offs, The Smurfs, G.I. Joe, The Real Ghostbusters, Slimer! And The Real Ghostbusters, Toxic Crusaders, Jem, Dinosaucers, Denver, the Last Dinosaur, TMNT, Mighty Mouse, Heckle & Jeckle, Deputy Dawg, Super Mario Bros. 3, The Chipmunks Go to the Movies, Maxie's World, Captain N, Jayce & the Wheeled Warriors, Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling, Woody Woodpecker, The Superman/Batman Adventures, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Dennis the Menace, and original series like The Itsy Bitsy Spider (based on a 1992 Paramount Pictures short film that was paired with Bébé's Kids), Problem Child (based on the movie franchise), Highlander: The Series, The Savage Dragon, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, Action Man, and reruns of game shows such as Press Your Luck, Hollywood Squares, The $25,000 Pyramid, The $100,000 Pyramid, etc. After the 1996 logo change (incorporating a star ridged into the "U" of the now-serifed "USA" logotype, replacing the Futura Extra Bold-typeface logo font that had been in use since the network's start under the USA Network name in 1980), including their airings/reruns of Street Sharks, Ultraforce, Double Dragon, Mighty Max, Gargoyles, Mario All Stars, Sailor Moon, that was so memorable.
I can give a little backstory to how WWE got on the USA network. On 12/5/82, regional promotion Southwest Championship Wrestling bought a time slot on the network at $7,000 a week until a particular bloody match aired and pressure from WWF at the time offering the network more that the per week price, they got the time slot and the rest is history. WWF would beging airing on 9/4/83
Less than year later, the WWF would get on WTBS's World Championship Wrestling at 605, on July 14th 1984. Less than a year later the WWF would sell the WTBS and Georgia Championship Wrestling to Jim Crockett Promotion's Mid-Atlantic CW. JCP would eventually sell to Ted Turner and long story short MACW became WCW after the name of the TV show from 82-92. In 92 the name was changed from World Championship Wrestling to WCW Saturday Night.
Ah, the USA Network. We had a regional feed in Latin America back in the day, which mainly ran sitcoms and movies. It lasted till 2004, when it was rebranded as Universal Channel. Most cable operators here in Chile, ended up dropping Universal from their lineup around 2017
Night Flight was magical to me. The one day you could stay up late, watching what was very much like TH-cam in the early days. Just random weirdness!
Cartoon Express was a life-saver on Sundays because no one else showed cartoons!
And before Cartoon Express there was Twilight Zone on WGN Network.
I remember when my family got cable and discovering Cartoon Express on Sunday morning.I wouldn’t even watch it all the time but just knowing cartoons were on Sunday morning was so pleasurable.
I loved USA Network back in the 90s when they would have Highlander the Series reruns. Highlander, WWF/WWE, La Femme Nikita, The Big Easy, and Renegade, that was so memorable. Unfortunately, I never saw their previous Cartoon Express and game show lineups, that would have been awesome. USA Network is just a shell of its former self these days, nothing distinguishes it from TNT, TBS, or the like.
USA has always been a platform for watching WWF/E for me.
I remember a Monday night raw episode once summer of 94 and silk stalkings was my punishment after show even though I didn’t get it at all … I was 11 at the time
Forgot xena
WWF/E has been on USA way before RAW. they had Tuesday Night Titans. ALL American Wrestling. Prime Time Wrestling. And special events like the very first Royal Rumble show.
Night Flight was just the best. The streaming channel is a worthy successor.
I would love a retrospective series on a lot of early cable channels like this, Ben.
Ooh, how about a retrospective of WeatherSTAR, the bulletin board like system used for local forecasts on The Weather Channel
I wouldn't object, either...a Weather Channel retrospective would be good, or maybe a scathing critique of certain networks that fell to "channel drift" (A&E, AMC, Bravo, etc).
@@ChuckD79 If Ben does something about the Weather Channel, I hope he also considers doing other weather programming, such as the well known (in the Maryland region at least) A.M. Weather they shown on PBS affiliates. Lately I've been playing a lot of the new Microsoft Flight Simulator and have been watching a lot of old A.M. Weather clips because they dedicated a whole section of every episode to pilots and varying levels of turbulence, wind speeds, and the jet stream. Don't know why but as a kid I used to find it quite interesting.
@@SNARC15 OMG, I think I vaguely recall A.M. Weather! No other weather source comes anywhere CLOSE to the detail that was put into the forecasts of A.M. Weather. My Mom grew up in Avon Park, FL and lived through SEVERAL hurricanes that went through that area back in the 60s and 70s and has always said that the best way to know where one of these storms is actually going to go is to know just WHERE the Jet Stream is...yet modern day forecasts, including forecasts provided by The Weather Channel, absolutely NEGLECT to include that information in their forecasts so you NEVER quite know where the Jet Stream is and thus have ANY real clue as to how accurate the forecast tracks are! A.M. Weather (if that IS the program that I remember) covered the Jet Stream in EVERY forecast. Imagine how much more certain people in areas frequently hit with Tropical systems could be regarding where such a storm is actually going if the Jet Stream got covered!
Really wish we could get a weather program like that back on the air...😍☺️😁
I have great memories of the USA Cartoon Express from the mid to late 1980's
I first discovered USA Network when we got Cable TV in Chicago in 1985.
They had some of the craziest programs on ranging from Sailor Moon to Captain USA's movie show in addition to WWE Wrestling & Night Flight.
Sadly, it is now a mere shadow of it's former self. 😔
And it won't have the WWE for long
In 1982 Night Flight featured a two-hour block of a Frank Zappa concert that later was sliced in half, and those two episodes were re-titled "You Are What You Is" and "Dumb All Over".
I didn't care -- whatever it took to get some good Zappa!
Duckman, WWF Wrestling, Happy Hour, Weird Science! Great memories!
I gotta say a handful of the USA originals in the past couple of decades are real underrated gems. Monk, Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, White Collar, Suits, and Mr. Robot. Not a lot vs the total catalog, but definitely some gems still.
Fun fact: Night Flight was one of the earliest American outlets for Power Rangers' Japanese Counterpart, Super Sentai (specifically, the series Kagaku Sentai Dynaman)
.
And oddly, reruns of it later aired on Nickelodeon's Special Delivery
@@theotakux5959 which funny enough would be the channel Power Rangers proper aired up until the most current series
@@amm2media472 I learned that from 'Nick Knacks' not too long ago. That being said, 'Night Flight', and 'Special Delivery' both introduced us to super sentai with 'Dynaman' years before Haim Saban unleashed the genre as 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers'.
Yay! DynaBlack's not mental! :D
Several Kids in the Hall members are listed in the writers credits, explaining lines like “Hip hip hooray, we’re orphans!”
As a 4 year old back in '89, I distinctly remember watching (and loving) the afternoon game show blocks on USA! Press Your Luck and Scrabble were my favorites. Loved coming home from preschool and watching them. I also remember Cartoon Express very well, it was chock full of old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
I recorded hours of Night Flight in the early eighties. Wish I still had those tapes
Ah, Night Flight. Back in the early eighties, this was the go to channel for the odd and unusual videos that TBS’s Night Tracks wouldn’t show.
Also they have my eternal gratitude for introducing me to the cult films Smithereens and Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, two of my all time favorite films.
Don’t forget Night Flight’s cousin, Radio 1990.
@@matthewfocht4894 Or Wes Archer's Jack Mac and Rad Boy Go, which debuted on Night Flight on December 6,1985.
Ben and I had the exact same experience! I also got cable about 1992, and watched a lot of USA. I remember Up All Night running the Toxic Avenger trilogy, and I watched it all. I was hooked on the game shows, too.
I watched USA Network beginning in about 1986, Mom started watching them in 1984. There's several glaring omissions in this video. The Hitchhiker, Freddy's Nightmares,Beauty And The Beast from the 80s just to name a few.
And of course for the 90s, Weird Science and Duckman.
@@Tornado1994 Duckman was amazing. Weird Science was pretty good, too. I’m sure he wanted to mention them, but that would make the video way too long.
I don't remember much about USA in the 90s. I remember watching Duckman at night even though I shouldn't have been, and I remember reruns of TMNT and Real Ghostbusters.
Did you too also watch RGB re-runs on Toon-a-Casserole on the Fox Family Channel?
I was a preteen in the mid 80's and found myself watching a lot of Night Flight at that time. One film that stayed with me that the show introduced me to was "I Was a Zombie for the FBI". I remember being creeped out by a particular claymation creature that appeared in it. Nickelodeon had its own kid friendly version of "Night Flight" called "Turkey Television". I loved USA during this time because that was when "Saturday Nightmares" aired, and I'd be introduced to films such as "Blood Song", and mini movies such as "The Contraption", "The Dummy", and the absolutely terrifying "Drip". But I was still a kid so I of course watched "Cartoon Express", and "Commander USA's Groovy Movies". And "Make Me Laugh" was probably one of the least funny shows to ever air as most of the time the comics were lame, but it introduced a whole generation to "The Unknown Comic". This was a great trip down memory lane. I'm 47 now, and I agree with you about the state of TV now. The TV of the past wasn't Shakespeare by any means, but those Liberty Mutual ads you mention are a great example of marketing that's just stupid, and an insult to the viewers intelligence. The rest is all preachy/woke BS. Thanks for your research on this!
I remember a show called Saturday Nightmares. It aired from 7PM to 10PM central. The show consisted of episodes of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour and a movie that usually aired on Commander USA’s Groovy Movies a few months before. Sometimes, a short horror film would air after the movie.
One of the oft-repeated shorts that Saturday Nightmares was fond of programming was called The Contraption, starring Mr. Rocky Horror Picture Show 'emself, Richard O'Brien: th-cam.com/video/i-PZ4Qy5F0Q/w-d-xo.html
Me too!
Yes, I remember it well and fondly. I would give anything to have a constant real time live stream of USA programming circa 1987, no other TV channels were needed really, USA took care of pretty much everything for my tastes. Too bad those days are gone forever.
R.I.P. Gilbert Gottfried (1955-2022).
USA network…. The home of WWF wrestling back in the day and USA up all night
And my favorite Sunday morning show Calliope.
@@WillmobilePlus I vaguely remember calliope being so young back then but my memory doesn’t remember the animated guy and the dog I remember a live action man and dog with an animated background similar to calliope’s background
Shoutout to Night Flight
The birth of cable TV was something for this kid at the time to experience after having only 4 channels to watch. So it sucked my brains in. Glad (I suppose, ohh I don't know ???) I saw it happening when It was happening, but I said goodby to TV some time ago and replaced it with the internet. The internet is so much more interesting, and adblock keeps those pesky advertisements far hidden away. [Shoutout to adblock, my homey !] My first experience with night flight was in the mid to late 70's when this cable concept was being tested where I was as a kid in SA Tx. It was novel and I sat up to watch The wild wild west into the wee hours of the morning. Damn, doesn't seem so long ago thinking about it now. And freaking empty V used to be interesting in the beginning as well. I was working my freaking ass off in the early 80's the kind that paid and my band, so my down time on the week day evening was TV. But my experience with NF was brief and prior to the cable craze. One last shout out to that HBO yoga program from the early 80's, Elvira and Rhonda Shears. %- >
Notification gang rise up.
Also I clicked here because I want Benny Boy to cover Sunday Night Heat and that gag dub of Dynaman on Night Flight
I never knew about Night Flight! I think I would have adored it, especially as an oddball child. Excellent video, yet again!
16:19 Apparently shoulder pads were a thing in mens' fashion too? Who knew!
This brings back so many memories. These days on USA, the network's basically "if you don't like SVU or Chicago PD, you can go to Hell."
...or the Harry Potter, John Wick, and Fast and Furious franchises.
Don't forget the worse WWE brand (Raw)
Anything in hell has to be better than what USA or any classic cable channel has become nowadays
You can say the same for every other cable channel “Watch our zillions of reruns of NBC and CBS crime dramas or hit the bricks sister!”
@@oldradiosnphonographs Well it's due to cord cuttinh
Let's not forget that other 90's show starring Jason Alexander, Duckman...USA made sure we got those episodes in the 90's.
Monk was one of my mom and I's favorite shows to watch together:)
My dad loved it, mainly because he always noticed little details like Monk did.
I remember Night Flight. I remember one night they were doing a show on Duran Duran and had their videos and related bands like Kajagoogoo (Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran produced their song Too Shy). I remember the game show block also. I loved Press Your Luck (still do). Oddly, I believe years later Monk was the most-watched show on cable and the series premiere at the time broke viewer records.
I have a whammy I drew from a blurry press your luck short that used to run on 🇺🇸 network
@@wendyokoopa7048 That's cool! I always thought it would be cool to have anything Whammy. Not sure if they exist but always wanted a Whammy plush.
Night Flight was the only source to see the uncensored "Girls on Film" music video on U. S. television, back in the day.
@@darrylu.4358 I remember that! Yeah my guy friend who didn't like them loved the video.
A bit of correction here -- Highlander didn't come through MCA, that was Gaumont, they picked that up independently. Itsy-Bitsy Spider was based off a Paramount (the other owners of USA at the time) short film that played before the infamous Bebe's Kids in 1992.
There is much more AXT footage out there, from after the 1996 logo change, including their airings of Sailor Moon (after broadcast syndication, but before Toonami). Finally, Will Meguniot, a comic book and animation artist who worked on the USA Street Fighter show, told me this a while ago (before he deleted his Facebook page) when I asked why they ditched their cartoons: "The cartoons were performing pretty well for USA, with Street Fighter actually pulling in better numbers than Superman on The WB. But, management noticed that the audience flow to the following live action shows and wrestling was pretty much non-existent, and decided it might be better to sacrifice the kid audience to get better viewer continuity for the advertisers. They made a classic error of sacrificing an audience they had for the audience they wanted - and never got."
Coming soon....."Oddity Archive Extreme"...with a hard rock version of Panvanned and the intro ends with an action shot of Ben jumping towards you with an explosion behind him
And his box.
@ Of course:)
this would be awesome
*X-treme
Oh the memories! I lived on Up All Night, and Pyramid! Basic cable was truly in better shape.
Robert Englund guest hosted Up All Night in 1991! Wearing his Freddy Costume!!!!!
Just for the record, Ben --
"The Itsy Bitsy Spider" was actually a PARAMOUNT show (produced by Hyperion Studio).
A new OA?
About USA Network?
Automatically liked and added to my Best of OA playlist.
And you were a fan of the game show block and Cartoon Express?
You and I are birds of a feather.
USA and TBS were two channels I kept it on as a kid growing up in the 1980's.
As a pro wrestling fan, I appreciate your accurate description of WWE programming.
Imagine if analog TV came back to the airwaves. Do you imagine companies jumping back in or has it become too much of a niche for it to be successful again?
Highly unlikely, IMO.
Plain analog TV has channels spread out across the radio spectrum, with each channel broadcasting through its own transmitter (or modulator, atleast). Running many transmitters could get expensive. Right for using each frequency has to be bought too.
The appeal of most digital broadcasts is that you could have a single transmitter broadcasting a data stream (full of "channels") on a single frequency. I'd guess transmitter owner could get bigger profit margin from his channels by not needing more transmitters for the same amount of channels (just speculating, I don't really know how broadcast economy works, lol).
Digital receivers can recover a lot of data from weak signal with error correction algorithms, which is why digital broadcasts tend to be weaker (but sometimes it's just the cheapness).
Analog broadcast is flawed; picture brightness is Amplitude Modulated, which means it's not immune to noise no matter how strong (practically) the signal is.
Analog Frequency Modulated radio still exists because it's reasonably simple, reasonably noise-free (being FM) and supported everywhere, unlike whatever digital replacements that failed to replace it.
Basically, there's no benefit of going analog again, atleast in the same form as it used to be.
Analog FM video would be better, but it's it would be still "1 frequency = 1 channel" thing, and would still need more bandwidth than the digital stream to get the same quality. Although that's the system FPV RC enthusiasts are using AFAIK, where having minimal lag is important.
Why bring back analogue TV? It's a move backwards.
18:37 RIP Markie Post.
Be still my blabberbuzzin' heart! hehe I watched so many programs on USA back in the day. When I was 9, 10, 11 I like the Cartoon Express. I also watched the game show block in the 80s during summer vacation from school. So loved your shoutout to "Liar's Club," one of my favorite gameshows. Betty White was a regular and was excellent on there. When I got to high school, I loved USA Up All Night, especially Fridays with Rhonda. Even in college, I remember they showed reruns of NBC's "Wings" and I watched them on the treadmill at the gym. So many good memories of USA in the 80s and 90s. WTBS was another favorite network. Sounds like it is all a cesspool now.
Speaking of Svengoolie, I used to watch it when I used to live in Illinois. I miss those nights.
Fascinating, even living through these times i didn't know about these late night things they did
I have fond memories of what USA used to be. I watched Cartoon Express in the 80s and 90s, and I also did watch some of the movies shown on USA Up All Night.
I watched a lot of TV back then, but I don't watch much of it today. It's just not the same anymore.
Night Flight was airing on IFC a couple years back, trimmed to 15 min of retro footage and newer stuff from animation and the internet.
He says that in the video
My Saturday afternoons in the 90s were spent watching American Gladiators in syndication then just The Weather Channel for sound so USA had lost its use to me by then. I remember that’s how I got my collection of H-B cartoons in the 80s, though.
And, damn, I had forgotten about Calliope.
Calliope sounds like a knockoff of what Nickelodeon offered when it started up. Some sort of package show deal. Wouldn't it be funny if that's where the "Clock Man" (Sally) short originally aired and somehow they misremembered it as being on Pinwheel?
@@mightyfilm MCA Television co owned Nickelodeon with Viacom, both ran the MTV Networks IPO until Nick split from MTV in '94, they ironically attempted a bid on purchasing Nickelodeon on March 22,1995, but Viacom won the bid. If MCA had beaten Viacom, Nickelodeon would be owned by NBCComcast today.
@@mightyfilm Calliope was absolutely not a knockoff, and predated the, "Special Delivery" program block. Calliope essentially ran short films with animated interstitial of a character named "Gene" introducing the short films. If anything, Calliope was a children's version of Night Flight.
I've been watching that guy who's doing the retrospective on Nickelodeon videos lately. By the description, it does sound similar to what their launch shows were, package shows with a host of some kind. My mind probably makes the connection because the names Calliope and Pinwheel both invoke that vaguely whimsical sounding object name that adults think kids will be drawn into with the promise of said whimsy. Then again, considering early cable channels were trying to get as much content as possible, package show hosting was clearly out of necessity. Like either it's that sort of package show of acquired films or dubs of some cheap to acquire, overly preschool friendly to the point of saccharine anime. Either way, I can't fault them for doing a series of films and shorts with a different kind of host. I'm sure there are a lot of local series that did the same thing. We had one in the late 80's that revolved around some Film Board of Canada animated film based on a kid's book. I'd say that was our cheap little Reading Rainbow ripoff, as it was literacy based and had a similar format. It sort of did its own thing, though, but still similar.
BEFORE I finish the opening theme, I just want to thank you for jarring so many memories of this network during its 80’s Heyday. Now onto the video….
I feel like your nostalgia-shilling is blameless... one thing I've never heard you say is "[insert aged media / device] was just so much better than [insert modern functional equivalent]". At least not without disclaiming that the opinion is based in 1) a personal fuzzy feeling that will not stand to objective testing, or 2) general cost-cutting and planned obsolescence over the course of a particular product's history (e.g., they *don't* make compact cassettes like they used to... for very understandable, economic reasons)
Mr Robot was the last big thing USA Network had. Loved this look on the network’s history!
Another great episode, Ben (possibly your best yet!)...as a kid in the 80s/early 90s, also loved USA's afternoon game show block and the Cartoon Express, not to mention until Cartoon Network came along in the mid-90s, CE was the place for reruns of practically every Hanna-Barbera animated series made through the mid-80s. Hell, I actually smiled when the footage of its animated opening bumper started! :-) Also, the GS block started in 1984 with Make Me Laugh and The Gong Show...even after being dropped from the afternoon lineup, USA continued airing both shows separately, in both morning and late night slots, through about 1987.
Side note: that LMaD phone game advertised during the break turned out to be a scam, which Monty Hall was completely unaware of...most callers who "won" never got their promised cash prizes (which were supposedly wired directly to callers' bank accounts...major red flag!), and years later, a class action settlement was reached by the company behind it. Oh, and the Advanced Dream Away supplement commercial? Its makers were likewise sued after the product was proven to have been ineffective at helping users lose weight while sleeping...I, for one, was shocked to learn this! LOL
Oh, and am very glad I was able to supply not only several of the promos/interstitials seen during the episode, but also the closing theme...was pleasantly surprised when one of my fellow OAers turned up on my upload of the promo it was taken from and said OA sent him here. :-)
Up All Night, Cartoon Express, Commander USA, and Saturday Nightmares (not mentioned) were my staple viewing in the late 80s and 90s. They also aired soap opera episodes of Edge of Night and Search For Tomorrow. You're not going to get that eclectic of a channel anymore sadly.
Did not have cable back then. Seems I missed some good times.
Very cool episode. So much nostalgia. Only thing missing was Saturday Nightmares! Warped my child mind!
I loved Press Your Luck as a kid. We had a version of it here in Australia.
UK TV had a channel that was like Night Flight called Sumo TV, It just aired random out of context clips of mostkly Puiblic Domain things and all the idents was animated by Cyriax those are more remembered than the channel itself.
I'm surprised you didn't mention, what to me as someone that is interested in pop/rock music history, is the most important part of night flight, New Wave Theatre. Which was a punk/no wave variety show originally broadcast on a local LA station.
Pretty sure I (er, Ed) made a text reference to it during the NF segment.
Random trivia: Carlos Guitarlos and Lawrence Fishburne - fresh from Apocalypse Now - worked the door as security for NWT. I miss NWT and remember been floored reading about Peter Ivers being murdered in the newspaper. NWT plugged on for a couple of episodes after that, but woefully short lived and sorely needed today. That show still remains peerless (as does Night Flight).
Something I’d forgotten about until my sister reminded me of it recently was the shoe Video Concert Hall, which ran on the network sporadically between 1978 and 1981. It showed a lot of videos from English and American bands from that era, a welcome relief from the Classic Rock hell that was radio in the late ‘70’s.
I would argue that Nickelodeon hasn't really devolved, it just changed with the times. I also don't mind ESPN, but it certainly doesn't have the same flavor it had when Stuart Scott was around, RIP.
@Niffy MTV is the poster child for the decline of cable in general.
@@TheMediaHoarder I think the History channel wins that one, even if the only music played on MTV is in commercials.
"Sorry sir Criminal Minds won't air for another decade. Fine just throw more money at that show about the duck." Nostalgia Critic.
Sometimes, it's videos like this that help me make up my mind on whether I should cut the cord for good. Every cable channel just feels the same now, with endless marathons of off-network dramas or comedies. And if it's anything original, it's typically a cheap reality show. I don't really remember a lot about USA growing up in the 90s except for cartoons and wrestling. My family got satellite TV in 1995 and I was able to experience the final years of Cartoon Express. My memory is foggy but I think I also remember seeing Hanna Barbera shows on USA at that same time too.
As for wrestling, WWF was about to shift to their "Attitude Era" with increasing violence and sexual content and my older siblings watched Monday Night Raw almost every week. I guess it fits in with the overall programming strategy that USA was developing in the late 90s, since that "Strip Poker" game show aired those same years. Really though, a lot of late 90s TV was edgy and crude.
As sanitized as it is, WWE programs among the last remnants of USA's general entertainment days, having been on the network in some form since the 80s. And with the closure of NBC Sports Network, USA has also started airing sports again, usually English Premier League soccer, NASCAR races, and coverage of the Olympics.
Make up your mind on the do side, of course.
Ah...back when USA network was watchable, at least in my opinion.
Spent many a weekend with Up! All night and listening for mom or dad to start coming downstairs so I could hurry up and turn the TV off lol. Good times.
Thanks for the vid man, love your channel :)
As someone who was born in 1996, it’s unthinkable that USA could be seen as anything other than “the channel with Monk and Psych”.
The oldest footage I have of USA is a golf tournament from 1996, but as a game show nut, I was aware of their block. I think there are a few USA broadcasts still floating around on the trading circuit.
The oldest I could find on my old recorded tapes from the USA Network was a commercial for Jem when it was on the cartoon express
I remember circa 1983-1984 on Sunday afternoons USA used to have "Kung Fu Theater" that used to show the 1970s martial arts films I forget if it was before WWF All American Wrestling that came on around 12 noon Eastern time from what I remember.
Kung Fu Theater aired after All American Wrestling, and for a year or two they bumped it up to a 10pm slot during a couple of summers maybe around 1987-88. The majority of the films came from the Harmony-Gold syndicated package.
Watched Night Flight every week religiously. Loved the strange shorts they would do and of course the music videos they picked. Also watched USA network hockey, they had the best announcers. Didn't they also show Australian rules football?
Australian Rules Football: I think they did for a very short time.
This (15:22) was Make Me Laugh, which, I never saw on USA, it was syndicated (NYC's WPIX), and it was HYSTERICAL. There's a few episodes floating around, here on TH-cam, and I wholeheartedly recommend them,
I kind of miss the early 80's and the explosion of new channels, so many companies trying to figure out what to put on the air to get viewers. I remember night flight pretty well, though i mostly just watched the music videos. There was so much else going on, and now it's pushing 40 years and all that is pretty forgotten, but it was a fun and often weird time.
Oddity Oddity
Oddity
Oddity
(now with the Liberty Mutual reference out of the way...)
USA did indeed have 2 original game shows long before 1999, in 1994 as a matter of fact with Quicksilver & Free 4 All, both Stone-Stanley productions for the USA Network.
Goodness gracious---it's been over thirty years since I'd thought of Cartoon Express!
Very good video, especially when he drags some history into it. Do another one!! Maybe one on TBS.
I have a couple of USA Movie Premieres from the 1990's on videotape. "The Kissing Place", The Frisco Kid", and one of my favorite, "Tucker: The Man And His Dream".
God I remember the first season of Calliope that had the impossible to find original opening animation. Looked something like Terry Gilliam's work.
I hope there are more cable network deep dives in the works, I love this stuff. 👍
My dad used to watch USA all the time in the 90s. When I heard that lady say "UP! All Night!" I knew it was time to go to bed, lol.
I'm sad I missed the game shows back then, but I'm pretty sure I had discovered Nickelodeon by that time and was watching it constantly...
Some of these films aired during Night Flight are simply legendary; It aired Another State of Mind; Suburbia, Urgh! A Music War, Rude Boy, Rocky Horror, and.....well, *that* John Waters film.
Oldie but goodie..."Fish heads Fish heads rolly polly Fish heads..." learned from there... Thanks Ben
Night Flight is where I discovered that clip of Bambi being crushed by Godzilla and they would on occasion air the only four Three Stooges shorts that were public domain.
Would love to see a video about the early days of Comedy Central which was formerly known as the comedy channel and I know was the result of a merger between the HA! network and something else. Anyway hopefully you’ve already made a video about it I will try to find it, if so. Otherwise, I think it would be a good topic to cover. Thanks for your uploads, my man. Much respect.
Back in the eighties, my parents, for awhile, were living in an apartment where there was satellite TV, I used to stay overnight at their place when I was visiting them, they would allow me sometimes to watch TV after hours when they were in bed, one of the American channels I took the advantage of watching was the USA Network and their Night Flight programming block, I only watched one hour or more, mainly music videos, it was really great, if I had a lot more money at the time, and I could afford cable or satellite TV, I would have loved to have USA Network on my tube.
Honestly surprised you didn't mention Reel Wild Cinema! That felt, if nothing else, Up All Night adjacent, and the movies were supplied by Mike Vraney's Something Weird. Or maybe that's due for an Archive episode all its own? (Probably not.)
Forgot it even existed. I've always thought of SWV as very much its own entity.
@@OddityArchive That definitely makes sense.
@@OddityArchive You didn't mention "The Hitchhiker", "Freddy's Nightmares" or even "Weird Science" and "Duckman".
3:15 - For someone who doesn't like wrestling, you nailed it.
USA Network is now WWE Raw and other shows. Now Chucky will air on USA and Syfy
Night flight and radio 1990 was my first time being introduced to music videos.
Especially the hard Rock and metal categories.
Iron maiden judas priest sabbath motley crue and so on.
Way before my hometown cable network got MTV.
RADIO 1990: from the creators of Night Flight! Most of those musician interviews were repurposed for/from Night Flight too.
I remember I watched USA a lot as a young kid when they showed stuff like Major Dad, The Facts of Life, Charles in Charge, American Gladiators and Baywatch
My earliest memories of the USA network was watch Bob Backlund us Jimmy Snuka from MSG `
I love your retrospectives on channels. I'm 40 and grew up with rabbit ears then cable. For so much of my life TV was a manor fixture. It seems funny how now I almost never watch it. I'd rather tune to specific content with people making great stuff online like yourself.
I enjoyed Duckman!😀❤️
A retrospective on Nickelodeon would actually be cool. It started as part of Cube in Columbus Ohio and then became Pinwheel then when it became Nickelodeon it had this weird mime as the channel mascot.
Now USA Network is the home of Chicago PD Law & Order Special Victims Unit and Monday Night Raw
You named some great damn shows there!!! Brought back some memories.
I remember the night flight 1988 6 episode parody english dub of the 1983 japanese super sentai(later shows turned into power rangers in the US)"DYNAMAN" not only was it a parody dub that ignored the original scripts but also used a crapload of licensed pop music. I think some of the "kids in the hall" worked on it. The 2 in one episode pilot also aired on Nickelodeon.
Mark McKinney did indeed work on that.
I watch the USA network when I was a kid I still like it and they should bring back game shows on that network. 😀👍
USA Network probably still aired Scooby-Doo as late as 1995 as Cartoon Network was yet to be available on all cable systems in the U.S.
I loved cartoon express i have fond memories of it as a kid. And of course every friday the 13th we got 3 jason movies in a row. Good times
I strongly suspect there's a correlation between the downfall of basic cable and the discontinuation of the Cable Ace Awards.
TH-cam and streaming services taking over is that obvious reason.
Night Flight is where I saw the infamous first, and only, all midget western “The Terror of Tiny Town”.
Saturday Nightmares straight up best
There’s plenty for a second episode. Dance Party USA. More on Commander USA. Kung Fu Theater. NHL coverage. US Open Tennis. Dog Show and so on and so on. Love old school USA Network.
The Cartoon Express also showed cartoons from Ruby-Spears(Hanna-Barbera`s sister studio)back in the 80s as well.
Some 1980s Hanna-Barbera cartoons also were shown(such as Challenge of the Go-Bots)
You forgot the greatest two shows from USA: Weird Science and Duckman!