What year did everyone start watching?

[ugotslimed]

I must have been a nerdy kid too because I thought Nick at Nite was way funnier than ycdtotv-not for the shows themselves-but for the bumpers they did in between the shows. there really needs to be an old nick at nite message board to discuss everything from "dixie the pixie" to "how to be swell" to "milkman."
-another interesting point is how you mention someone being grossed out by the green slime. I always wondered if green slime itself was really considered gross and controversial. I know the bathroom humor ycdtotv was supposed to be like that-but were people really freaked and grossed out by the green slime?
if so maybe the "great slime controversy" bumper is based on fact!

I know I was a fan of the show by 1983, since I distinctly remember Mrs. Kerrigan's 3rd grade class and joking with someone else who watched the show that the people who didn't wear green on St. Patrick's Day should get slimed. Not many people knew what we were talking about, and thought it sounded truly disgusting when we described it. So I had to have been watching it for at least a little bit prior to March, 1983. I'd say probably as early as fall 1982.

I'm pretty sure the first episode I saw was the "Pier Pressure" episode on a Saturday morning, flipping through channels. The scene of someone's foot stuck under a pier and someone else who kept stepping on it made a major impression on my 7-8 year old mind, even if I didn't totally get the joke. I understood that there was something absurd going on, and I loved it.

And yes, I remember the Silver Ball era very well. Of course we didn't know at the time that it was the "silver ball era", it was just the way Nickelodeon looked in between episodes of You Can't and Mr. Wizard, which were most of what I was interested in. I always wanted to be interested in "Standby: Lights, Camera, Action" but I could never really get into it since it was pitched at older kids. Same with "Livewire" - it seemed cool, but I was too young for it.

I also vividly remember the aggressive promotion before Nick At Nite started up, only to discover that our cable system shared Nickelodeon with the Milwaukee ABC affiliate and switched over at 7PM Central every night (I was in the Chicago suburbs, but we were also sort of close to Milwaukee so we got some Wisconsin duplicates). It happened even after N@N started, which was devastating to me as a 10-year-old. Every night, I'd watch to see if maybe someone would make a mistake and it wouldn't switch, but inevitably after a minute or so of Nick At Nite starting it would automatically switch to "Who's The Boss" or whatever was on ABC that night. They finally expanded our cable about a year later and since I was a nerdy kid, it was heaven to me to watch stuff like "My Three Sons" and "Laugh In" and "Ann Sothern" and "Route 66".

Ah, memories.

[GoingGreat]

I totally took the "slime controversy" bumper as fact at the time. True investigative journalism dedicated to issues important to kids.

And yes, the bumpers/graphics were part of what N@N so great. Those same shows on their own during the day on a random independent channel wouldn't have been anything particularly interesting at all, but packaged up like that they became something totally different.

In case you haven't seen, there's a ton of N@N stuff on YouTube from the late '80s/early '90s. I'm such a nerd (never outgrew it) that I actually downloaded/ripped episodes of all the N@N shows from 1988 (I looked up an old schedule from a particular week) and used iMovie to put a night back together with the bumpers in the right place and all that. I so wish I had just taped an entire night of it way back when, but alas I wasn't thinking that far ahead.

[ugotslimed]

I'm always looking up old nick at nite stuff on youtube. Something I didn't even remember wasd they used to have bumpers called "global village news" where it was Daily Show-like sketches of fake news (years before daily show) with the tagline "If we don't cover it, it doesn't matter"
-funny stuff. My memory of nick at nite really kicks into high gear at about 1990-I would have been too young to stay up and watch it most nights before that-but I remember scattered things from the 80's. Particulalrly the "Back of patty Duke's head" interview with the actress who was the back of patty dukes head. (not the real one of course) I remember being a little freaked out by it because they wouldn't show her face. Anyway the weird thing is, I think those bumpers are from 87 or 88-I don't know if I would have been watching Nick at Nite that regularly yet then-this makes me wonder if they showed those bumpers durring the daytime Nickeldoen showings of patty duke too.

I totally took the "slime controversy" bumper as fact at the time. True investigative journalism dedicated to issues important to kids.

And yes, the bumpers/graphics were part of what N@N so great. Those same shows on their own during the day on a random independent channel wouldn't have been anything particularly interesting at all, but packaged up like that they became something totally different.

In case you haven't seen, there's a ton of N@N stuff on YouTube from the late '80s/early '90s. I'm such a nerd (never outgrew it) that I actually downloaded/ripped episodes of all the N@N shows from 1988 (I looked up an old schedule from a particular week) and used iMovie to put a night back together with the bumpers in the right place and all that. I so wish I had just taped an entire night of it way back when, but alas I wasn't thinking that far ahead.

[Bigzman]

I first began watching in the spring of 1982, at my grandparent's house. I could recall distinctly missing some of the opposite skits so I could walk my way to the kitchen and grab some popcorn (this was before microwave popping became commonplace). I would race back in time to see the locker jokes from shows like Classical Music, Rumors, and Fame--great days indeed! It wouldn't be until 1984 when I began watching in my own home.

And yes, the commercials were and other Nick shows were great to see as well. I am so glad fellow YouTubers have preserved these memories.

Matt

[MarcD]

Hmm... a lot of us old farts started watching around 82-83 apparently.

No surprise I'm still a fan of the show, I also spend most of my music-listening time on music from the early 80s.

[ChrisInMI]

The reason I didn't start watching the show earlier than I did was actually because of the green slime. There was something about seeing the kids get their hair and faces covered with the stuff that just frightened me to death when I was a very small child. One of my earliest memories of being freaked out by the slime was what I now know (thanks to a YouTube video which has since been deleted) was the promo for the very first Slime-In sweepstakes, with a slime-covered Christine in that yellow dress from the "Medicine" episode (in which she was slimed, so I wonder if they shot the spot while filming that episode). I guess I just one day decided I was going to make myself watch an episode - the first episode I ever saw was "Movies" (in which the entire cast except for Abby is slimed), and from that moment on, I couldn't get enough. Again, that would have been in about 1988, possibly 1987. I have vague memories of the Silver Ball from watching Pinwheel as a toddler but I certainly wasn't watching YCDTOTV then.

[sew091472]

I first started watching in early 1982 (I was 9 at the time). We had just had got cable in the early fall of 1981. The first episode I saw was "Strike Now". I do remember the Silver Ball and that Nickelodeon went off the air at 8 eastern time and became the Arts and Entertainment network.