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In 1975, I was 14 and Mare was in her early ’30s. Her life–that of an intelligent, successful career woman–was dreadfully remote, yet it was everything I ever hoped for. The clothes! The job! The warm, wisecracking friends!
But seeing Mare last night, it occurred to me that her clothes are tacky, that her job as an associate producer at a nowhere Minneapolis TV station is none too impressive and that I have funnier friends. Then, just when I thought I couldn’t get any more depressed, it dawned on me that all the guys she goes out with are too young for me. These days, I have the hots for Mr. Grant.
I found myself watching Nick-at-Nite because-like the rest of America in August–I couldn’t stand watching one more rerun of Life Goes On. If I’m going to be brain dead, at least I’ll be brain dead with the classics.
You’ve probably seen the Nick-at-Nite lineup, which features The Partridge Family, The Dick Van Dyke Show and other nostalgia programming. The idea is to draw both baby boomers and their boomlets-the little Jasons and Jennifers–and it seems to be working. Nick-at-Nite’s ratings are up about 12% from last year, and approximately 677,000 American homes watch the channel every evening.
“What’s happening is that the kids tuned in to Nickelodeon during the day lead their parents to the TV by 8 or 8:30,” says Larry W. Jones, vp/marketing for Nick-at-Nite. “To a large extent, Nick-atNite gets rid of the generation gap. There’s a bond created in this viewing environment.”
There’s also a jangly mixture of ads selling Stuff For Kids and Stuff For Adults Who Have Kids And Need To Know What To Do With Them. I know this because I spent last night nursing Woo Woo shots through several hours of Nick-At-Nite at Polly Esther’s, a ’70s revival bar in my neighborhood.
On the bar’s big-screen TV, I relive my media childhood with an episode of Get Smart in which Maxwell Smart tries to steal some top-secret papers from arch-enemy Kaos. He needs the help of a pneumatic brunette scientist who has invented a spray that makes a person invisible. Hilarity and bad taste ensue, along with the following commercials:
* Yoo-Hoo, the drink that’s too sweet for anyone but heroin addicts and 8-year-olds, tells kids “It’s the cool way to do chocolate.”
* Two 30ish women (supposed to be 40ish) engage in the kind of breathless conversation about moisturizer that advertisers assume we all have when men are out of the room: “Your skin looks so young!” says the first. “It’s Suave!” gushes the second.
* Cinnamon Life cereal, which sports the tagline “Don’t worry, your kids will eat it,” reassures parents that, indeed, their children will have the energy to attend school after breakfasting on this treat (especially if they wash it down with Yoo-Hoo).
* Jimmy Connors, hawking Power Stick deodorant by Mennen, drops by to deliver this upbeat message: “I’m getting older, so I have to push myself harder.”
Several Woo Woos later comes Dragnet. Sgt. Friday and Col. Potter from M*A*S*H are on the trail of two girls who’ve run away from home because their well-meaning-but-germ-obsessed mother won’t let them have a dog, or for that matter, a father. (Divorced dad doesn’t have visitation rights because he used to be a drunk.) By the end of the half-hour, we discover Dad’s on the wagon and Mom regrets keeping the girls from their father. Everyone is reunited thanks to a neighborhood dog, Los Angeles is safe for the nuclear family once again, and we get these commercials:
* Six Flags Great Adventure promises fun and motion sickness for the whole family.
* A promo for My Secret Garden, a children’s movie whose apparent purpose is to make today’s 10-year-olds into tomorrow’s Merchant/Ivory audience.
* Dutch Boy house paint, a product probably not geared to Manhattanites overhauling studio apartments.
* An ad for Life with the tagline “Remember when you used to read us and we were relevant?” (No, sorry, that’s not quite the line, but by this point I may have had one too many Woo Woos.)
All this nostalgia is warm and fuzzy alright–like a hairball. I have to admit, though, that in addition to such cultural peaks as Wuthering Heights, Fred Astaire, Vermeer and Ella Fitzgerald, I now look forward to introducing my future children to Dragnet.
Copyright Adweek L.P. (1993)
