Nickelodeon already had a hit importing You Can't Do That on Television from Canada, but that wasn't enough. They wanted their own version, too. A clear case of having cake, and eating it as well.
Unfortunately, Turkey Television, which was also part of the then-nascent Nick at Nite evening block, was a dud, cancelled after 1 season. A mishmash of cartoons imported from across the globe, and comedy skits from here, there, and everywhere. Dana Carvey appeared in at least one episode while on Saturday Night Live. Nick at Nite was finding its footing at the time, but giving Turkey a weekend daytime berth to widen its audience didn't work, either.
Here's the intro:
Co-creator/co-executive producer Geraldine Laybourne would recover from this debacle.
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3 comments:
Turkey Television was at least an interesting idea; Nick tried to do the same thing that MTV did with music videos, only with comedy. The problem was that it came off like a mishmash of weird stuff that made no sense to kids. Also, TT was the only Nick show to my knowledge aside from Looney Tunes that got a run on both Nickelodeon and on Nick at Nite. Unfortunately, the jokes weren't quite edgy enough for a young, hip late-night crowd and the show couldn't secure a following among the much coveted 18-35-year-old demographic.
Years ago I read an interview with Ms. Laybourne where she said of Turkey Television: "What I learned from that is never give your show a title so embarrassing that people will make fun of you forever for having created it." But like Goldstar said, while the execution wasn't exactly up to snuff, I thought TT was an OK idea anyway.
IIRC, guys, TT & Looney Tunes were paired together on Nick at Nite. It was thrown together, it seems, with little thought other than copying You Can't Do That on Television, which meant this wasn't planned out properly.
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