When Norm Was The Norm

(From the Janesville Messenger, 1-4-09)


My daughter Corinne is going to Boston next spring with her high school band. When she received her itinerary, one of the items listed was “Dinner at Cheers.”
“What is ‘Cheers’?” she asked.
Oh, my.
I looked it up and discovered that the final episode of “Cheers” aired almost 16 years ago (16 years ago!) when my daughter was a year old. No wonder she knew nothing of Sam, Diane, Woody, Norm and Cliff. Finding out that Frasier was on a show before “Frasier” was like finding out that John Lennon was in a band before he wrote “Imagine.”
Besides making me feel old, it reminded me of how television used to be the Great Uniter. At the time “Cheers” was on the air, practically everyone I knew watched it. And that’s how it was with a lot of shows.
If you needed a topic to start a conversation, all you had to do was ask, “Did you see ‘Saturday Night Live’ last weekend?” From “M*A*S*H” to “Happy Days” to “The Cosby Show,” there were dozens of shows that provided a common bond for discussion at school or at the office – “watercooler shows,” to borrow a phrase from “Seinfeld.”
Of course, those were the days when you only had three network programs to choose from. With the advent of cable television and its explosion of networks, viewership has greatly fragmented. Then came home video, followed by the Internet and video games, and now it’s hard to find two televisions on the same street tuned to the same thing (except on Packer Sundays).
My personal television viewing habits have changed radically over the last decade or so. Where I once watched as much TV as anyone, now I rarely view a program that doesn’t include a football. The only two current shows that seem to have any kind of “watercooler” status are “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” – and I have never watched an episode of either. That’s not an exaggeration; I mean never, as in “not once.”
Other popular shows I have never seen: “The Sopranos,” any incarnation of “CSI,” “E.R.,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Sex and the City.” The list would fill a few pages.
Only once did I watch a “Seinfeld” episode in first run. I saw “Friends” once. I saw part of one episode of the first “Survivor” series but after watching the contestants eat a rat, I never returned.
That doesn’t mean I am now some sort of snobby TV hater or Luddite. There are, in fact, a few series I really like, including “The Office,” “Lost,” “Psych” and “Monk.” However, I watch 99% of their episodes not in their scheduled network slot, but on DVDs checked out from the public library or on the TV networks’ web sites.
On the rare occasion where I do watch a show on network TV, the commercial interruptions drive me nuts. We caught one of my daughter’s favorite movies, “Miracle,” on ABC recently, and sitting through the long breaks was torturous, particularly when you’re no longer used to doing that.
About the only universally shared TV experience left is the Super Bowl, a show where, ironically, the commercials are part of the entertainment. I’ve always imagined that the only people not watching the Super Bowl are 80-year-old ladies sitting quietly at home tuned to Lawrence Welk or American Movie Classics (sorry, Mom). But amazingly enough, each of the past two years, I have had to miss the big game. It completely pained me that last year, while one of the greatest games in the history of the Super Bowl was playing out, I was driving back from central Iowa in a snowstorm, forced to search the AM radio dial for the game. And to make matters worse, when my wife took the wheel for the last part of the trip, I actually fell asleep and missed the Giants’ winning touchdown drive. You know you’re getting old when the formula “Passenger Seat + Darkness = ZZZ” automatically applies to you.
This year, however, I should be able to watch the Super Bowl again, and as long as the Minnesota Vikings aren’t playing, it will be a good thing. Maybe I’ll even go to a Super Bowl party.
Because sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.
And they're always glad you came...