Nick at Nite Meta

I can’t blog about reruns without giving props to Nick at Nite since they are a great source for rerun watching.  The thing that amuses me most though is when characters in a show on Nick at Nite refer to watching old shows on Nick at Nite.  The specific examples of this are both from The Nanny.  In one episode Fran is dating someone younger then her (fake) age and they are talking about the TV shows they both grew up watching the he says he saw them on Nick at Nite the reference is supposed to point out their age difference since she saw the shows when they were 1^st broadcast and he did not see them until they were reruns.  The other example is when Ms. Babcock insults Fran’s intelligence by saying she went to Nick at Nite School implying that she knows more about TV then real life.  The initial reaction to hearing shows talk about Nick at Nite on that network is to think that they are older or more time has passed but that’s only partly accurate.  When the concept 1^st started they had older shows and that’s what The Nanny episodes were referring to when that was written in the mid 90s.  Since then the criteria for getting a show on Nick at Nite does not seem to include a passage of time since the original run.  In fact I’m pretty sure they were showing Everybody Hates Chris while new episodes were still being produced and shown on the CW.  Basically the stereotype that a show has to be of a certain age or irrelevancy in order to make it on to the network no longer applies.   Even when shows are recent having them on in reruns can introduce new viewers to the material.   The reruns also provide a concentrated version of the show by having them on many days in a week and sometimes more then one episode a day you can watch all the seasons in a few months instead of over several years while they were on originally.