Flashback Fantasy: Prevue Day on Pop
Just one periodic hour, a semiannual day, or even a whole weekend, would mean unique retro relaxation.
The Pop channel has its flings with bingeable classic shows. There was a point in recent memory when one could go there on a Tuesday afternoon or Saturday evening for an ER marathon.
Which made this author remember, In my day, that full-hour show only occupied that space for a half- or full minute at a time, and barely claimed a quarter of the screen.
That was when the Prevue Channel — Pop’s predecessor twice removed — served up a snippet of the heart-racing medical drama on its upper right side. Alongside the video promo was a dark blue backdrop with the show’s title, next airdate and time slot, and the digits for your local NBC station printed on it.
Now I wonder, What if we could have that back, every once in a while, for old time’s sake?
That sake, namely the sentimental value, would be worth the time alone.
Realistically, this is not an idea worth banking on. Pop is just another regular TV network with attractive syndicated series to acquire and fullscreen commercial space to sell.
But if, by any chance, a throwback occasion could work in that space, it would slake a thirst for a certain flavor of ’90s nostalgia, a craving that prospective viewers may not know (or admit) they harbor.
The event could take portions of one or more days sprinkled out over the almanac. It could consume an annual 24-hour stretch. Or it could last one regular-sized or long weekend.
Anything to let one-time Prevue cultists kick back and relive a rather mundane, inconsequential, yet uniquely their own, slice of their younger years. And to give those who were born and rose to consciousness since that time a measuring pole on how glimpsing the near future of TV offerings and/or killing time has evolved since the turn of the century.
Prevue served a unique purpose while it had one. Ditto the subsequent, self-explanatory TV Guide brand.
As a concept, the rolling local listings on the bottom half of one’s screen paired with the top half’s bite-sized segments, commercials, and typed announcements with stock music seeped deep into this century. The TV Guide Channel (later tweaked to TV Guide Network, then just TVGN) had extra offerings that Prevue lacked, but kept most of the fundamentals and only gave way to Pop in 2015.
Prevue’s obsolete nature is a moot point when you size it up against sentiment. The brand’s only era was underappreciated while it was around, and has only grown more appealing since it left.
It is somewhat amazing, given the practical ubiquity of digital cable and concomitant Internet service from a given provider, the concept stayed in practice so long. While there is work to be done to close the digital divide, many people take for granted the ability to click, scroll, and query their way to customized short- and long-term listings.
With its scope of offerings, TV Guide represented the bridge between centuries. But Prevue was exclusive to the ’90s. Its lifespan of 1993 to 1999 matched those of The Nanny, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Homicide: Life on the Street.
And as this author has asserted in other spaces, it was cheated by TV Guide’s overeager entrance with 11 months left in the decade. By instituting the relaunch at the stroke of midnight Eastern on February 1, 1999, the powers that be reaffirmed their desire to hasten Y2K’s influx.
That is why Prevue’s obsolete nature is a moot point when you size it up against sentiment. The brand’s only era was underappreciated while it was around, and has only grown more appealing since it left.
By recreating Prevue in an all-out manner, Pop can make up for that long-ago misstep and treat ’90s kids to an immersive throwback. Incidental secondary benefits would not be out of the question either.
For any Gen Z viewers or younger, this would be a fun lesson in the relatively recent history of technology. For all viewers, it could be a tempting, yet worthwhile, excuse to give the laptops and mobile devices a breather.
The chief difference between the eras is that now a little more work and a little less patience is required on the viewer’s end. Back then Prevue spared the remote and its holder constant clicking through a guide or through the channels themselves. Its top-half offerings dished up extra information, and maybe a little entertainment, while one waited for their favorite channels to reappear on the bottom rotation.
Naturally, the tradeoff called for some swivel-headed attentiveness and humoring on the viewer’s part. Not everything you saw on either half of the screen was what you were looking for at any time, all the time.
Some aspects of the Prevue rotation, like the three rotating snippets of the month on its musical score for motionless interstitials, were fairly predictable. Others, like the precise featured film on Prevue Revue or the promos for terrestrial, basic cable, or pay-per-view programming, were not.
The post-Prevue landscape is more conducive to following up on predetermined programming preferences. Back in the day, the channel gave you a little less work and little less control while giving you a full menu of every genre in steady increments.
In an era and setting before the sometimes off base and occasionally creepy algorithms of web searches, no suggestions were specific to what you already, let alone recently viewed. As such, while you relinquished control by setting down the remote, you could theoretically invite a suggestion you never thought might have a place in your wheelhouse.
Deep into the post-Prevue age, most TV watchers and streamers have their go-to channels, services, and programs. Streaming aside, that is not much different from the past. But everyone’s favorites are easier to find and cue up, and decide on. There is barely any place for someone to ask prospective converts Have you ever considered our content?
Dare we say Prevue mitigated TV tribalism, if only a tad?
The post-Prevue landscape is more conducive to following up on predetermined programming preferences. Back in the day, the channel gave you a little less work and little less control while giving you a full menu of every genre in steady increments.
As long as you trustingly went along with it, there was a chance you would get intrigued by something more than what you sought. Or you might have just let the ride continue with no particular purpose.
The running time, view counts, and comments on a given YouTube upload prove that Prevue became a living-room scenic drive for many viewers. It was a refreshing alternative to fruitless channel surfing.
As such, for nostalgic purposes, cueing up a VHS capture uploads on your web browser is one thing. It would be another to kick back on one’s sofa or bed and actually turn to Prevue via the remote (then put the thing down right away).
The former method replicates the experience well enough, replenishing the same old intangibles to the mind. But the latter gets closer to authenticating the experience.
And yes, it was an experience of sorts. It almost had to be when the TV Guide already graced living rooms in its mini-magazine book form. The channel could not carry on long in its late-’80s/early-’90s precursor’s form of a rolling lineup that resembled a primitive computer screen.
You might have come to Prevue for the listings. But anyone who stayed surely did so for more reasons than making sure they didn’t miss any bottom-half teasers of what’s on deck in the next 90 minutes.
The top half was home to the adhesive appeal. The featurettes, interstitials, a given month’s select troika of Killer Tracks samples, and even the ad nauseam ads for primetime network gems, Pay-Per-View offerings, GEICO (both pre-Gecko and the short-lived Kelsey Grammer Gecko campaigns), Woodbridge Sterling Capital, and Psychic Talk USA grew on you.
The top half was home to the adhesive appeal. The featurettes, interstitials, a given month’s select troika of Killer Tracks samples, and even the ad nauseam ads for primetime network gems, Pay-Per-View offerings, GEICO (both pre-Gecko and the short-lived Kelsey Grammer Gecko campaigns), Woodbridge Sterling Capital, and Psychic Talk USA grew on you.
It wasn’t much, mind you. And if you made one sitting last longer than any of the programs touted on the bottom half, you may have wanted to reconsider your agenda. But it was still a part of life in the former days, and as such has accrued a little more appeal since it went away.
Granted, change is normally good. During its lengthier tenure, the TV Guide Channel/Network generated jobs for on-air talent and unseen celebrity interviewers.
But if enough people took to a Prevue Hour, Day, or Weekend, the experience could illustrate some of the ways their media consumption has mutated a little too much.
Most cable news networks were barely two years old when Prevue News was still rolling out three quick-hit headlines twice an hour. Nothing further than that. No potential for punditry overload, and of course none of this century’s incessant bulletin crawls on the bottom strip of the screen. (After all, that space and then some was needed for listings.)
Even if one will subsequently resume the habit of gorging on a talking-head buffet — or on anything else on another channel — one could use a momentary hands-free ingestion of free samples from every department of scripted and unscripted TV content. The easy digestion would be aided all the more by dusted-off evergreen ads and still-shot, music-laden, maybe text-only bumpers.
This dream plan may require some concessions to the present day, especially in terms of advertisers and segment subjects. (Although the aforementioned GEICO has confirmed no qualms about recycling decades-old spots. And when it comes to scripted series, the rash of reboots is still rolling.)
But the graphics, music, and other trimmings are timeless, despite their permanent association with the mid-to-late ’90s. With those, and any salvaged voiceover recordings, Pop could revive its old identity and tout 2020s content with a ’90s flair.
That is, the only kind of ’90s flair it can provide, and a kind of ’90s flair only it can provide.
Do you have an idea for an immersive ’90s throwback event, especially one that is admittedly unrealistic, but would yield boundless sentimental benefits if one could pull it off? DM me on Twitter @WriterAlDaniel with your suggestions.