We're here at ClassicFlix because we love vintage television programs and movies, but what started that fondness? I'm especially interested in people who did not grow up on the TV shows from the 1950s and 1960s, yet still watch them today. I believe my own preference for old-school entertainment is a combination of nature and nurture--nature in the sense that my parents watched and loved it, nurture in the sense that--well, my parents watched and loved it.

Reruns were scattered all over the dial in the era before endless courtroom and confrontational talk shows, but there was one source in particular that stood out for my family. Before there was Me-TV or Antenna; before there was Nick at Nite or TV Land; heck, before there was USA or TBS, even, there was channel 11, WPIX.

At least in my neighborhood, our 'local' independent stations were 3 New York outlets based hundreds of miles away. WPIX-11, WOR-9, and WNEW-5 weren't exactly mom-and-pop operations, but they offered a whole bunch of great shows all day long and provided a great alternative to the 3 networks and PBS.

WPIX gave me cartoon reruns like Tom and Jerry and live-action kid shows like The Magic Garden. It delivered local programming like the news and Yankee baseball. Plus there were all those fascinating local commercials featuring Phil Rizzuto shilling for loans, someone claiming to be 'Crazy Eddie' hawking electronics, not to mention all the cool station promos and bumpers.

To a kid growing up in a relatively small town, this was a mesmerizing window into the larger world. I believe a lot of other people of various generations felt the same way. Fortunately, many of them preserved this stuff on the Internet. For a piece of bittersweet nostalgia, Google 'Henry Tillman' to find a classic example of a clever WPIX promotional campaign that today reveals a New York we'll never see again.

The best part of WPIX's schedule, though, was its late night rerun lineup, which in its prime consisted of:

11:00 PM The Odd Couple
11:30 PM The Honeymooners
12:00 AM Star Trek
01:00 AM The Twilight Zone

This is not only an amazing block of programming in terms of quality, but it's also a perfect representation of New York itself. Felix and Oscar's adventures were loaded with references to the city itself as well as its sports teams, attractions, and personalities. The Kramdens' Chauncey Street dwelling epitomized a certain conception of urban apartment dwelling, and also Ralph's perpetual pie-in-the-sky schemes suggest the drive and spirit of New Yorkers. As for Trek and Zone...well, the Enterprise was bold, and...OK, so the analogy collapses here. But as far as I was concerned, they were New York because WPIX showed them.

Now, this lineup wasn't a constant (and just how unconstant it was, I'll illustrate later). Eventually WPIX slipped Cheers into that 11:00 slot, for a while midnight was Saturday Night Live reruns with the original cast, and there were some other variations over the years. It's possible that lineup wasn't as long-lasting as I remember, but boy, do I remember it being there. It's no coincidence that those 4 shows remain on my list of all-time favorites. I wasn't allowed to stay up all the time to watch them on my 5-inch portable black-and-white set, but during summers and on non-school nights, those shows were there. My parents and I even watched them together sometimes, especially the comedies.

The WPIX late night roster taught me the value of 'rewatchability.' We would look forward to seeing a series not just because it was so good, but because we knew it held up to multiple viewings. Look at The Honeymooners, which ran weeknights continuously for over 30 years on the station. That staying power is staggering, particularly when you consider that, though eventually it added the 'Lost Episodes' to the mix, channel 11 was running the same 'Classic 39' episodes from that one legendary season (1955-56). I will say it again: 39 episodes ran continuously for decades, and fans loved them.

In fact, the ability to quote great lines and even recite them along with the actors only enhanced the appeal. The Odd Couple and Star Trek had similar timeless qualities. I believe that there was an inherent likability and distinctiveness of the characters on all those shows that made viewers like me eager to revisit them again and again...and again.

Further proof of that rewatchability factor is the continued success of The Twilight Zone, which of course thrived all over the country since its original run. Think how many episodes feature twist endings. The fact that the show remains so popular even after so many know the outcomes is testament to its quality.

My own personal experience involved seeing my parents' enthusiasm upon seeing a certain episode. 'Hey, it's the one where Felix and Oscar go on Password!' Or if it was The Twilight Zone, 'It's the one where Ed Wynn is a pitchman!'


Or maybe 'It's the one where Ralph makes his own costume!'


And it wasn't just my parents. When my uncle visited town and stayed at my grandparents' house, he'd often call my folks and see if they had on WPIX (they usually did, but he called, anyway). 'Guess which one is on? It's a good one!' It was almost always a good one. My parents and relatives were sincere in their enthusiasm of these episodes even after seeing them over and over again. One of my best friends in the neighborhood shared our love of the New York stations and the same classic series, and we'd often compare notes about the ones that were on the night before.

So from watching this original Must See TV, I learned the joy of old programming that could be viewed repeatedly. This paved the way for me to seek out more classic television in general, and I never looked back. Er, that is, I kept looking back, and I liked what I saw.

Unfortunately, there's a darker side to this story, an incident that traumatized me at the time but ultimately planted a seed for my DVD collecting hobby. You see, as I mentioned, WPIX often changed its schedule, whether I wanted it to or not (Hint: I didn't). Even though me, my friends and family, and presumed millions of other viewers were satisfied with that late night rerun lineup, the Powers That Be couldn't resist tinkering.

I recall one summer night I was looking forward to staying up late and drifting off to some of my favorite shows. I think that even the branding of channel 11 had started changing at this point, with more 'modern' logos and graphics replacing the traditional-looking bumpers and promos. This should have been my first warning.

However, it was as an unsuspecting innocent (OK, maybe I was worldly enough to have seen an R-rated movie or two at that point, but I still believed in my TV stations, darn it) that I watched a Honeymooners at 11:30 and prepared for a Trek. Would it be an alien one, a split personalities one, a goofy one? Part of the fun in those days was not having access to program listings, episode guides, and all the info we have today that tells us exactly what is going to be on at what time. So I had no idea which Star Trek was coming on at midnight...

Or really if it was coming on at all, of course, but why would I even consider it like that? It was summer, it was midnight, it was the end of the 'Mooners, and it was time for the Enterprise.

Only it wasn't, as I noted when one of those newfangled bumpers appeared on my screen. 'Coming up...' the announcer intoned, 'Space: 1999.'

Say what? That was a funny way to pronounce Star Trek. And I wanted my science fiction from some random stardate, not from 1999. I had never heard that announcer screw up before, and the accompanying still photo and text proved he wasn't wrong tonight. Nope, it was really a different show, some knockoff I had never seen. No disrespect intended to Martin Landau or to fans of that series, but I sat through about 5 minutes in disbelief before changing the channel. Nowadays I might even be excited if someone picked up Space: 1999, but I wasn't in the mood to see it replace Trek, and to this day I've never seen a full hour of it.

Somehow this was more of an insult than WPIX running Saturday Night or Hill Street Blues in that timeslot. This was another space show, clearly an inferior one, and it felt like someone was pulling a fast one on me. I think it was the next day that I saw my friend and we commiserated about how our midnight show had been dumped. Maybe it was still on in its semi-regular Saturday slot (6:00 PM if I recall correctly), but that wasn't the same. Pro wrestling was on then. Dinner was on then. Star Trek belonged at midnight because--well, because that's just the way it was!

It was different when they replaced Twilight Zone with One Step Beyond. After all, I usually couldn't stay up that late. Besides, Beyond was a pretty cool show in its own right, one we couldn't see anywhere else. Plus the way my friend across the street liked to announce, 'One...Step...Beyoooooooooond!' made it worthwhile.

But if Trek could disappear so suddenly, if a TV station could wreak havoc with my nightly routine (the fact that I didn't do it every night makes it less routine, maybe, but no less important), how could I rely on television? I'm fortunate to have been born a tad too late to get into the phenomenon of buying TV shows on VHS via a mail-order club. At two episodes per tape for, what, 20 bucks a pop plus shipping, I could have gotten in a lot of trouble.

But when DVD arrived, and when TV on DVD became a thing, whoa-ho! I had the technology, I had the disposable income, and while I didn't necessarily have the free time to watch them, I knew I wanted to own my favorites. I could make my own lineups, I could pull out individual episodes, and I would never have to worry about tuning on my TV at midnight and seeing Space: 1999.

To me that's the beauty of collecting these shows on video: The freedom, the independence. DVD allows us to set the terms. It's a good thing, too, because nothing lasts forever on television. After decades of running The Honeymooners on weeknights, WPIX finally yanked the show, and though it shows up every now and then, if you turn it to channel 11 at 11:30 in the middle of the week, you'll get Seinfeld. Now, that's another quintessential New York sitcom, one that people quote and enjoy in repeated viewings. But it's not The Honeymooners, and so viewers must fire up the DVD player to see this comforting image, accompanied by the memorable closing theme Jackie Gleason himself composed, and drift off to sleep as the end credits roll:


I still get a little drowsy when I see it.

Rick Brooks is the proprietor of Cultureshark, a blog in which he uses an often irreverent approach to express his reverence for the classics and the un-classics.