Apr 21: Baywatch, Homer's shoes, Netflix, lost SNL sketch
Plus a look at one of the funniest #1 hit songs of the '90s
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved, forgot, or never knew existed
April 21st, 2023 • Issue 148
This week in the ‘80s and ‘90s
April 21st
1981 - Weird Al Yankovic made his national TV debut on the Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder.
1984 - Footloose unseated Thriller as the top album in the U.S. after 37 weeks.
1984 - Phil Collins’s single Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now) hit number one.
1986 - Geraldo opened Al Capone’s vault on live TV and found nothing.
1989 - The Nintendo Game Boy was released in Japan, along with Super Mario Land.
1989 - Field of Dreams and Pet Semetary hit theaters.
1989 - George W. Bush became CEO of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
1990 - Sinead O’Connor’s one hit, Nothing Compares 2 U, hit number one.
1990 - The Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue special was simulcast on all major networks.
1993 - Walker, Texas Ranger premiered on CBS.
1994 - Herman’s Head aired its series finale.
1995 - While You Were Sleeping and the Basketball Diaries both hit theaters.
April 22nd
1978 - The Blues Brothers made their first appearance on Saturday Night Live.
1985 - Prince’s album Around the World in a Day was released.
1989 - Guns N’ Roses’ single Patience was released.
1991 - Johnny Carson announced he would be retiring from the Tonight Show the following year.
1993 - The Mosaic 1.0 web browser was released.
1994 - Richard Nixon passed away.
1998 - Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened in Florida.
2000 - Elian Gonzalez was seized by U.S. federal agents during a raid.
April 23rd
34 years ago, on April 23rd, 1989, Baywatch premiered on NBC.
Baywatch is a groundbreaking show. Not for its bikini models. For it’s business model.
Because Baywatch was the first true international TV hit to come from the U.S.
It didn’t start out that way. The pilot episode aired on NBC on this day in 1989, and the show would then begin as a primetime NBC drama series in the fall.
That didn’t take.
Baywatch needed to be more cheesy, more credulity-stretching, more raw, and, yes, more jiggly than the network fare of the time. It ranked 74th out of the 111 TV series for the 1989-90 TV season and NBC gave it the hook.
But the producers and their star, David Hasselhoff, noticed something. The show was far more popular in the U.K. and Germany than it ever was in the U.S.
So they took a gamble: They bought the rights. Hasselhoff took a pay cut, trading salary for executive producer earnings if the show took off. And the team produced the series for first-run syndication.
After all, they recognized Baywatch didn’t need the accoutrements endemic to a network TV show. They could hire unknown actors (and did so, with great success). They didn’t need tons of locations; and even used the cast’s real-life break room and gym on screen. They didn’t need many costumes. They didn’t need an army of writers.
They just needed to give the audience what it wanted.
Baywatch was always meant to be a syndicated show. Especially one that wasn’t tied down to any network — or the resulting Byzantine international rights situation.
They syndicated Baywatch around the world, to anyone who wanted it. And from there, it went on to be the first true U.S.-borne global hit.
By 1993, most reports said the show was receiving more than one billion viewers worldwide on a weekly basis.
Now, three decades later and more than a decade into streaming, global hits are far more common. Shows from any country can become hits in any other country. (On that note, are we ever getting a Squid Game season two? I feel like I watched that first season while I was still decontaminating delivery boxes with Clorox wipes.)
But the phenomenon began in earnest with Baywatch — though not with the Baywatch pilot we got on this day in 1989.
1982 - The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was released.
1983 - Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ one hit, Come On Eileen, hit number one.
1985 - New Coke was announced.
1985 - The We Are the World album was released.
1988 - Whitney Houston’s single Where Do Broken Hearts Go hit number one.
1989 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played in his final NBA regular season game.
1989 - Troy Aikman was the first pick of the NFL Draft.
1991 - Michael Bolton’s album Time, Love, and Tenderness was released.
1993 - Shaquille O’Neal destroyed his second backboard of his rookie season on a dunk.
1994 - Howard Stern was named the Libertarian party nominee for New York governor.
1999 - Election hit theaters.
April 24th
1982 - Tom Tom Club’s one hit, Genius of Love, peaked at number 31.
1989 - Massachusetts declared this day New Kids on the Block Day.
1990 - The space shuttle Discovery launched with the Hubble telescope onboard.
1994 - David Robinson scored 71 points in the final game of the NBA season.
1994 - Mel Kiper Jr. was mocked live during the NFL draft.
1996 - Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots entered rehab.
1997 - Seinfeld’s “The Yada Yada” episode aired on NBC.
2000 - ABC aired its dramatic Three Stooges biopic.
2003 - The series finale aired of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
April 25th
25 years ago, on April 25th, 1998, Next’s single Too Close hit number one.
Today marks the 25th anniversary of Too Close by Next — the only number one song in history entirely devoted to the phenomenon of embarrassing, accidental erections.
Likely the only top 40 hit song as well. Possibly the only song, period.
(Although let’s give a tip of the hat to LL Cool J, who also eschewed hyper-masculinity in Doin’ It during his honest lyrical description of the premature end to a highly-anticipated sexual liaison.)
Too Close capped an unlikely rise (pun not intended when I started typing the sentence but is now thrilling me) for Next.
The group formed six years prior in Minneapolis when a gospel choir director introduced the three founding members.
Their demo tape eventually caught the attention of Naughty by Nature — another group whose biggest song was genitalia-centric — and they got Next in the room with Arista Records.
Though Too Close was Next’s biggest hit, they’re surprisingly far from being one-hit wonders. They had four other top 40 hits in their relatively brief career, with 2000’s Wifey even making it to number seven.
Though the group’s last studio album came out in 2002, they’ve been on again, off again ever since.
They’re still just trying to poke back through to musical success; unfortunately, the industry hasn’t been grinding quite close enough.
1990 - The Hubble telescope was released into orbit.
1992 - The back-to-back-to-back series finales aired for Growing Pains, Who’s the Boss?, and MacGyver on ABC.
1992 - Kris Kross’s single Jump hit number one.
1995 - MLB returned after a strike ended the prior season.
1995 - Method Man and Mary J. Blige’s duet I’ll Be There/You’re All I Need was released.
1995 - Soul 4 Real’s single Every Little Thing I Do was released.
1996 - Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk opened in New York.
1997 - Volcano and Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion both hit theaters.
2000 - David Arquette won the WCW championship, horrifying fans.
2002 - Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes died in a car accident.
April 26th
1982 - Rod Stewart was mugged in Los Angeles.
1983 - John Elway was the number one pick in the NFL Draft by the Baltimore Colts.
1985 - Just One of the Guys hit theaters.
1986 - Arnold Schwarzenegger married Maria Shriver.
1986 - The Chernobyl disaster occurred in Kiev.
1989 - Kevin Mitchell made a famous barehanded catch.
1989 - Lucille Ball passed away.
1991 - Dinosaurs premiered on ABC.
1993 - NBC announced Conan O’Brien would replace David Letterman as the host of Late Night.
1995 - The first game was played at Coors Field in Colorado.
1995 - Friday hit theaters.
1999 - Replay TV shipped the first DVR.
1999 - Caroline in the City aired its series finale.
1999 - Lycos launched five live web radio music channels.
April 27th
1981 - Wings broke up.
1983 - Nolan Ryan became the MLB career strikeout leader.
1990 - Axl Rose got married for 27 days.
1991 - The series finale aired of 21 Jump Street.
1991 - Amy Grant’s single Baby Baby hit number one.
1992 - The first Kirby game for Nintendo, Kirby’s Dream Land, was released on Game Boy.
1996 - Spacehog’s one hit, In the Meantime, peaked at number 32.
1999 - 702’s single Where My Girls At and K-Ci and JoJo’s single Tell Me It’s Real were both released.
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news
Netflix is killing its DVD mailing service on September 29th after 25 years and 5.2 billion DVDs shipped. They sent their first DVD (Beetlejuice) to a subscriber on March 10th, 1998.
The official trailer for the White Men Can’t Jump reboot is out. The movie premieres on May 19th on Hulu. Imagine the exact same movie as you watched in 1992, but if the leads had no chemistry
A Galaxy Quest reboot TV series is in development at Paramount+.
The production company Fremantle is talking with networks about rebooting Baywatch.
Ben Affleck says his one line in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie was dubbed over.
Atari has acquired the rights to 100+ PC and console games from the ‘80s and ‘90s. A lot of them are back catalog-type games; some titles they spotlighted in their press release are Busby, Hardball, and Demolition Racer.
Recommendations of the week
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved
This short compilation video of ‘80s TV catchphrases went viral this week. It features some sitcoms, a few dramas, and even a couple of commercials.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you forgot
Someone’s actually producing the Assassin shoes — a major plot point from a season two episode of The Simpsons. The preorder is currently sold out but may restock.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you never knew existed
In 1998, a Schoolhouse Rock-style cartoon short called “Conspiracy Theory Rock” aired on Saturday Night Live. It went scorched earth on media conglomerates — especially NBC/GE’s own. The short never aired again in reruns or as part of any DVDs or streaming copies of the episode.
Have a great week!
-Sam