News Cut

End of the icon

Posted at 12:48 PM on April 2, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Icons

This, apparently, is "end of the icon" week in America. Tonight, ER, which debuted -- Mrs. News Cut reminded me today -- when our oldest son was in 2nd grade (he's almost 23, now), has its final showing, ending -- officially -- the NBC dominated time period on Thursday night that started with Hill Street Blues, then L.A. Law, and then ER.

And it's been announced that "The Guiding LIght," will end in September.

The soap opera is disappearing almost as fast as the soap that spawned it.

Trivia question: What was in NBC's 9 p.m. (CT) time slot before Hill St. Blues launched the "Must See TV" tradition on the network? (No peeking or Googling)


Comments (3)

"The soap opera is disappearing almost as fast as the soap that spawned it."

I'd say the soap opera has just morphed into Reality tv and shows like The Wire, The Sopranos, etc.

Posted by David | April 2, 2009 1:34 PM


"What was in NBC's 9 p.m. (CT) time slot before Hill St. Blues launched the "Must See TV" tradition on the network?"

Howdy Doody.

Posted by bsimon | April 2, 2009 3:20 PM


I got tired of waiting for an answer, so I cheated. According to Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-See_TV ), prior to “Must See TV”, NBC’s Thursday night slot (8-10 CST) was filled with “NBC Thursday Night Movie”

The wayback machine (pre VCR) … THEN: a movie almost every night of the week, NOW: inane reality programming every night of the week. Just another reason old guys can be annoying by starting a conversation with “I remember when …”

Posted by tiredboomer | April 3, 2009 12:33 PM


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