#postioning

See more of our Nick-at-Nite posts here.  

Nick-at-Nite network identifications 1987-1989 

(The Nick-at-Nite video posted here is really long. But, if you just watch the first 90 seconds you’ll get the gist.)

The assignment to create network IDs for Nick-at-Nite arose from two different circumstances. The first and best is that the channel that we had created was a roaring success (thank goodness, we’d expended a lot of our reputation on this nutty idea) and they deserved a chance to strut their stuff. But, the second was fostered by their confusion.

Two years in, by 1987 Nick-at-Nite had been a tough sell for the advertising sales department. After 35 years of traditional broadcast networks, a certain conventional wisdom had set in with media buyers. And Nick-at-Nite exploded all of them.

Color good, black & white bad. Logical on the surface. New good, reruns bad. Got it. Network television (CBS, NBC, ABC) good, cable not so much.

Well, our channel was all B&W, all reruns, all cable. Never mind that in six months we’d become the #2 primetime cable channel (after USA), branded ourselves as “good TV” and the greatest hits of the TV generation, and brought in an audience that loyally followed our unstated premise to reject the idea of “Ugh, reruns” and shouted “Oh boy! Reruns!”

Nonetheless, the media buyers at the ad agencies, while on the surface adhered to the manta of “just show me the numbers!” turned their back on us.

Our sales team was hurting.They made their case to the programming and marketing folks at NAN and suggested that we position the channel as “all comedy.” Not a bad thought (HA! and Comedy Central would be around the corner) but it didn’t really work for Nick-at-Nite.

Nonetheless, they persisted. So, the brain trust at Fred/Alan put our heads together. Led by Alan, we had often referenced bits from the Rocky & Bullwinkle show, particularly our favorite.

Bullwinkle: “Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”

Rocky: “That trick never works.”

Alan: “In my view the most brilliant bumpers ever because as a kid you knew there were three endings. You'd wait through the commercials to see which of the three it was this time.

“Of course Jay Ward probably did it because he got five for the same money. The man was even more brilliant than he knew.“ 

Basically, what Ward had done was take about 10 seconds of animation, and make five one second pieces, and Bullwinkle says, “Presto!” he had five surprise endings for about the money of 1.25 films. A great method for us to use a budget more efficiently and still get dozen of films that could be reused for years without wearing out the viewers. These IDs were stop motion live action, in color, to contrast with the programming.

We quickly huddled with two of our long term creative companions, Eli Noyes and Kit Laybourne who jammed ideas with Fred/Alan producer Tom Pomposello, put together a production and we were off to the races.

Live action filming in stop motion (a neat trick) with a six second opening that would be repeated in all 45 spots and 45 different, silly, hopefully surprising and funny 4-second back ends. That meant, for the first set alone, we shot three minutes of footage, but got seven and a half minutes of final film. Not bad.

Over the next couple of years we did three sets, the first in April starring a man, the second –eight months later– with a woman, and the last in 1989 with both actors as a couple. About 20 minutes of 10-second pieces. Whew! Top it off with Pomposello’s take on the opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night” and there was the making of a pretty unique branding stab.

Of course, Nick-at-Nite as a comedy channel never took off. A new ad sales chief came in from Turner Broadcasting and declared Nick-at-Nite to be “marketing machine!” and we were at last profitable, not just successful.

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