It Was a Thing on TV: An Anthology on Forgotten Television

January 4 was National Trivia Day.  In honor of the event, we look at a Japanese show which made the translation to American television about weird and wonderful trivia.  Give a listen to Hey! Spring of Trivia and there may be some melon bread in it for you, and the melon bread is shaped like a brain.

They're a staple on TV today, specifically in the overnight hours.  Half-hour infomercials came on the scene in the early 90s, filling holes in television schedules at all hours of the day.  In this installment, we look back at 9 such infomercials from the 1990s and talk about how cheesy they were and memories we had watching them.

In 1986, NBC expected to air Saturday Night Live in its usual post-news time slot.  The New York Mets had other plans, forcing SNL's hand to record that night's show in the dead of night, and causing the episode to air weeks later.

Before baseball season began in 1999, during a viewer mail segment, a viewer asked David Letterman how Letterman prepared for opening day.  The response was the first of three appearances of this segment, Ball, Get Out of My Nachos.

Tonight (September 8) is the start to the National Football League season and we mark the occasion with a look at a short-lived reality/discussion show starring the two biggest diva football players of the early 2010s. Also, Mike tries taking their Twitter handle and...hilarity ensues.

Marvel Month concludes with possibly the second-worst season of SNL ever.  We talked about probably the worst season of SNL on episode 97, about the 1980-81 era.  Now, we look at the 1985-86 season, a transition season of sorts, when most of the cast lasted just this one season if not less, and the writers lasted just as long, ushering in one of the best eras in the show's lengthy history.

For the 109th anniversary of the Titanic's sinking last year, we looked at S.O.S. Titanic, a TV movie from 1979 with Susan St. James among others.  (UH OH!)  This year for the 110th anniversary, we're covering a much more light-hearted take, answering the question "What if Disney made a movie about the Titanic?"  Thanks to Robert Smigel, we think it might look a little like Titey.

In the early 90s, if you had a beef with someone, you couldn't necessarily take them to a TV courtroom.  Enter a show with boxing, trash cans, and feather dusters, where combatants took their issues to the ring.  The Grudge Match is a show we have wanted to cover for some time and thanks to another podcast, a full episode made its way online recently.

We wrap up our Halloween trifecta of shows with some humor, straight from the minds at Saturday Night Live.  In 2016, David S. Pumpkins appeared on a Halloween sketch.  He proved to be so popular that he got his own half-hour special the following year.

ANY QUESTIONS?!?!

Simultaneously one of the most brilliant things on TV the last decade and one of the most bizarre, Too Many Cooks aired in the dead of night on Adult Swim.  Within days, it was viral and repeated often.  We offer a live commentary while watching the show and get into details about some of the production, and what happened to some of the actors and actresses.