Is a sea monster attacking Baywatch beach? And can Mitch squeeze in some more make out time before it strikes again?
Baywatching: Nightmare Bay
Is a sea monster attacking Baywatch beach? And can Mitch squeeze in some more make out time before it strikes again?
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Even as a youngster I could not sit through the stupidity that is Baywatch. Yet your Baywatching videos are always a delight. Weird. Anyway thank you for these!
This is most likely a really inane question but I’m going to ask it anyway but how was Baywatch shown in sidycation? I ask because every prime time turn sidyacated show I can think of the episodes were shown during the middle of the day but with Baywatch I’m almost postivtive I saw a few episodes at night or late evening, and I know it wasn’t the first season I remember because I was born the year the first season aired. Than again maybe the airings were different in Canada compared to America.
Anyway great to see Baywatching back again I binge watch this a few weeks ago when I was really sick and it cheered me up so I’m happy to see you at it again.
Not sure exactly how syndication works, but the show got most of it’s funding through product placement. It did extremely well in countries outside of the USA, which is where it found most of its success. Baywatch is sort of the idealized version of the American culture and I guess that was appealing to a lot of other countries back then.
If it did better outside of America maybe that’s how I saw it closer to prime time because I think a Canadian station NTV(which I think is only in NFLD) air alot of popular syndicated shows around prime time, something I think was really common years ago but doesn’t seem as common now well other comedy shows. Though I’m only guessing based off memory because I didn’t watch much TV as a little kid.
To be very basic about the subject (since the intricacies of it could make a contract lawyer’s head spin and does), broadcast syndication is based upon network affiliates. United States television stations fall into two categories, network owned and third-party owned, either family or corporate. The network-owned stations play the standard network fare with local ad-spots and local news capped in. The affiliate stations are contracted with a network to provide a specified set of network standards and broadcast standards but still have a percentage of their airtime free to do with what they want. These stations are easily identified as being called some off-moniker like FOX12 or NBC7 and will announce the station ID (W-KFUK or w/e) at least once an hour. The affiliate stations are allowed to buy “syndication packages” for their remaining airtime. The advantage to the affiliate is a low-cost package and rights to use the advertising time for whatever they choose (usually more local revenue). A syndication package comes from two main sources. “Off-network syndication” is when a well-known, already cancelled program is bundled up and sold by its network owners on an open-market format to the affiliates. The original Star Trek, I Love Lucy, Knight Rider, and many more were all long ago made into syndication packages and sold for those timeslots. The affiliate retains the decision, in most cases, as to when, where, and how to air the syndication package. The other method is called “first-run syndication”. This is when a show is created by a third-party outside the networks and sold directly to the affiliates and bypassing the networks. Originally, this was the realm for failed pilots, quickly cancelled shows, and other such fare to attempt some second life by their producers and financiers. One of the first shows to pioneer first-run syndication as an entry market and make it an “enterprising” [haha to come…] business model was Paramount with Star Trek The Next Generation. Since then, production companies have had a lot more luck in selling successful shows directly into syndication. I remember in some video or other of yours saying you grew up in Arizona. You would have grown up having almost entirely affiliate stations in your area. I myself grew up in northern New Jersey. I had a split of both. Other areas would have been subject to other combinations. Outside of the United States, however, most countries have central programming models! In foreign market, syndication packages are sold by the U.S., U.K., and a couple other countries as supplement to the regional market. The central broadcasting network then, usually, has rights for broadcast and/or distribution to the country in question.
Worth noting, the percentage of affiliate/third-party owned stations has drastically declined over the years. A large majority of the local markets are now saturated by owned-and-operated broadcasters all of them with standardized programming. It puts me in mind of this quote…
“Rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong … And so the rhetorician’s business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.”
– Plato, ~ 380 B.C.
Now, in Baywatch’s case, I can hazard some of the following (and hope your more researched knowledge into the show itself can confirm this speculation)…
It’s first season was network-owned. Once it re-aired for season 2 it did so as first-run syndication. The first season episodes were either still network owned or resold to the creators or affiliates. Either way, that is probably at least part of the reason only Germany had a release for purchase in it’s original format that you could find. I’d hazard to say it was most popular in Germany and it’s likely they still retain right to distribute from both owners? The entire idea of actual broadcast medium is laced with situations like this and its complex tangle of licensing and marketing.
It’s economic footprint with its product placement was seemingly based upon much more globalized markets (from what I remember it was mostly Coca-cola, McDonald’s, and such that was more globally recognized). This is likely to have at least some small part in its international success as well. It made the package attractive to be supported by large companies with large, global markets. It’s sexualized nature (and we all know the old adage of “sex sells”) also made it an attractive United States advertising vehicle (since international TV has always been way more risque, by and large, than the U.S.).
Its appeal in foreign market, I presuppose, had a small flavoring of why you, yourself, have the perverse fascination with it’s epic awfulness (I riff movies too, I know that feeling so don’t think I mean anything negative in that!) To the foreign eye, and I hope some people from the international community will comment and back me up here, the American lifestyle is one of ludicrous largess and hedonism. What we in the U.S. might call a stereotype or trope maybe about another country’s lifestyle, we also have the same type of picture we present as a culture to the rest of the world. “The mirror reflects both ways” and in many ways, Baywatch is everything absurd and ridiculous about us as a culture as seen from the outside looking in! A small nature of the same feeling you have watching and reveling in the absurdity of it to the point of making an entire video series has some corollary to its appeal on the global level. I actually was growing up when this was on and I myself remember… If you watched Baywatch while it was on, you were a total twib. But everyone was total twibs and hypocrites watching it for T&A anyway. Absurd but it was it’s own small phenomenon.
Hopefully some of this is helpful to you or to someone else! (and you get your “critical, need to know, information”) =^.^= Many happy returns to you and yours Allison/Lupa and everyone who actually read all this!
(P.S.: Further reading and examples are provided below because reading is FUNdamental!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcasting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_syndication
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_affiliate
An example of an affiliate-made program intro (in this case WWOR-9 Secaucus, NJ during the 1970’s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrVwr4W_FCE
An example of an affiliate advertising spot for a first-run syndicated show (in this case the then CBS-6 Miami, FL, now NBC-6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I11327kYChU
This is the most watched show ever..?
Wow..
You do not know how happy I was too see this, I really love your reviews because you and Phelous and wicked funny and are my favorite but these Baywatch ones, my god I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard, it’s just like the charmed review. I have to re-watch these because they are so funny and amazing, I can not wait for more but thank you for these.
Just want to add my voice to those saying keep up the great work with your videos moving onward!
Your videos never fail to put a smile on my face
Yay Baywatching is back and another season of giving eddie shit xD
Yay! I’m so glad that I happened to check the site today! Your first video of 2015! The opening of Baywatching always makes me seriously happy. I didn’t know that Baywatch was cancelled for a short time. The things you learn.
So Harvey is the Stiles of this show?
I’ll give the actor who played Harvey this, the part where he’s covered in syrup looks like it could’ve been and awful shoot.
Yet another poor victim of the Ent casting couch.
Wow. I think this is the only Baywatch episode I ever watched when it was actually on the air…. mostly because I remember that seal and as a kid I was convinced it was the seal sinking ships because it was mad about Oil or something. ….Somehow what actually happened is even dumber than that.
Nooooo! Kreg!!! You were my favourtie creepy eyed staring dude in this show!
I am so happy we finally have the greatest 90s Theme song of all time. Sung of course by the Hoff himself, because damned if Mitch is gonna let any-one muscle in on his spotlight! (seriously though, I love the Hoff’s singing voice. So cheesy. So good.)
And hey look. I finally made an account.
You know, the more I tihink about it, we need another series like this
But it shall be called
Full Housing
Yes
Reviewing every episode pf Full House.
But that would cause someone’s brain to melt, so no one should do it.
I just would love to see it happen. And watch it all.
I miss the streaming of baywatch that was done about a year ago, so fun and with many laughs talking on chat window and getting a response from Allison or Phelan or who ever was there at the time. I keep checking to see if you are doing anymore but I have’nt seen one on in a long time.
That note… “Think of me when you rub Hobie’s back.”
I… what?! X___X