NewsRadio ... has it aged well?

I always loved NewsRadio since it came out. Yesterday I watched some of season 2. I hadn’t watched the show in years. Of course it was funny, and good, but I’m wondering if the show hasn’t dated as well as I thought it would.
Particularly the clever, semi-obscure references. Also, as great an ensemble cast they were, the characters individually seemed to get on my nerves (with the exception of Jimmy, Bill, and Catherine.)

It’s still my favorite show from the ‘90s but what do you all think?

 

Never thought much of the show. Easy predictable jokes all the way around. It just seemed so... bland!

The only episode I thought was funny was the one where Bill has a vanity cane.

 

The episode when Bill quits smoking and Dave quits coffee sure has aged like fine wine. I lost it during the scene when they lose their tempers with Matthew.

 

I've always enjoyed this show. One of my favorites is the first episode, where Dave's first task as station manager is to fire the current station manager.

 

Thanks. That’s soooo good.

 

I think a good, funny show like NewsRadio doesn't suffer from being "dated". Not sure why that would matter. WKRP in Cincinnati is my favorite show of all time and the fact that they aren't playing Muse or Migos or using iPhones doesn't make it any less funny for me.

 

The world still hasn't caught up to it. We have no news stations yet in space.


WKRP is a great comparison.

 

Yes. WKRP and Mary Tyler Moore too.

 

Still my all-time favorite TV show. I think the fact that they basically only used the station as a setting and rarely incorporated current news events into the writing (Joey Buttafuoco excepted--haha) keeps the show from being dated.

Nothing they could do about the giant cellphones, but then it was mostly Jimmy James with one of those. If the writers were at all prescient, they would've had the characters wandering around like zombies staring at iPhone-shaped devices for 22 minutes every week.

If NewsRadio really was easy, bland, and predictable, it would've had a much more popular life (and afterlife in syndication). But, as with many other shows, movies, and musical artists, I'm grateful that I discovered it and don't much care if other people did or didn't.

 

The show was great in it's prime. Sadly, when Phil Hartman died, the show just could not keep up with the former glory of its past.
Some of the better notable episodes, the smoking one, the subway fire, the Bebe Nuwirth episode, the big bonus, Dave's ex-girlfriend, the best ones were in seasons 1-2., but 3 and 4 had their share of good ones, too.

 

Saw practically the entire run of the who on Antenna TV (or some such similar network) about 4-5 years ago. Hadn't seen it in eons, and I don't know that I ever saw more than a handful of episodes of it back in the day, despite the fact I'm pushing 50 now. (I rarely watch prime-time television, and often only catch shows in reruns a decade later -- for instance, I never saw an entire episode of Seinfeld until my wife and I bought our first house in ~2002, when we didn't have cable-TV for the first 4 months.)

Anyway, my wife really loved NewsRadio back the first time, and I have to admit I really did too (seeing it circa 2013-2014). I thought it stood up really well, actually. Very solid material, and the characters were mostly half-brilliant, at least!

 

"Arcade" (S3) and "The Public Domain" (S4, Phil & the piano--Paul-Paul-Paula Jones, she's seen Clinton nude...OK, so the show dates itself in spots--haha) are my two favorite episodes. The S3 episode with James Caan (some of Andy Dick's best work, or was he not acting--IIRC, Caan wanted Dick to go to rehab) was another great one.

While S5 is obviously on a whole lower level, it really is better than it had a right to be. No Phil, creator Paul Simms spent most of the season working on a doomed pilot, and a lot of new writers.

 

I only discovered this show back in 2011 as I wasn't living on this side of the world when it first aired and it didn't seem to make it over to the UK.

I got into it right away and watch episodes often enough. The only season I tend to avoid is Season 5. I find it difficult to watch knowing what happened to Phil Hartman. On the other hand, it would've been interesting to see what they did with Season 6 after all but two, left the station to join Jimmy, in Hampshire was it? Can't recall.

They also under used Khandi Alexander (aka Catherine) IMO. Which is why she left the show IIRC.

I agree with Anthology123, that the first two seasons had the best episodes.

 

You're entitled to like the show or not, but that is a ridiculous criticism, the series was spectacularly surreal, inspired by Green Acres....it certainly wasn't predictable.

I recall reading that if the show was renewed, the setting would have been relocated to a small New Hampshire town, as they start a new station...

 

You have your opinion, I have mine. I'm happy you enjoy the show.

 

I rewatched a couple months back and it held up for me. Terrific show.

 

I really liked it when it was broadcast, and it's funny how often clips or comments come up on a fairly regular basis in day to day conversation ("good times, good times"). Phil Hartman was so great, it was interesting to see Dave Foley move from the sometimes very odd Kids in the Hall to mainstream TV, and curious now to see Andy Dick before he fully fell off the rails (or fully embraced the rails....). I was glad to see Khandi Alexander with a great role in Treme.

 

I wasn’t a regular watcher of it, but do recall fondly an episode where the vocationally inept Andy Dick character is fired or leaves the station and it turns that he was a licensed (and capable and respected) dentist, who had given up his practice to pursue his dream job - in AM radio.

 

Remembering the monster talent on this show has me thinking I need to buy the complete series on DVD.

 

Bill: "It's not garbage. It's rap music. And I love it. The pulsating rhythms, raw bass line. This stuff speaks to me in places I didn't even know I had ears."

And c'mon they used several Zeppelin albums as episode titles then "Led Zeppelin Boxed Set", that's still funny.

 

Didn't Dave love Green Acres?

 

That Joe Rogaine guy always bothered me.

 

Even on SNL, Phil's troubled personal life was always bubbling under the surface to those paying attention.

 

One of the finest moments. God bless Stephen Root.

 

More great Jimmy James: