Television: Reheat & Serve

If you are of a certain age--somewhere between Madonna and Britney--your memories of high school or college probably include profound, intense late-night conversations that went something like this: "Dude! Remember Lite-Brites? Remember Webster? Remember Frankie Goes to Hollywood?"

Thanks to the tireless efforts of VH1, it is becoming nearly impossible, dude, not to remember. A longtime way station for people too old for sister network MTV and too young for the History Channel, the music network found sudden relevance in 1997 with water-cooler hit Behind the Music, a saucy bio show about the travails of rock stars. But VH1 binged on the show, running and running it until it collapsed (much like its earlier hit Pop-Up Video). In 2002, with ratings scraping bottom, the network brought in new management to decide, in effect, what VH1 was about. Which really meant deciding what its viewers--mainly adults born after 1964, that is, Generation X-ers and those a bit younger--were about.

The answer: recycled culture. Gen X had demonstrated an early appetite for nostalgia--witness That '70s Show and the Brady Bunch movies--and the network courted it with I Love the 70s and I Love the 80s, limited-run series in which moderately famous actors, comics and musicians riffed on mass-culture icons from Kojak to Kajagoogoo. The series riveted twenty-and thirtysomething channel surfers, as though tripping a Manchurian Candidate--like synapse. In just over a year, VH1's ratings jumped more than 100% among 18-to-49-year-old viewers. (Also, of course, recycling culture is faster--and often cheaper--than creating original entertainment.)

"We tapped into the one thing we all have in common," says MTV/VH1 entertainment president Brian Graden, "which is our relation to pop culture." Now VH1 has packed its schedule with rememberfests like 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons and the new Bands Reunited, a reality show that tracks down, Blues Brothers--style, the members of '80s bands like Berlin and Extreme for reunion concerts. Coming up are the series Surviving Nugent, a reality show built around '70s rocker Ted Nugent, and a "postmodern" remake of The Partridge Family that will begin as a reality show in which viewers will help cast the sitcom.

The key to the channel's success is in capturing the tone of Gen X nostalgia, at once snide and affectionate. Executive vice president Michael Hirschorn calls VH1's focus not "nostalgic" but "retro," which he defines as less "sentimental and teary." (Although one could reasonably define it as "I am so not old enough to be nostalgic.") "The channel had been in a baby-boomer mode, which was very serious about music," he says. "We turned that into 'Let's have fun with pop culture.'"