Antenna TV Network Reminds You of the Time That Was on TV

With the addition of Antenna TV, I may now never have to leave Channel 22. Thanks to the ability to divide a digital channel into subchannels, I can now watch Joe TV, Q13 FOX, and the Antenna Network (on 22.1, 22.2, and 22.3, respectively–though I understand the last two may switch positions). The new network, featuring syndicated shows from TV’s vault, is the brainchild of the Tribune Co., and offers you such blasts from the past as:

“Three’s Company,” “Good Times,” “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son,” “Benny Hill,” “Maude,” “The Nanny,”"Too Close for Comfort,” “The Monkees,” “Married with Children,” “NewsRadio,” “Dennis the Menace,” “The Donna Reed Show” and Three Stooges shorts.

Add to that the fact that on over-the-air Channel 22, I can swap between Glee (Ugh, why can’t I quit this show?), House, Lie to Me, Family Guy, and South Park, and there’s clearly no need to roam. (Don’t worry Retro TV 7.2, you’re still in our hearts, but please work on getting Barney Miller. It’s the least you can do to memorialize Steve Landesberg.) 

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Last night, after rescanning the “dial” to pick up the new subchannel, I watched an hour of Three’s Company and was plunged into a reverie of the America that was. Is this trend toward ransacking long-ago syndication just a corny nostalgia-fest, our Branson-at-home?

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I don’t know if Knight Rider tells us much of anything, except how divorced the ’80s were from reality (*coughManimalcough*), but Rockford Files (over on 7.2) and Three’s Company are already historical artifacts. I firmly believe over half of all Rockford’s cases could now be solved without him leaving his trailer, thanks to the internet, and that half of all his beatings could be avoided, thanks to the cell phone more opportunely alerting him to bad guys being on his tail.

Three’s Company premiered in 1977, and bends over backwards to be acceptable to the TV audience because of its daring premise: A young man who wants to share an apartment with two unmarried women has to pretend to be gay to overcome the landlord’s objections.

You watch the show today in a kind of astonishment, head cocked to one side, eyes wide. The theme song hearkens back to vaudeville, but really, the dramatic set-up is even older, and could have been presented in the commedia dell’arte era. Still, Three’s Company was videotaped before a live studio audience, and those are real guffaws from real Americans at Jack’s shenanigans, at how “gay” Jack affirms his identity by…attempting to pick up on Norman Fell. The complex of interpenetrating realities is positively Barthes-ian, and more real than reality.

Maybe we have come a long way as a society. I can’t wait for Don Knotts to show up with his fabulous assortment of straight-man cravates.