On
February 3, 1979, CJOH-TV in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, aired the
first episode of a low-budget children's television series called
You Can't Do That On Television.
Created
by Roger Price, with the help of Geoffrey Darby, the show was
aired live on Saturday mornings with musical guests, games, slap-stick
humor and call-in segments as some of the features. It starred
a cast of unknown child actors, including a very young Christine
McGlade, the first host of the program. The
show also starred Les Lye
from Uncle Willy and Floyd fame.
After
a successful first season, the show's creators produced a short-lived
spin-off of this show called Whatever
Turns You On, which was almost the same exact
show as You Can't Do That On Television,
only it was taped instead of broadcast live. It was shown during
prime-time hours, and it featured Laugh-In
veteran, Ruth Buzzi.
The spin-off, unlike its sister show, had horrible ratings and
was canned after one season, but thanks to Whatever
Turns You On, the idea of having the show taped,
having show topics and opposite sketches were introduced.
You
Can't Do That On Television was still doing okay
on CJOH, and an up-and-coming children's network in the United
States called Nickelodeon took interest in the show and began
airing the Canadian series once a week in a line up with a plethora
of other Canadian-based television programs in 1981. By this time,
You Can't Do That On Television was slightly
different from the way it began. The live audience was replaced
with the more infamous canned laughter, and the musical guests
and call-in segments were also gone. The show was less variety
and 100 percent comedy.
In
1984, while the show's ratings declined in Canada and was hardly
watched, Nickelodeon aired the show five times a week, and it
became the network's highest-rated television program. Kids across
America were making slime and water sounds with their mouths and
sending in their entries for the Slime-In,
a contest hosted by Nickelodeon that flew a lucky kid to the set
of You Can't Do That On Television to
be slimed (which was replicated by Canada's YTV later with their
version being called the Slime Light Sweepstakes).
Nickelodeon
knew it had a hit on its hands and quickly began assimilating
the show into everything the network did. Nick also had a line
of products released based on You Can't Do That On
Television, including green slime shampoo and soap,
a green blob substance called Green Slime and also a short-lived
comic strip featured in The Cable Guide
appropriately titled, You Can't Do That In Comics.
The green slime that made the show famous was used in logos, promos,
commercials and even a geyser to make Nickelodeon famous worldwide.
The substance is still a fixture of Nickelodeon today. In fact,
while most of today's generation of Nickelodeon has never even
seen You Can't Do That On Television,
Nickelodeon still uses the words, "I don't know" to slime celebrities
at the Kid's Choice Awards.
You
Can't Do That On Television continued
as Nick's number one television show until Marc Summers began
hosting another hit for Nick called Double Dare
(which gave away Green Slime Shampoo and Soap as prizes) in 1986.
This was the year that the show lost its hosts, Christine
McGlade (1979-86) and Alasdair
Gillis (1982-86), who were the most popular
cast members. 1986 was also the year that YCDTOTV had added the
future recording superstar Alanis
Morissette, who was just as unknown as all the
other cast members at that time.
While
the show always had most of the cast from previous seasons return
to do the next season, 1987 marked the end of an era for You
Can't Do That On Television. The season only consisted
of five episodes, with Adoption
being banned after one day of airing, and the kid cast was only
nine strong after having 22 children in 1986 . Also, Doug
Ptolemy and Vanessa
Lindores, who had been on the show since 1982,
had grown too old, along with Adam
Reid (1984-87) and Matthew
Godfrey (1986-87). The loss of those cast members
would make the cast only five strong for the 1988 season, with
only two of those cast members being popular with the show's fanbase.
There ended up not being a 1988 season, due to the absence of
creater and producer Roger Price. After Roger was talked back
to the show in 1989, Stephanie
Chow (1984-1987) decided not to return to the
show so that she could focus on her studies. This left only four
cast members from the previous season, with Amyas
Godfrey (1986-90) being the only one of the
four that anyone could actually remember. Thus, a whole new cast
was selected, creating what most fans refer to as the "new episodes."
The
1989 season spit out some very funny episodes, including a compilation
video that Elektra video released called Nickelodeon
Presents The Worst of You Can't Do That On Television.
The episodes from this season were very enjoyable and very well
written, but regardless of the quality of those episodes, the
familiarity of the show's cast was gone, causing a lot of long-time
viewers to quit watching. Although YTV stuck to a Whatever
Turns You On (1979) to You Can't Do
That On Television (1981-90) rotation,
Nickelodeon (most of the show's source of money) aired mostly
1989-90 shows during the week with older episodes being shown
on the weekend, dropping the shows ratings even more.
The year 1990 marked the end of You Can't Do That On
Television's production with only five episodes being
produced.
After
airing reruns for four years, the show was off the air for good
in 1994, marking the end of the best kids' show ever made.
