The It Was a Thing on TV Podcast Network

To start 2026, we look at a show which many consider one of the best one-season wonders in television history.  What happens when you get a playboy who lives in a plane and drives a white Corvette, performs magic, and solves crimes?  You get The Magician, an enjoyable series from 1973-4.

With the bowl season going on in College Football, Greg and Dane look at this one-time event from the New Year's Day 1996 episode of Monday Night RAW featuring a Fatal Four-Way Tag Team match down with football-style rules known as the RAW Bowl. The winning team in this match is gonna receive the Lombardi trophy, but it's not what you think it is! Also, we see a preview of the upcoming Royal Rumble, hyping a big debut in the WWF!

Congratulations!  We have successfully completed another orbit around the sun!  As we have done for the last 5 years, we have summarized the year in television, this time in one part and in under 2 hours, spanning from Netflix buying everything to the disasterous year with CBS/Paramount.  Thanks as always for listening in 2025.  We have many more goodies in store for 2026!

Happy holidays!  Our gift to you this holiday season is a television movie from 1977, which was a carbon copy of the Christmastime favorite It's a Wonderful Life, but gender-swapped.  Included in the cast is one of our favorite names, as well as the person Warren Beatty said is the best in Hollywood at something.

A Longhorn Network tradition becomes an It Was a Thing on TV holiday tradition as we watch the University of Texas' live mascot, Bevo, in his natural habitat to muzak of songs from the holiday season. We also share some fun facts about Bevo and the University of Texas while watching Bevo.

You can follow along with us at the following link from the Longhorn Network website. - https://watch.longhornnetwork.com/video/651299

We did it!  600 episodes!  As we do with milestone episodes, we cover a very special topic.  No topic is more special or more appropriate for this podcast than one of television's biggest bombs ever.  People thought the Happy Days magic would last via another spinoff.  Audiences initially said yes, but that quickly changed to a no, and the storybook relationship between Joanie and Chachi would end just as it began.

Greg and Dane go all the way to the UK for this edition of the SCTM filled with "great surprisements" as we have a fatal four way match between Stone Cold, Mankind, Undertaker, and Kane with Vinnie Jones as a guest enforcer. We also got Vince at Oxford University, D'Lo Brown touring London, and Christian teaming up with Sable?

Buckle up because it's gonna be emotional! 

The Little Rascals shorts were very popular in syndication during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, to the extent that NBC ordered an animated Christmas special based on the shorts in 1979. Spanky and Porky have to retrieve a coat that their mother sold with the help of the gang, but all sorts of hilarity ensue. Can the gang get Spanky and Porky's mother's coat back in time for Christmas?

Health clubs and aerobics were all the rage in the early 80s, thanks to Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons.  Eventually, this trend was bound to hit scripted television.  It did, in comedic form with Leslie Nielsen playing a former health show host turned health club owner.  Alas, this show didn't pump up the viewership and its membership was cancelled after just 5 episodes.

With the enduring success of a TV series comes the inevitable spinoff.  The first spinoff of Cheers was this entry about Carla's ex and his new trophy wife, and Carla's two kids.  13 episodes later, it was clear the spinoff went to the wrong character, something which would be righted years later.

You have had your Thanksgiving dinner.  Now it's time for dessert, the final Thanksgiving parade of the 1980s.  As always, highlights of pop culture from the year make appearances, as well as ads for the must-have items for the holiday season.  In 1989, we also get a weird appearance from The Joker (no Cesar Romero and his orange wedges) plus a troupe of dancing chickens.

In honor of Thanksgiving, Greg and Dane go back to 1988 and look at the 2nd Annual WWF Survivor Series from the Richfield Coliseum in 1988. We got a confusing double turn between Demolition and the Powers of Pain, Akeem, Mr. Perfect, The Mega Powers, and so much more on this episode of The Squared Circle Time Machine!

(Also, forgive Greg for working with a hoarse voice in this episode)

A personal favorite show of Greg and Mike's is this spiritual successor to The New Liar's Club, but with various types of lines from movies, songs, and factual statements, and without even a single mention of Shoddy Laroux.  The game is derivative, but the real reason we did the show is because someone wanted to bring up the end theme and its similarities to video games of the era.

It's the latest episode of The Masked Man arc on the SCTM as Hulk Hogan, Sting, and Dave Sullivan team up against the 3 Faces of Fear in a six-man tag team main event ref'd by Mr. T in a nightgown.

We also see a return match between Pretty Wonderful and Stars and Stripes for the WCW Tag Titles and a hoss fight between Dustin Rhodes and Vader! We also learn from Bobby Heenan how devastating the sleeper hold can be!

We're giving you a double dose of McLean Stevenson today, on his 98th birthday.  Next is a very short-lived show with McLean playing a conservative priest who clashes often with a liberally-minded nun.  After 5 low-rated episodes, CBS was having nun of it.