Was Friends a Ripoff? WB Exec Reveals The Truth!
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- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2024
- Friends and Living Single were two very similar shows that premiered within one year of each other. Living Single was first, but Friends lasted twice as long. In this video, I try to figure out why Friends gets all the 90s glory.
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I love this breakdown! I don't remember much of living single, but then again I was more interested in cartoons when Friends premiered as well.
I wonder if we reached peak tv sometime in the late 90s, early 2000s. There was enough variety to satisfy many audiences, but not like today where there is too much TV for the audience to possibly find/consume it all
Greg! Thank you so much for watching my video and commenting! It truly is an honor. I hope I can build my channel as well as you have. Thanks so much!!
And I completely agree about reaching peak TV in the early 2000s. I would even go as far as 2009. But that was it. Once streaming entered the game and the amount of content exploded, it was impossible to keep up and good shows got lost.
I remember these articles about the difference between white and black viewers. I am white and preferred NY Undercover to Friends. I was from an urban area and encountered folks confronting the same politics and class issues as JC and Eddie.
Thank you so much for making this breakdown! I always preferred friends because I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood and went to an all white school, I never had experiences with other different races, so when I tried living single a few years ago, I just didn't have much of a connection with it. What's funny is that my fiancé, who is white, likes in living single and doesn't like Friends. I'm glad that both shows exist so that people can have choices.
Thanks for watching my video and commenting!
Time for a Friends/Living Single crossover!
Interesting dive into both TV shows, I believe "The Living Single" producer had it most correct out of all the television program developers mentioned in the video - "I believe all tv shows could/can be enjoyed by all the viewing public."
Natalie, thank you for this presentation; it can serve as a catalyst for a needed substantial conversation which has many other tentacles entangled within it.
Side note: it seemed as though parts of this video experienced changing levels of volume; had/have others mentioned this? It could just be my ears.🙂
Thanks for your comment! The audio is weird on this one because it was the very first video I ever made and I was teaching myself how to edit. There are a lot of flaws! But I’m getting better with each video. 😊
The Fox network was a fun place in the late 80’s, early 90’s. From married with children to in living color and Herman’s Head, they had the oddball, borderline pushing stuff.
I admit I thought Living Single was much better. But alas
It was a really good show, and in a lot of ways I agree. Better writing and characters. I think if it would have been on one of the major networks, it would have been a much bigger show. Friends got the prime time slot after Seinfeld on the number one network.
And thanks so much for watching my video and commenting! (I accidentally replied to your comment with my regular personal account. I’m new at this) 😂
I live in a place where living single was more popular. I came to Southern Cali where friends were popular, and no one knew what living single was.
Your vids are severely underrated. I really like them!
Thank you! I’m still very new to this. Hopefully they are getting better as I go . 😊
Ive never knew Living single as it was never broadcasted in my country, but something tells me I would have liked it way than Ive never liked Friends.
I wish BBC'S Coupling was longer than 4 seasons! T_T
Great job on your video it was very informative and entertaining! I always watched Friends and didn’t know much about Living Single. Although Friends is a great show, Living Single deserved more attention. It seems like such a good show, I’ll definitely check it out now!
Thanks so much for watching and commenting! Living Single is definitely worth the watch.
I love both shows, I watched Living Single while it was on and still watch the reruns all the time. I didn’t get into Friends until it was already over.
Oh wow! I always find it interesting when people don’t watch a popular show until after it’s gone off the air. Especially with a generational show like Friends, it must hit different when you see it a decade or two after it aired. Thanks for your comment and for watching my video!
@@mysocalledgenxlife lol Nick at Nite put me on to Friends. I’ve seen every episode now, several times. And I quote it and Living Single often, especially Chandler. Rest in peace to Matthew Perry, Chandler is literally my favorite character.
There are many shows that are rip-offs of an original show because of that original's success. For example, it took five years, but Webster was a rip-off of Diff'rent Strokes. But many rip-offs can be great and enjoyable in their own right. As far as the black & white thing, you are correct. This was around the time that the dark powers that be really started their divide and conquer tactics which, unfortunately people still fall for, not just in relation to skin color, but also gender, political affiliations, etc.
i was never into living single or friends. just not my thing. but i have always felt that when pop-culture actively targets a specific demographic, perhaps even playing hostile to all non-target demographics, those demographics are isolated and lose touch with other demographics. this is true for race, sex, and age. NATALIE, you touched this, but you don't really drive it.
i'm not against a show of all one race. cosby was a black cast that played to a broad range of demographics. full house and family matters were each single-race casts, and while they played more to a tween/teen demographic and the parents that watched with their kids, the shows ran back to back to balance each other.
by the next decade, shows like living single and friends targeted very specific demographics and ran against each other in blocs that did not really appeal to a wider audience. we stopped watching tv together as a family and started watching at different times and/or in separate rooms.
going one step more, and this is more about the generation gap than the race gap. there was plenty of scripted content, even in 80s shows, that didn't jibe with family values. and this varied according to the family. GENERAL PUBLIC, regardless of your family values, do you watch tv as a family or in separate rooms? when watching together and you see something especially agreeable or disagreeable, do you ever talk about it in a way that reinforces your family's values?
I'm not a Friends fan I liked some episodes but I thought it was kinda dumb. Living Single was better
They gave Friends a hit song as their theme. They put so much more money into it.
I liked Living Single and I've never watched not one episode of Friends, so I cant really compare the two but Friends had 5 whites and living single had 5 blacks, I knew I could relate to a show like living single more than friends.
Even though they seemed liked similar shows on the surface, they did have many differences. They were marketed differently on very different networks to different audiences. At the exact moment that audiences were starting to fracture based on identity. I related more to the characters on friends, but I think that Living Single was a better show. Thanks for your comment and watching my video!
On that black vs white, even if we don't like white things those white things ranked a lot higher every time compared to whites on black things because we can see ourselves in the characters regardless of race if it's entertaining enough, don't hear this that much the other way around like Martin was one of my heroes growing up while most whites only knew him from being banned from SNL and Big Momma's House which is crazy to me but on my side I know Friends and Seinfeld and while I didn't love both shows I know and follow all of the actors because I love them regardless. I think the real divide is that networks can pick and choose to what markets they wanted to air so in Detroit FOX was becoming primetime for blacks while NBC was everywhere and if they wanted something they can pick the bones of something and push it so hard to hundreds of millions if necessary to bury the competition. Like I said I was in Detroit once I left Detroit and visited other Michigan cities nobody had heard of FOX black shows at that time because they can truly pick and choose where to broadcast and the Upper Peninsula definitely didn't get it for a long while like almost to the end of Martin but NBC and the others were strong and clear. The thing I love about today is we all watch whatever whenever and it's true word of mouth because unlike the past where some of us get this and the rest gets that depending on location we all get everything together we just have to decide to watch it.
The people who created both shows have admitted as much. Living Single was sabotaged as well since it should've run as long as Friends had.
I recall the purpose for UPN rebranding and catering to an "Urban" audience was because of black audience viewing habits.
I have never seen a single episode of "Friends"
Me neither. I had an ex-girlfriend that was obsessed with Friends. I always waited to go to her house after she watched it.
Tv shows are always ripping each other off, Sanford and son is a ripoff of a show called step toe and son about a Jewish father and son
Theres a difference. Sanford and Son, All in the Family, Three's Company are Americanized ADAPTATIONS that were credited as such in their closing credits. Not ripoffs.
By that bullshit logic I guess star trek which only had a 3 year run before it was canceled was total trash and Dallas which had 10 year run must be one of the greatest shows ever.
Hell , Simpsons and Law & Order SVU must be the best shows ever.
If it was cancelled it wasn't a better show. In fact it was irrelevant in the rest of the world. In fact I don't even remember Living Singles.
Friends was way superior to most similar shows of that time, the cast proportion was identical to Save by the Bell, and it followed young adults like Melrose Place. But the characters and the show in general was way more relatable than the yuppies in the other show. Friends was not a copy, it is like saying all sitcoms copied each other cause they where all focused on a couch. Someone is a sore loser.
The ability to pay rent is also addressed the show.
Imagine making a show like that today when we know how shitty New York is.
Friends was a ripoff of Living Single and Seinfeld. A bland portrait of NYC and an example of everything wrong with the Big Three Networks back in the 90s. The exec quoted in the article showed that they had no intention of ever promoting Living Single even to the main audience who supported it. Merchandising opportunities? Sell some f'n t-shirts for starters jackass. These foolish execs helped kill many great shows in the 90s and 00s and for all the complaints about streaming services and video sites one good thing about both was they provided a platform to promote shows and movies that would've never gotten the same support back then.
Oh please, I'm not American and Living Single was way better than Friends, most people I knew hardly watched Friends and most also think it was overrated. So sppeak for yourself.
@@beyourself2444 LOL, friends was a world success and they weren't even singles, while I never heard of Living Singles.
You're exactly what I was just writing about, the only reason you don't remember Living Single 1993 and know of Friends 1994 is because FOX was still so small that not all cities and states received FOX yet almost until the end of these shows around 1996 and by then America chose Friends because it's all they knew. It was cancelled not because of quality, it was cancelled because Fox was still small and contract negotiations came up and when they asked for more money on a network they were carrying on their backs at the time lead by one of the cast members they fired him first and wrote him out the show and caused a rift between the cast and the network that lead to a quick cancellation afterwards. Living Single before then could've went just as long if FOX was a little bit more established at the time like it is now
@@drebone1986 No it's because I'm European and nobody cared about that series. There was no Fox. Friends is still rerun.