It’s Friday the 13th, but to a certain number of highly dedicated and vocal fans of classic television the scariest thing about the day won’t have any connection to Jason Voorhees. Instead, they will be mourning what they consider the “death” of a television show that hasn’t produced an original episode in 55 years.
Regular readers and even my social media followers know darn well I’m an unabashed fan of MeTV, which is far and away the gold standard of “diginets”, broadcasting’s answer to pure profit plays. Since its inception as a nationally distributed channel in 2010, it has been masterfully been run as an homage to a select number of scripted tv series from the 50s, 60s and 70s designed to appeal to Baby Boomers and those that aspire to be who grew up with the same sort of addiction to TV that I did. And for the most part it has been a remarkably consistent hang. With only a few occasional tweaks for seasonality and lapsing rights, shows like M*A*S*H, THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW and PERRY MASON have run every weeknight (and sometimes more often), as safe and reassuring a haven as any viewer or advertiser might desire. It was one of the few channels I was even allowed to watch by my ex, and when shows she liked were on those were the among the few times of the day I was given relief from her verbal abuse.
But to some of its more ardent fans there’s apparently an even greater demand and need for consistency than I had, and any disruption to their habits inevitably produces a flurry of outraged consternation that wind up dominating the feeds of online groups of its alleged fans. And they’ve been particularly active of late since CORD CUTTERS NEWS’ Luke Bouma dropped this sobering story last month:
MeTV, America’s leading network for classic television entertainment, has announced a major addition to its programming lineup: the beloved sitcom The Golden Girls will make its triumphant return to broadcast television starting Monday, March 16, 2026. This marks the first time the iconic series has aired over-the-air since its last broadcast in 1997, nearly three decades ago. The show will be featured prominently in MeTV’s schedule. Weeknights from Monday through Friday, viewers can enjoy two back-to-back episodes from 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. ET/PT.
Making way for it will be HOGAN’S HEROES, a show that has occupied the time slot with rare exceptions nonstop for the last 15 1/2 years. For those of a certain age not familiar with it, the show was a zany satire of World War II-based dramas with a cast of madcap prisoners of war and German Kommandants set in the fictional Stalag 13. 168 episodes were produced over six seasons as part of a CBS lineup that was at the time dominated by similarly silly and inexplicably high-rated shows like THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, PETTICOAT JUNCTION, GREEN ACRES and yes, THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. When the network decided to move in a decidedly more austere direction and jettisoned them in the so-called “rural purge” HOGAN’S HEROES was swept away along with them. I suppose since it didn’t seem like Stalag 13 was located anywhere downtown Berlin it too would have qualified as “rural”.
HOGAN’S HEROES was a favorite in my house; my dad would leap to his feet when the show’s daffy opening cued him to don his fedora as a pith helmet and use a vacuum cleaner pipe as a rifle and march in goosestep, my then-toddler sister crawling behind him in blissfully unaware solidarity even when he’d forget he was still in his underwear on balmy summer evenings and our neighbors could see into our living room. When it went into syndicated reruns after its cancellation even as my sister matured this became a five-night-a-week ritual. Somehow, just like Colonel Hogan and his crew, we survived an otherwise traumatic experience.
But for way too many current fans the reaction to the fact that it will no longer be as prominently featured has become a crisis even greater than what my childhood household endured. Witness what one Milo Notis of Liverpool, Tennessee posted as recently as yesterday:
Hogans Hero’s
It’s not the first time in the last 12 months that the management of MeTV has set off this powderkeg. Back in October they announced the addition of EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND to its prime time lineup, the first time the channel has added a show that produced originals into this century. RAYMOND has been a remarkably consistent rerun performer on numerous cable channels after a lengthy run in broadcast syndication, and continues to prop up so-called “zombie” networks like TV LAND with even more ubiqitous scheduling. It has delivered sizable increases for MeTV since its premiere, particularly in the key sales demographic they monetize the business off of, and two recent anniversary specials on CBS delivered millions of viewers, many of whom weren’t old enough to have watched the show when it originaly aired.
I can make these claims because I’ve known the channel’s architect and champion Neal Sabin for decades and consider him one of the savviest and knowledgeable broadcasters I’ve ever met. I’ve previously sung his praises when he launched a cartoon-based spinoff channel nearly two years ago. His track record and longevity speak for themselves. Like me, he’s also a student of ratings and trends and uses them to defend both his moves and what to others seems like stagnation. I know his superiors–or, rather, his partners–know that way better than I do. And bluntly, far, far more than any “fan” ever will.