Thanks to @GlitchyParadox for the catch.
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Well, this came out of the blue:
Retro TV Adds Cult Classic Mystery Science Theater 3000
Chattanooga, Tenn. (March 25, 2014) – Luken Communications is proud to announce the long-awaited return of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to television on Retro TV.
A cult favorite since its inception in 1988 as a cable-access show, Mystery Science Theater 3000 follows a man (played first by series creator Joel Hodgson, then head writer Mike Nelson) forced by a mad scientist to watch the most terrible movies ever produced. To stay sane, he and his robot sidekicks (Tom Servo, voiced by Kevin Murphy and Crow T. Robot, voiced by Trace Beaulieu) provide a hilarious running commentary making fun of the film.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 ran for 11 years, spawned a feature film, won a Peabody Award, was nominated for two Emmy Awards (for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program), was nominated for a CableACE Award, and was recently named the #4 Best Cult TV Show Ever by Entertainment Weekly.
Matthew Golden, Luken’s Vice President of Production, said “We are absolutely thrilled to return Mystery Science Theater 3000 to the airwaves. With its marriage of sharp humor and vintage films, MST3k is tailor-made for Retro TV, and our audience will fall in love with it all over again.”
Mystery Science Theater 3000 will make its Retro TV debut in the “not-too-distant future”: Saturday, July 5th, 2014.
Luken Communications is a Chattanooga, TN-based broadcast group with networks including Retro TV, The Heartland Network, The Family Channel, PBJ, Frost Great Outdoors and TUFF TV. Luken Communications offers diverse, family-friendly programming on its networks reaching approximately 80 percent of all U.S. households via a blend of over-the-air, cable and satellite television. For more information about Retro TV, please visit www.WatchRetroTV.com or www.facebook.com/WatchRetroTV.
I spoke with Mr. Golden and he says they have the rights to 26 episodes:
103- The Mad Monster
105- The Corpse Vanishes
211- First Spaceship On Venus
320- The Unearthly
323- The Castle of Fu Manchu
402- The Giant Gila Monster
409- The Indestructible Man
412- Hercules And The Captive Women
419- The Rebel Set
424- Manos: The Hands of Fate
507- I Accuse My Parents
511- Gunslinger
517- Beginning of the End
518- The Atomic Brain
610- The Violent Years
616- Racket Girls
619- Red Zone Cuba
701- Night Of The Blood Beast
812- The Incredibly Strange Creatures…
820- Space Mutiny
821- Time Chasers
822- Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
908- The Touch of Satan
1002- Girl in Gold Boots
1003- Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders
1009- Hamlet
What is RetroTV? It’s one of those networks that sprang up after local TV affiliates were all required to go digital. It runs over-the-air on local affiliates’ digital sub-channels and low-power stations.
A list of their affiliates is here.
What a week, huh?
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Man. Fu Manchu, Manos, Red Zone Cuba, Incredibly Strange Creatures … this is a real set of episodes that sit on your head and make you beg for mercy, isn’t it?
Is anyone else kind of waiting for about April 3rd to quite believe in this whole week?
Well good golly miss molly.
Sadly, none of their affiliates are in my area.
OTA, no less. First time since 1988?
Huh. Retro, indeed. I feel like these airings should only be watched on old CRT TVs in wood cabinets with wonky vertical hold and a greenish tint. Preferably with rabbit ears perched atop the digital converter box.
Clint, first time since ’95-96 and the syndication experiment.
Gah, no closer than Utica/Olean! Problem is, we in Rochester (NY) already have Me-TV, so we’re probably screwed. Pretty sure that all of the local DTV slots are taken.
HYPERVENTILATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE TELL ME I DID NOT JUST READ THAT MST3K IS COMING BACK TO TV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :shock:
And I get the channel is going to be on!!!!!!!!!! THERE IS A GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YES!!!!!!!! FINALLY!!!!!! WE WILL GET MST BACK ON THE AIRWAVES!!!! :-D
That is AWESOME. But no Chicago affiliates? That sucks. But maybe a good sign going forward….
Perhaps they’ll be like Me-TV and have a handful of episodes available for streaming?
San Francisco has one but no Comcast channel listed for it. Guess I will have to poke around on the non-HD channels to find it. We have a channel here called Me TV that has some great old shows (Mary Tyler Moore, The Twilight Zone, Bob Newhart, etc) so I am wondering if it is that one or maybe some entirely different local channel that only shows 25+ year old tv shows… Anyway, great news, imagine the bored channel surfing kids that will accidently tune into this and discover their new favorite show (I know that’s how it happened for me back in the day)!
Also, some pretty great episodes on this list! I Accuse my Parents, Time Chasers, Girl in Gold Boots and Merlin are all in my top 10…
I’m guessing Jim Mallon heard about the Rifftrax thing and remembere that he owns a beloved property with a huge fanbase thar he wasn’t doing anything with.
This might be the first time I say this, but: good job, Jim! Hopefully this is a sign of things to come!
And it’s only Wednesday! Remember when months would go by without anything newsworthy for you fellas to report? Crazy.
hellokittee @12, ME-TV* is totally different (Chicago-based versus Luken’s Chattanooga base). I love ME, but being local, I love their digital spinoff ME-TOO even more – it’s slightly more esoteric or arcane (Cannon, Streets of San Francisco, The Iron Horse, The Rebel, 77 Sunset Strip, etc) at times.
And, yes, while there isn’t a RetroTV affiliate anywhere near me, as an old MSTie, I’m delighted for anyone who’ll get a chance to see this over the air. Who knew, ten years ago when Sci Fi had their last broadcast, that MST would ever come back to TV?
No Twin Cities affiliate, either.
How does this list map at all with the DVD releases, time-wise? I mean, is it a mix of recenidet and old, or what?
I know TV and video rights are separate, but I wonder if there are tea leaves to be read.
*recent
Not sure what happened there.
All of them are available on DVD. There are a bunch that were Rhino/Shout Select titles, and the newest one is Hercules and the Captive Women which is on the latest set.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usfiAsWR4qU
damn it they dont have retro tv in my area.
Wow. I remember back in November when they were having the online Turkey Day. I mentioned on here that if they wanted to take it one step further they could probably go to a station like Me-TV to air future Turkey Days, and it kind of catapulted into a conversation on whether a station could syndicate certain episodes. I wonder if that might have led to this. (Probably not, but my ego wants to say maybe. :D)
So does Retro TV count as an independent station? If so, then MST3K kind of goes full circle.
I’m so happy – even if the local Retro affiliate is on a hard-to-get channel that’s not on cable where I live (62.4 in the Boston area). There was a Retro affiliate in Texas that streamed but I’m not sure they’re doing it anymore.
I just Googled “MST3k Return” and got this SatNews page as the #1 listing:
https://www.mst3kinfo.com/mstfaq/syfy.html
Might want to update it is all. :)
And thus sayeth God “Return to Broadcast Airwaves MST3K”. And it was good.
Unfortunately, not in Columbus Ohio though.
This is cool.
It figures since Tucson had Comedy Central waaay back in the day, that we wouldn’t have Retro TV for the return. Still, this is very awesome.
Time for a new addition to the broadcast schedule!!! After ten long years, and so many Screaming Skull reruns later… so cool.
It’s only a matter of time, now. And you know what I’m talking about. Don’t know when, where, how or who, but it’s coming…
I believe this is the first time any season 1, 6, 7, 9 or 10 episodes have been in syndication. Jack Perkins, where are you! Excuse me, I meant “The Host”…
I also can’t wait until I read this post:
“I saw this show on Retro TV, now I’m hooked, and I discovered your website!”
Makes me wonder if the old Hopkins, Minnesota address will be on screen…
@25
amen
now turn your church hymnals to hymn 507 and let us all sing “Happy in Your Work”
Anyone notice most of the episodes are the ones with public domain film? The ones from the scifi era must have been easy-affordable to clear.
Hopefully this will give people unfamiliar with MST3K, young and old alike the chance to discover it the way it was meant to be discovered; no idea what the heck is going on or who the guy and the talking gumball machine and reindeer-looking thing are.
I’d probably argue my only complaint with the episode line-up is “Mitchell” and “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” aren’t included. To me, it’s the most important transitional moment in MST3K (changing of the hosts), and it’s not here.
Now granted, I can understand “Laserblast” and “Revenge of the Creature” not being in the line-up, I’m sure they’re pretty pricey films to acquire, but aren’t “Mitchell” and “The Brain that Wouldn’t Die” public domain?
Other than that nitpick, this is AWESOME news!
WOW. Jealous. Our NBC affiliate station got MeTV a year ago (actually addicted to it, like what Nick at Nite used to be before they started playing Raymond and King of Queens), wish they’d gotten the rights to MST3K, instead we get Svengoolie which is a lot of fun but yeah…jealous. :/ What network is RetroTV usually associated with? CBS, ABC?
No affiliate in my area, but I have all these on DVD anyway, so I can just pop one in the player and pretend.
Interesting that its 26 episodes. 26 weeks is half a year. So this first run of syndication should go from July 5-December 27. Hopefully they extend it after that and mix in more episodes. The ones they have, are slightly lacking. With more PD and cheap episodes(which is what the syndicated episodes appear to be) perhaps being released by Shout! in the coming months, they might be able to run more episodes like:
602-Invasion USA
605-Colossus and the Headhunters
618-High School Bigshot
912-The Screaming Skull
1007-Track of the Moonbeast
And possibly more of the previously released episodes from Rhino that are public domain like:
206-Ring of Terror
321-Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
404-Teenagers from Outer Space
406-Attack of the Giant Leeches
407-The Killer Shrews
408-Hercules Unchained
410-Hercules Against the Moon Men
414-Tormented
503-Swamp Diamonds
504-Secret Agent Super Dragon
506-Eegah
607-Bloodlust
612-The Starfighters
902-Phantom Planet
907-Hobgoblins
1011-Horrors of Spider Island
And that’s 21 episodes right there.
(Public domain episodes are from Travis’s list)
@33: Funny thing is Kevin has always cited the original Svengoolie as an influence on the show.
@35: Perhaps it’s easier to license the stuff that’s already been on DVD?
Our cable system currently has CoziTV, ThisTV, and Antenna TV. I think my brother’s system has Retro TV. But, just in case, I guess I’d better start pestering Optimum to add it to the lineup.
Woohoo! There are two affiliates in St. Louis
16.1? 13.2? D’oh! I have no idea what those are.
Holy cow. I originally discovered Mystery Science Theater during it’s brief run in syndication on WBNA in September 1995. I was so sad when they stopped airing it a year later. Fast forward 18 years in the future and Retro TV picks it up. Who’s their digital affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky? WBNA!!!! :)
Great… except I live in Spokane. :)
I’m glad it’s on again, though.
I don’t think I get this channel, and with my DVD’s I don’t really care. But I am very happy that the show is on the air again. The world is a better place now. Thanks for the Handel above. Nice touch.
You know if the last three episodes of Season 8 are such easy gets, I’d love to see Shout! express that with some re-releases.
We used to have Retro TV in the Green Bay WI market but it was dropped over a year ago. It was a good channel. It’s another one you could describe as old time Nick at Night. They also had Svengoolie knock off Wolfman Mack for a while.
Anyway the notable first here is that this is the first time Comedy Central episodes and Sci-Fi episodes will air on the same channel. It only took 17 years.
Any word on time edits or anything? iirc the syndication run shaved a few minutes off here and there.
Based on some tweets from @KevDGrussing:
I figured out why #MST3K will be airing on RetroTV. Or why its only 26 episodes anyway.
RetroTV owns rights to air titles frm Peter Rogers Organization library, which owns rights to, among others, Cosby’s first 2 TV projects.
PRO also happens to own rights to many of the films that were riffed by #MST3K. That’s how MST3K will suddenly appear on RetroTV.
RetroTV, by the way, is owned by Luken Communications. The superpower of digital subchannels with a whopping 7 subchannel networks.
I decided to contact my cable provider (Time Warner Cable) and see if there were any plans to add RetroTV to their lineup in my area and was told the following:
“We have launched it currently in NYC and Dallas and upcoming upcoming launches in Austin, San Antonio, Kansas City, Raleigh, Cleveland and Columbus (in TWC areas)”.
So, coming soon, in some places.
I have Me-TV, Antenna TV, Get-TV and This-TV. So of course NO Retro-TV. Leave it to MST3K to make us wait 15 years to see this on broadcast TV again and then pick the most obscure channel they could possibly find.
RetroTV does not here in IL. I, of course, have every episode commercially released, but it would be nice to watch MST3K on broadcast TV. I guess we’ll eventually get RetroTV. A movie channel called GetTV started last month.
I’m pretty sure if BBI had their way the show would be airing in every market with all 176 episodes in rotation. Unfortunately “popular” channels don’t see the same degree of value in a two hour puppet show with movie rights issues that we do. Heck, Comedy Central and SCI-FI Channel both dropped the series around the time they started becoming available on more basic cable packages around the country.
Does anyone else think that Shout Factory should sponsor this? They could air ads for the box sets during breaks.
now if we can just get National Geographic channel to give Rifftrax a permanent show everything would be perfect.