You Can't Do That on Television (1979-1990)

Carleton Productions, Nickelodeon

⚠ Unverified — hosted on the Internet Archive, not confirmed public domain. Opens on archive.org; nothing plays here directly.

You Can't Do That on Television is a Canadian sketch comedy television series that aired locally in 1979 before airing in the United States in 1981. It featured adolescent and teenage actors performing in a sketch comedy format similar to America's Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and Canada's Second City Television. Each episode had a specific theme, typically relating to the popular culture of the time. During its original U.S. run, the show was associated closely with the early years of the cable network Nickelodeon. It achieved high ratings, and is most famous for introducing the network's iconic green slime. The show was also notable for launching the careers of many performers, including alternative rock musician Alanis Morissette, filmmaker Patrick Mills, and television producer and screenwriter Bill Prady. The show was produced by and aired on Ottawa's CTV station CJOH-TV. Initially a local program, it was marketed specifically for a North American-wide audience from its third season on. After production ended in 1990, Nickelodeon aired reruns in the United States through 1994, when they were replaced with the similarly-themed domestic sketch comedy variety program All That. The show is the subject of the 2004 indie documentary You Can't Do That on Film, directed by David Dillehunt. Filmed in August 2004, the documentary was released in North America by Shout! Factory in 2012 and reissued in 2022 by MVD Entertainment. The film's tour of Studio D at CJOH was the final production made in the original studio, as the space had been sealed for tax purposes by station management. The building was demolished in 2011 following a fire in February 2010. You Can't Do That on Television premiered on February 3, 1979, on CJOH-TV in Ottawa. It was a locally produced, one-hour, low-budget variety program with some segments performed live. The show consisted of comedy sketches, music videos, and live phone-in contests in which the viewer could win prizes such as transistor radios, record albums, model kits, etc. The format also included performances by local disco dancers and special guests such as Ottawa-based cartoonist Jim Unger. Each week, the show took its "roving camera" to hangouts around town, recording kids' jokes or complaints about life, which were played on the following week's broadcast. The show also benefited from links with popular Top 40 Ottawa radio station CFGO. For example, station personality Jim Johnson emceed the disco-dance segments and shared tidbits about the artists featured in music videos. Veteran comedy actor Les Lye played numerous recurring characters and was initially the only adult to perform in the show's sketches. He was the only actor to appear for the entire series' run. Actress Abby Hagyard, who played the maternal character "Valerie" opposite Lye's paternal role "Lance," joined the series in 1982. Occasionally, the older children in the cast (including Christine McGlade, Sarah West or Cyndi Kennedy) played adult characters. The show offered programming for children on Saturday mornings that made no attempt to be an educational program. The idea was successful, as (according to one episode) the show scored a 32 share of the ratings for CJOH in its 10:30 a.m. Saturday time slot. The studio masters for the first-season episodes no longer exist, and all but three of the episodes from the first season were believed lost until early 2013, when copies of the missing episodes from off-air recordings were contributed by Roger Price and posted on YouTube. The format was similar to You Must Be Joking! and You Can't Be Serious, children's sketch variety shows that Price created and produced for Thames Television in Britain from 1974 to 1978. After a successful first season, a national network version of You Can't Do That on Television entitled Whatever Turns You On was produced for CTV and debuted in September 1979 (its hour-long pilot episode had aired in May). The show's creators shortened it to 30 minutes, removed local content, and added a laugh track. They replaced music videos with live performances from popular Canadian artists including Trooper, Max Webster, Ian Thomas, Ottawa's own Cooper Brothers (one of whose members, Dick Cooper, later became a writer for YCDTOTV) and disco singer Alma Faye Brooks. Ruth Buzzi joined the cast playing many of the adult female characters, including a strict schoolteacher named Miss Fidt and the studio secretary Miss Take. In addition, the 22 children from the first season were trimmed down to seven: Christine McGlade, Lisa Ruddy, Jonothan Gebert, Kevin Somers, Kevin Schenk, Rodney Helal and Marc Baillon. Another first-season cast member, Elizabeth Mitchell, only appeared in the pilot episode. The show was placed in the 7:00 p.m. timeslot on Tuesday nights, and some CTV affiliates opted not to carry the show, possibly because of concerns about its content. As a result, CTV cancelled the show in December 1979 following poor ratings after only 13 episodes. In January 1981, production on YCDTOTV resumed, and a new set of episodes aired locally on CJOH through May 1981. The format of the 1981 episodes was similar to that of the inaugural 1979 season, but each episode featured sketches that revolved around a certain topic (something that carried over from Whatever Turns You On). As disco's popularity had waned, the dancers were replaced by video-game competitions. At that time, Price and Darby tried to syndicate YCDTOTV. They edited each 1981 episode into a half-hour format similar to that of Whatever Turns You On. Some scenes were reshot to remove any specifically Canadian content, and the half-hour syndicated edits became entirely sketch comedy. The 1981 season was rerun on CJOH in early 1982 in the half-hour syndicated format. To compensate for the removal of local content, Price and Darby created a new local show for CJOH titled Something Else, which featured many of the YCDTOTV cast in a game show/variety format similar to that of The Price Is Right. The YCDTOTV team also made a pilot television film for Disney in 1981 titled Bear Rapids that was never picked up. Four of the hour-long CJOH episodes from the 1981 season ("Strike Now", "Sexual Equality", "Crime and Vandalism", and "Peer Pressure") are available for public viewing on YouTube. The rest are only currently available in the half-hour edits. In 1981, the new American youth-oriented cable network Nickelodeon took an interest in YCDTOTV. Nickelodeon originally aired several episodes in the edited half-hour syndicated format as a test run. The response was positive, and in January 1982, Nickelodeon began airing the entire edited season. By 1983, YCDTOTV was the network's highest-rated show. Production on new episodes of YCDTOTV resumed full-time in 1982 in the half-hour all-comedy format, with Nickelodeon and CJOH as production partners. Over the next few years, the series was screened nationally in Canada. CTV, the network CJOH-TV was affiliated with, broadcast the show on Saturday mornings between 1982 and 1990, with little publicity. However, YCDTOTV continued to expand its audience in the United States on Nickelodeon, where it initially aired five times a week and eventually every day. The series gained broader exposure in its native Canada in 1988 when it was added by the newly established youth-oriented YTV cable channel. It was heavily promoted and aired daily during peak viewing hours. Viewers in the United States were given the opportunity to enter the Slime-In, a contest hosted by Nickelodeon that flew the winner to the set of You Can't Do That on Television to be slimed. The contest was later replicated by Canada's YTV as the Slime Light Sweepstakes. In 1983 at WGBH-TV in Boston, Massachusetts, Roger Price created a version of YCDTOTV for American public television network PBS titled Don't Look Now (originally to be titled Don't Tell Your Mother!). The show was similar to episodes from the 1979 season of YCDTOTV, including music videos and several earlier YCDTOTV sketches and motifs (including a variation on the show's trademark green slime gag called "Yellow Yuck"). Despite high ratings, the series ended after its five-episode trial run in October 1983, possibly because of complaints from parents about its content. Nickelodeon was also concerned that if Don't Look Now was successful, it could mean the end of YCDTOTV.[4] The series was believed lost until all five episodes surfaced in early 2013. They have been posted on YouTube, excluding the copyrighted music videos. Price created another show for Nickelodeon in 1985, the less successful Turkey Television. It featured several main cast members of YCDTOTV including Les Lye, Christine McGlade, Kevin Kubusheskie and Adam Reid. By this time, McGlade, now in her twenties and eager to move on with her life, had moved to Toronto and was flying back to Ottawa for YCDTOTV taping sessions. Turkey Television also marked McGlade's debut as a producer, a career that she continued after leaving YCDTOTV in 1986. Another Price production using YCDTOTV cast members, UFO Kidnapped, was made in 1983. Although the pilot aired on Nickelodeon, the series was not picked up.