The earliest I can remember watching The Monkees is when reruns of the show joined CBS's Saturday morning line-up in 1969. That having been said, I remember being excited when I saw the ads announcing The Monkees was coming to CBS, so I must have been aware of the show or the band before then. Given my age, it's possible I may have seen at least part of the original primetime run of The Monkees on NBC. I had certainly heard The Monkees by that time. My much older sister owned their albums and they were constantly played on the radio in thee mid to late Sixties.
Regardless, I became hooked on the TV show when it was rerun on Saturday afternoons on CBS. According to my siblings, I could not be moved from the TV set and would throw a tantrum if my parents insisted that I did. I played my older sister's records and even cut the 33 1/3 records off Post Cereal boxes that came out in 1970. In 1972, The Monkees moved to ABC, although it was regularly preempted by sporting events, which did not make me happy.
The Monkees entered syndication in 1975, although I would not get to see it regularly. None of the stations carried it in the Columbia/Jefferson City market, and our reception of the St. Louis stations could be hit and miss. I wouldn't get to see it again until February 23, 1986 when MTV showed a marathon of The Monkees. A lot of times we learn that things we enjoyed as children really weren't that good, but that was not the case with The Monkees. I loved it as much in my early twenties as I did when I was five years old. The marathon was such a success that it sparked renewed interest in The Monkees. MTV began airing it daily and Nick-At-Nite also picked it up. Local stations began airing The Monkees again. I was able to watch it on KPLR out of St. Louis.
Unfortunately, MTV, Nick-At-Nite, and local stations would eventually drop The Monkees, and I would go years without seeing it again. I did watch the special Hey, Hey, It's The Monkees that aired on ABC on February 17, 1997, but as much as I loved it, it wasn't the same as the original series. Fortunately, in 2000 it was rerun back to back with The Partridge Family as part of the Screen Gems Network that was syndicated to local stations by Columbia Pictures. This programming block would only last for the summer of 2000, when the two shows were replaced by reruns of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie (the shows that had originally aired on the Screen Gems Network). Fortunately, I would not have to wait so long to watch The Monkees again.
It was in 2003 that Rhino Entertainment released the entire series of The Monkees on DVD, with each of its two seasons in a box set, along with the special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee. Never again would I have to go without watching The Monkees. Not that I would have to. In 2011, Antenna TV began airing The Monkees and did so for years. IFC also aired the show. FETV started showing it in 2017. In 2019 MeTV began rerunning The Monkees and did so for time. More recently, it was added to Catchy Comedy's schedule. It was only recently that The Monkees became available on streaming. It can be seen on Tubi and The Roku Channel.
As to why The Monkees has remained my favourite sitcom for nearly sixty years, that is difficult to say. Much of it must be nostalgia. The Monkees reminds me of my early childhood, when I didn't have much responsibility and all of my needs were seen to by my parents. Watching The Monkees transports me back to a time when I felt safe and secure and my biggest worry was what was on television on any given day. And it is easy to see why the show would appeal to little boys. Over the course of the show, The Monkees faced gangsters, mad scientists, spies, Western outlaws, and even aliens. And through all of this they played some of the best pop rock songs of the era.
Beyond the nostalgia factor, another reason it is that in many ways The Monkees was ground-breaking. Not only did it employ the sort of zany humour common to sitcoms in the Sixties, but it was meta before meta was a thing. Not only did the show regularly reference pop culture ("The Spy Who Came in From the Cool" referenced both I Dream of Jeannie and From Russia with Love), but The Monkees regularly broke the fourth wall. For a Sixties show, it was very fast-paced and even experimental in nature, using jump cuts, sped-up film, and montages of the sort for which videos on MTV would become known. Indeed, The Monkees won Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series (beating out The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, Get Smart, and Hogan's Heroes) and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy.
Ultimately, what I think appealed the most to me about The Monkees, especially as a young man, was that no matter what happened, The Monkees won in the end. Here was this down-and-out rock band composed of four twentysomethings who still somehow managed to defeat everything from alien invasions to organized crime to foreign spies. Quite simply, the messages of The Monkees were to never give up in the face of adversity, that even an underdog can win if the cause is just, and that good always defeats evil in the end. As corny as those messages may sound, I think they were important in 1966 and they are still important to this day.
As it is, I think The Monkees will continue to be popular for decades to come. The reruns on CBS and ABC on Saturday morning in the late Sixties and Seventies created a new generation of fans. The syndication run created yet more and the MTV run even more. Each revival of The Monkees has created new fans. Indeed, today I encountered a 19 year-old fan whose favourite show is The Monkees and whose favourite band is The Monkees. She wasn't even born in the century in which the show originated. The Monkees has been popular for sixty years now. I think it will remain popular for sixty more
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