If the KTMA Season was so Bad....

[hipsterthor]

How did it acquire such rabid fans in its early days? Even the First Season was pretty bad....usually it takes a while for a show to get a show to get a lot of fans. It took Seinfeld till season 4 to really take off. But with MST it seems there was a fanbase for it from the get-go, despite it kind of sucking.

[brandonakaxerxes]

I think Joel said that since this was a new concept, nobody really knew how many riffs was too much, or simply not enough.

Also, Comedy Central was just starting out at the time, and probably weren't in any position to decide if a show wasn't popular enough to keep on or not.

[mrsphyllistorgo]

MST3K truly was, in the most cosmic sense, in the right place at the right time.

It appeared in Joel's mind at just the right moment, he had the right group of freinds to develop it with, it started in just the right place (Minneapolis), and arrived at CC just when cable, as a cultural force, began to change the face of television entertainment in general. They grew together and garnered fans at the correct pace.

Seriously, can you imagine a two hour show, of any kind, getting the green light at any channel now? Everything lined up just right.

[Torgo]

Judging by the phone calls they put on the air, KTMA got rabid fans even with its sparse riffing. There were also a few people who weren't into it, proving the show was very much polarizing from the beginning. It's hard to tell what the reaction to KTMA was, since it was just aired in one state only and I definitely didn't live there. I doubt it was seen as anything more than another cult movie host show, though. A lot of people have an affection for that sort of program.

The show was given up after a single season, though, so KTMA obviously wasn't seeing a future in it. Best Brains did the smart thing by using this year to refine it then sell it on a nation wide series. You can criticize season 1, but the most notable difference between it and KTMA is that the first season not only better production values and a riffing script. People wrote letters, showing the show did have a fanbase even back then, but it grew as it went on and the style of the series was perfected.

But the same can be said for just about any series, really.

[Mod City]

I agree with the above analysis. The show was just unique enough that it struck a chord with some people. And as Torgo said, some people flipped for it and others couldn't fathom what was going on. The concept was intriguing, and it's what got many people into the show later on as well, not just the KTMA days.

I'm assuming some extremely die-hard fans developed in those KTMA years, but in reality, it's all there was of the show. The KTMA season is not as strong as subsequent seasons, something I think even the most serious Season Zero fans will admit.

I'll also suggest that MST3K didn't have as many fans in the early days as it may first appear. I joined the fan club around the start of season three and there were only 6000 members at that time. I think it picked up greatly well after they had figured out the riffing rate and general comedic formula of the show. So in that regard, I think it needed time to build it's audience, as well.

[Phantom Engineer]

KTMA only seems bad because we have later seasons to compare it to. I'd like to think that if I saw it then I would have liked it and seen the potential.

[Crowfan]

Joel always said "The right people would get it." This is true; some of my friends love the show and some of my friends still to this day wonder why I watched it all those years. To each their own.

[brandonakaxerxes]

Torgo, small correction. I don't think KTMA really "gave up" on MST3K. The brains left on their own, as KTMA was close to bankruptcy at the time.

[inlovewithcrow]

It was so bad because we have seasons 2-10 to compare it to. With nothing to compare it to--the movies alone or yet another family-based cutsie sitcom, it was great.

[zombiewhacker]

Yeah, I was watching the KTMA Fugitive Alien ep on YouTube, and once you get past the 25 cent budget (and no Trace!) it's pretty darn funny.

I also agree that the concept itself was so unique that earliest viewers probably weren't that concerned over the fact that the Brains were only riffing at five for minute or whatever.

[SOL Stowaway]

Dec 29, 2011 14:57:30 GMT -5 Mod City said:

The KTMA season is not as strong as subsequent seasons, something I think even the most serious Season Zero fans will admit.

Never!

Season Zero > Season Two > Season One

Season Zero > Old Who

Season Zero > Cinematic Titanic

Season Zero = Original Star Trek

I'd drop $100-200 in a heartbeat for my dream KTMA set of K01, K02, K09, K11 & K20.

[Mr. Atari]

I vastly prefer the KTMA season to season 1. I also tend to prefer it to season 10. Mostly because the movies were far more interesting and watchable. I know the riffing wasn't up to par with later years, but I prefer to sit through "The Last Chase" or "Hangar 18" or "Superdome" or "Million Eyes of Su-Maru" over "Mad Monster" or "The Corpse Vanishes" or "Squirm" or "Blood Waters of Dr. Z" 100 times out of 100.

[harcourt]

Before MST3K started, I was a fan of late night movies and our local DC host, Count Gore De Vol, and then cable happened and those channels had many hours of programming to fill with a limited budget and they showed many iffy and bad movies. Of course, there was also the Rocky Horror Picture Show cult, where people interacted with the movie.

Specifically when watching cable movies, we would hang out and make fun of them.

If I had lived near KTMA and knew about this show, I'd have likely been hooked.

As has been mentioned, the show became fine-tuned and quickly-paced after a few years. This does not mean the early years are badly done. They are just different. I'm a fan of the TV disaster movie, and KTMA had a bunch. Josh had a different style - a quick improv dry wit that still works for me.

So my point is that when the KTMA season happened, there was an audience ready for that. It wasn't just a host saying "let's watch this movie", but adding comments about the movie in real-time as I imagine some people already did.

[Tor Johnson]

I've been watching the KTMA episodes lately. I agree that they are different from later episodes but not bad. The riffing is better than a lot of people could do without a script. It had to be difficult to ad lib all of the riffs. I was wondering if anyone knows what the rocket that shoots Joel into space ,during the theme, was made out of??

[Mitchell]

Two of my favorite episodes are from the KTMA era, Superdome and SST Death Flight.

I don't think KTMA episodes sucked. The production values were non-existent and the tape quality not very high, but the knife-edged jokes were still there and very funny. Like Mr. A, the KTMA episodes, to me, are better than Season 1. I agree that has to do with the movie selections, but I find the riffing quality to be on-par with some of the later work.