Thursday nights in the 1990s weren’t just TV — they were an event.
NBC branded it Must See TV, and for nearly two decades, it owned the culture. Friends, Seinfeld, Frasier, and ER pulled in more than 70 million viewers on a single night. Rival networks waved the white flag, and advertisers paid record prices just to be part of the lineup.
But every empire falls. By the 2000s, Seinfeld was gone, Friends said goodbye, and spin-offs like Joey couldn’t fill the gap. CBS fought back with Survivor and CSI. ABC countered with Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. Streaming, DVRs, and YouTube shattered the watercooler moment forever.
In this High and Low Retrospective, we explore the rise and fall of NBC’s Thursday Must See TV:
How the slogan was born in 1993 and became a cultural truth
Why NBC’s lineup dominated for over a decade
The shows that defined an era (Friends, Seinfeld, Frasier, ER)
The rivals that ended NBC’s reign - And why the end of Must See TV marked the death of the last true network monopoly