“Soul Train” Derailed?

Last Updated on January 21, 2017

What’s going on with Soul Train?

I’ve been noticing lately, when I’m passing by the show on weekends as I flip through the channels, that “television’s longest-running, first-run, nationally-syndicated program in television history” is showing classic episodes from the seventies and eighties under the title The Best of Soul Train, which is usually a good sign that a show is on its last leg.

It won’t come as a shock, I trust, to point out that I am not the show’s target demographic, so I’ve asked a few friends of mine who work in programming departments of stations that carry the show. Oh, yes, they tell me, it’s been this way all season. No new shows.

The show that aired today, for example, was from the 1980-81 season, and featured Betty Wright and Funkadelic. (As I write this, they’re playing a little Cool & The Gang.) The music is much more to my varied musical tastes than the hip hop that dominated the show when there were actually new episodes.

I looked at the show’s official site, but there was no explanation for the repeats. (And after a while, the grammarian in me couldn’t stand reading anymore: someone decided that in telling the “Soul Train Story,” it would be a good idea to capitalize the first letter of every word in every sentence.)

I would think that we would have heard something if TV’s “hippest trip” had come to an end. Then again I would think that if they were going to be doing any new episodes, they wouldn’t have taken a full season off.

But the more I hear, these reruns don’t seem so bad at all.