mhg83

Was watching Six Feet Under earlier. It was a scene between Keith and David. Keith says to David "We're watching OZ" This felt out of place and cheap for HBO to be plugging a show on their network. I don't recall other shows on HBO doing this. Just pulled me out of the show.

I remember Buffy did this once for Dawson's Creek but they never name dropped the show. It was just Spike watching the Tele and commenting "Oh Pacey you idiot. She doesn't want you"

Have other shows done this before? I don't remember any on the top of my head.

actionjackson29

I doubt it HBO plugging their show. Just the writers thinking OZ would be an interesting show for the gay guys to be watching.

JTH182

Probably makes less waves if you use a show that's on the same network opposed to one on a competing network too.

Groucho

Oz was put to better use on Arrested Development

wirefan

There was a scene in SOA with Juice in jail watching The Shield. (but this was after The Shield had ended)

Of course this was more a reminder to the audience that Sutter once had a quality show prior to him turning SOA into dogshit; as opposed to an actual plug for the show.

ChrisHicks

Wasn't there a similar scene in Millennium where someone was watching The X-Files on TV?

resinrats

Simpsons has done it a bunch of times. Many times making fun of Fox.

TheKing

The Neighbors had an episode this season where the characters end up on an episode of Shark Tank.

There was an episode of Seinfeld where George and Susan were watching Mad About You (you could hear the theme song). Although those shows also had a brief crossover prior to that.

Jimmy James

Was the Crane Train to Mental Well Being a plug for Cheers on Wings?

Defiant1

I remember an episode of The Golden Girls (NBC at the time) where the girls were trying to schedule something and another character asked if Thursday would be okay. All the girls were horrified at the idea. The other character suddenly clued in and realized that The Cosby Show was on that night, so they would be busy.

emachine12

Community wins this by having Abed talk about Cougar Town...

Abed then talks about being an extra but running out of the scene due to stomach issues.

Then the episode of Cougar Town that aired after has that exact same scene.

Giles

wasn't there a few instances that referenced Futurama

Futurama also made references to a lot of other shows - they did a rather hysterical cameo of Jake and Finn from Adventure Time.

TheKing

I think most of the Cheers cast crossed over with Wings. I know Norm and Cliff did, and I'm fairly sure Frasier and Lilith did as well. NBC did this a lot in the 90s with their comedies. In fact, NBC did it so much, that you could tie in hundreds of shows that exist in the same fictional universe.

ABC did it as well. I remember at the end of an episode of Family Matters, Urkel flew off on an out of control jet pack, and he landed at the start of the episode of Step By Step right after it.

PhantomStranger

It was a pretty common promotional stunt in decades gone by. In a world of specialized niches, I think the networks don't believe it works as well today.

sven

Seems like it would just add to the realism. Wouldn't have bothered me a bit.

Michael Corvin

I remember quite a few shows(even from competing networks) name dropped Lost when it was on.

Most obvious coming to mind though is Dwight and Battlestar Galactica on the Office.

chowderhead

All the singing competition shows will plug the shows after it either with an announcement by the host or the stars of the other show will pop up in the audience.

bluetoast

Yeah it didn't seem unrealistic that they were watching Oz. But speaking of which, on Oz itself, Robert Iler (as himself) was a participant on the fictional game show the prisoners watch on TV, which led to the prisoners wondering why they don't have HBO.

Not really a direct plug, but on one of the last episodes of The Wire, Duquan was excitedly talking about Dexter.

Shannon Nutt

Family Guy would be out of business if they didn't make fun of other shows - a lot of FOX stuff too.

resinrats

Remember when Family Guy came back, Peter read a huge list of FOX shows that got cancelled, allowing their return.

Family Guy also had Homer make an appearence when Family Guy did something before Simpsons did it.

UAIOE

I guess "Family Guy" should have shown Homer when it did the Back to the Future "It's your cousin Marvin" joke, because Seth used that joke at least two times before The Simpsons did it.

writer106

Back when NBC had other soap operas in addition to Days of Our Lives, they would cross promote all the time. On Passions, the characters would talk about watching the serial killer storyline on Days.

On Nickelodeon, there was references to Drake and Josh on Victorious and Sam and Cat, but D&J was over by that time. There was a crossover episode between Victorious and iCarly. Disney Channel has done crossovers with most of their shows.

TheKing mentioned the ABC crossovers back in the 90s. Urkel also appeared on an episode of Full House.

Shannon Nutt

GENERAL HOSPITAL had a scene last year where one of the characters was watching the news and another character asked "You're watching the news?" and the character replied "It's all that's on this time of day since they cancelled ONE LIFE TO LIVE."

They also did a storyline where characters went on THE CHEW.

fujishig

Cheers had that crossover with Jeopardy (one of my favorite episodes). You could argue that Jeopardy is iconic enough that it wasn't really a plug, but they surely would have just used a fictional gameshow (and lost some of the effect) if they weren't on the same network

Also this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...nal_crossovers


Cartoons do it much easier, especially if they're parodies like Family Guy or the Simpsons. Does anyone know if the Scooby Doo guest stars (individual stars like Sonny and Cher, Sandy Duncan, Don Knotts, as well as "acts" like the Adamms Family, the Harlem Globetrotters, Adam West/Burt Ward Batman and Robin) were done to promote the other shows, to promote Scooby Doo, or just because they wanted to have celebs on?

Shannon Nutt

"Cliff...you bet all your money - why would you do that?"

"Because I knew for a fact they had never been in my kitchen!"