ViacomCBS’s Nick at Nite will continue to air reruns of Friends as part of a new multi-series agreement with AT&T’s Warner Bros. Television.
As part of the deal, Nick at Nite also bought the off-network cable premiere rights to Young Sheldon, which will start to appear on the channel on Nov. 30.
The Friends move illustrates that while AT&T spent big bucks to put Friends on its streaming platform HBO Max--and take it away from rival Netflix--it prefers getting income from cable syndication to being the exclusive outlet for the popular show.
Young Sheldon is also available for streaming on HBO Max.
Nick at Nite has been running 11 episodes of Friends a night from 9 p.m. until 3:05 a.m. The episodes are longer than 30 minutes each because they are stuffed with extra commercials.
Nick at Nite has also been running two other Warner Bros. shows on weeknights, Mom and Full House, but the network declined to say whether those shows were included in the renewal.
Beginning Nov. 23 at 9 p.m., Nick at Nite will be presenting a Super-Stuffed Friends-Giving featuring classic Friends episodes, highlighted by a marathon of Thanksgiving-themed episodes on Thursday.
HBO Max has been hyping a one-shot Friends reunion, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, production has been delayed several times.
Friends premiered in 1994 and stars David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and Jennifer Aniston as 20-somethings in New York. There were 236 episodes before the show’s finale in 2004.
The series was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, who executive produced the series with Kevin Bright through Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television.
