There were a lot of great sitcoms in the 1990s, but it’s hard to argue about any show other than Friends, or maybe Seinfeld, being the most iconic of them. While the NBC series was a big deal for its stars, garnering newbies like Jennifer Aniston their first set gifts (in her case a washer and dryer) and eventually gigantic salaries, it wasn’t all positive vibes. In fact, I just learned its reign on TV did negatively affect another beloved series: Sister, Sister.
Tamera Mowry-Housley, half of the duo at the center of the family comedy that we still love, has revealed that Friends was actually involved in pushing their show off of ABC after two seasons. This was back in 1995, and it eventually landed on The WB. As she shared:
I can remember Friends came about, and a lot of the networks wanted to, they were like, ‘Wow, this show is a hit. How can we bring that to our network?’ So we go from being on ABC to the WB. I remember my sister and I going, ‘What the hell? What is that? What is the frog network?’ A fledgling network? I remember looking that up, going, what does ‘fledgling’ even mean.
At the time, the Mowry sisters were just teenagers, and trying to understand why their new series was getting moved onto a different, and less known, network. As People noted, the series ranked a “respectable” No. 33 on Nielsen ratings when the first season aired on ABC. So it was a surprise to be pushed off of primetime.
Still, the move from ABC helped build up the WB as a network, which launched in 1995, as Mowry-Housley continued:
I have a frame from the WB saying, ‘Thank you for helping us start a network.’ And [her Sister, Sister dad] Tim Reid was telling me, ‘Tamera, a lot of networks do this.’ They start off with Black shows, because we’re talented. Black people are talented, and a lot of people watch Black shows, and they built that network with those shows, and then they start changing.
Mowry-Housley made these comments in the HBO doc Seen & Heard, which features a series of big names talking about Black representation on television over the years. The primetime sitcoms that would debut on ABC in the years to follow instead of Sister, Sister included Sabrina The Teenage Witch, The Drew Carey Show, Ellen, Soul Man, Everybody Loves Raymond, Becker and Two Of A Kind with the Olsen twins, which all had predominantly white casts.
Sister, Sister’s move to The WB was joined by other Black-led shows like The Wayan Bros. and The Jamie Foxx Show, which helped make the new network (nicknamed the Frog Network) before predominantly white cast shows like 7th Heaven, Buffy The Vampire Slayer also became staples on the channel later on. Sister, Sister was on TV until it ended after six seasons in 1999. Following their sitcom, the Mowry sisters would star in Disney Channel movies like the Twitches, their reality TV show Tia & Tamera, Hallmark holiday movies, and more.
Over the years there’s been talk about a Sister, Sister revival, with the most recent comments coming from Tia Mowry who said “never say never”, but did not point to any clear movement on a project. These comments about how Friends impacted Sister, Sister have me looking at ‘90s television a bit differently, but it only highlights further how beloved and impactful Tia and Tamera’s early sitcom continues to be.