Must See TV was an American advertising slogan that was used by NBC to brand its primetime blocks during the 1990s, and most often applied to the network's Thursday night lineup, which featured some of its most popular sitcoms and drama series of the period, allowing the network to dominate prime time ratings on Thursday nights in the 1980s and 1990s. Ratings for NBC's lineup fell during the mid-to-late 2000s, and today the network ranks behind Fox, ABC, and CBS on Thursday nights. In 2015 and again in 2021, the network canceled comedy programming on Thursdays and switched entirely to dramas. However, the branding returned for the 2017–18 television season.

Hill Street Blues is an American serial police procedural television series that aired on NBC in prime-time from January 15, 1981, to May 12, 1987, for 146 episodes. The show chronicles the lives of the Metropolitan Police Department staff of a single police station located on Hill Street in an unnamed large city, although the opening credits show scenes from the city of Chicago, contrasted with New York City inferences, including: a discussion, at the start of the eighth episode, of the police department running a summer camp for juvenile delinquents in New York's Allegany State Park; a stolen police vehicle being found in the East River in the 11th episode; and a mention, in the 13th episode, that Detective LaRue lives on the Lower East Side. The "blues" are the police officers in their blue uniforms.