Did anyone watch this when it originally aired?

Yes I did. I watched syndicated on middle tier networks like UPN. I think it was on Fridays around 10:00 pm.

Yes. I watched it during its original run on Showtime and even videotaped the thing way back when. I did not like it consistently enough to ever go back and watch them again. They're in a box somewhere. (Had the same reaction to Star Trek: The Next Generation.) It was popular enough to last five years on a pay cable channel, but not as successful as Stargate SG1 would soon prove to be. I remember Showtime had this thing about wanting nudity in every show, and, until that network pretty much went to shows that were only about indulgent sex, most of the time those efforts were odd as they just seemed forced and out of place. SG1 had the same problem, and it is evident in their pilot, but those guys soon ignored the Showtime network bosses and wound up moving to the Sci-Fi Channel (pre SyFy) for its final five seasons. As a science fiction fan, I watched the revival of The Outer Limits regularly waiting for something really good to show up. It happened sometimes, but not much really. Fortunately, it was seldom awful. But when compared to the original Outer Limits, it suffered from a lack of any real style (visual or narrative) at all.

I used to try to catch it, but it seemed like it was never on at a consistent time. I remember watching it Saturday mornings most of the time, but sometimes it wouldn't be on and I'd randomly catch it at a different time.I was a kid, so I might not be remembering things correctly, but as far as I know, it was not popular at all. It was one of my favorites though.

I didn't have cable, so I must have been watching reruns on some network channel. Maybe that's why it was never consistent.

I never caught it on Showtime, but we watched it on broadcast networks. Bring back the reruns!

I watched The Outer Limits in first-run syndication in the late '90s. My local Fox station would broadcast The Outer Limits weekly at either 11:00 p.m. Saturday night, or 12:00 a.m. Sunday morning. If you were unpopular in high school or a nerd in general you were probably aware of it. Otherwise you would probably be unaware of the show as the only commercials for it were the promos for the next week's episode after the current episode ended.

In retrospect the '80s and '90s were probably the golden age of television sci-fi—there was even a channel that showed just sci-fi (no wrestling) and was phonetically spelled correctly: SciFi Channel.
Think, three Star Trek series in syndication, The X-Files, Twilight Zone and Outer Limits revivals, Sliders, Time Trax, Babylon 5, Perversions of Science, M.A.N.T.I.S., and dozens of other shows.

i could never understand why it was called THE OUTER LIMITS, and not STRANGE STORIES or something like that.
it simply did not have the eerie paranoid feeling of unease that the original TOL had-and thus was a different set of stories altogether.

I watched it only once.

I watched the episode Bits of Love when it originally aired on showtime, I was a kid and it was the first thing I saw that had boobs in it.

IIRC it started on Showtime (Premium Pay cable; like Stargate SG-1) and either finished in syndication... or the re-runs quickly showed up in syndication

as a syndicated show it would air anytime between 10p Friday and 6am Monday depending on the market (my local region was Saturday afternoons I believe)
- however if the local Affiliate had a deal with a local sports team, it was often subject to being pre-empted and put at an even more odd time

I would watch when I could, but between the inconsistent UHF signal and those pre-emptions it was rare to catch 2 episodes in a row