Okay, let's talk about *this!*

[Sesame Skates]

I got these tidbits from Antenna TV's Facebook page. It's an infamous example of how and why they crank out excuses not to air vintage SS and other quality classic programming:

(TV Fan) how about land of the lost and weekmorning like 70s electric company woody woodpecker reading rainbow and mr rogers and old sesame street for 60-70

("Corporate Sockpuppet" Type of Guy) It is unlikely that the not-for-profit producers of public television shows would licence their reruns out to a commercial broadcaster - plus it is not financially viable for a network to air those shows.



BTW, if you haven't discovered it already, Antenna TV is another new network airing classic TV: http://www.antennatv.tv/

 

[Drtooth]

Here's the thing... that's not an unreasonable "excuse." There is NO WAY a commercial network would be able to rerun SS... and if they did, it would be hacked and chopped up. Why, the only reason Noggin even aired what they did when they did was because that was when Viacom wasn't trying to push SW's interests out of the network.

A retro commercial station would be the ideal place to rerun old cartoon series... whatever ones weren't bought up into oblivion in the 90's... but classic PBS shows would need a classic PBS network. And considering PBS is going through some congressional elephant dung right now, that may just give them a boost.

Personally, I want some older cartoon series back NOW. This TV has like a third of Inspector Gadget rerunning and I'm dang grateful for it, even though they stuck it at 8 AM, and again, only air like a third of the produced episodes.

 

[D'Snowth]

Land of the Lost wasn't a non-profit show: Marty Krofft has said before that he and Sid were very commercial with their shows from the beginning, and were always out to make a profit from their shows, and LOTL was no exception.

 

[minor muppetz]

It is a wonder that Nick Jr. never aired Sesame Street or Electric Company reruns. For most of it's run Nick Jr. has been commercial free (I think it might have initially had commercial interruptions), so those shows could have aired uncut.

 

[Drtooth]

face palm:

Look at their show choices

Okay... I'm about to do that rant I've been doing forever now, so here goes.

FCC... Lipservice... cheap... 1990's nature shows. Really... Mustard Pancake? Critter Gitters? Curiosity Quest? There's your answer right there. There it is. They refuse to air any GOOD kid's programming because they have to PAY for them... and you can't fund them because no one wants Billy Boogereater to see a commercial for a toy or candy product because of all the money spent on studies saying things that are obvious. So, lack of profitable commercials= lack of profitable children's programming. So we have to get this cheap, leftover junk that can be funded by the Ad Council's 7 cents per that they basically air JUST so they can keep their license.

What kid... what kid in the world watches these dry career and nature oriented shows that are only there to fill out a requirement? Either kill the stupid legislation and put up the highly profitable infomercials that station owners use to coast by on their butts, or stiffen the legislation to FORCE quality programming on these little networks.

There is NO BIGGER FAIL than a retro network that refuses to air retro programming. I'm sure a lot of it IS the red tape and legal mumbo jumbo and cartel pricing from all the conglomerates buying up rerun and cartoon rights in the 90's for them to not air them today, but it's time to put the foot down and say, "We're going to advertise McDonalds and Marvel comics action figures on television so we can be competitive and have actual GOOD programming for kids. Raise your own snot eating brats!" There would be a great place to rerun old cartoons like Bullwinkle and Underdog... make a deal with Classic Media... you can have a nice, inexpensive line up. But instead, 1990's junk like Critter Gitters...

Wow... I seem to remember no one in the history of mankind watching that.

So, to answer you're question... that's the "not financially viable" stuff for Woody Woodpecker and LOTL. They just want parental group friendly, non-competitive lipservice to keep a broadcasting license. Thanks FCC... thanks whiny parental groups... thanks Commercial Free Childhood/Responsibility Free Parenthood.

 

[ISNorden]

If a group like Commercial Free Childhood had existed when Joan Ganz Cooney got into the TV biz...there would never have been a Sesame Street. Either that, or the show would have been so unwatchable in 1969 that it never would have lasted more than a season or two!

P.S. Regarding Sesame Street with commercial interruptions: Telefutura (a Spanish-language cable channel) does exactly that with Plaza Sésamo on weekends. They're not affiliated with PBS, they actually show non-Ad Council commercials (geared towards the parents--makeup and exercise equipment)...yet they managed to get permission to run the show. If Telefutura can run Sesame Street with profitable ads that don't get kids begging for junk food and fad toys, then I'd bet my bottom dollar that an English-language retro channel could do the same successfully.

 

[CensoredAlso]

If a group like Commercial Free Childhood had existed when Joan Ganz Cooney got into the TV biz...there would never have been a Sesame Street.

VERY good point! : D

I really don't agree that children should be "kept away" from commercials. If a child buys a product (or at least asks their parents for it) and it turns out to be a rip off, that child has learned the valuable lesson to not believe everything he/she sees. Would these parents deny their children the right to make mistakes and learn from them? (HINT: Yes, they would. )

 

[ISNorden]

VERY good point! : D

I really don't agree that children should be "kept away" from commercials. If a child buys a product (or at least asks their parents for it) and it turns out to be a rip off, that child has learned the valuable lesson to not believe everything he/she sees. Would these parents deny their children the right to make mistakes and learn from them? (HINT: Yes, they would. )

Another ironic observation, compared with the one Sesame Street used to teach: "Everyone makes mistakes", including the adults that a preschooler trusts. A 5-year-old who can't handle being told "you got scammed, don't believe it" grows up to be a 25-year-old who sues a restaurant for not warning customers that their fresh coffee is hot. Overprotective parents have ruined kidvid today much more than Madison Avenue did in the past; given the choice, I'd rather see a glitzy toy commercial pay for an educational show that kids actually learn from, instead of a public-service ad paying for thirty minutes of "cover our legal butts for the FCC" programming.

 

[Drtooth]

A 5-year-old who can't handle being told "you got scammed, don't believe it" grows up to be a 25-year-old who sues a restaurant for not warning customers that their fresh coffee is hot. Overprotective parents have ruined kidvid today much more than Madison Avenue did in the past; given the choice, I'd rather see a glitzy toy commercial pay for an educational show that kids actually learn from, instead of a public-service ad paying for thirty minutes of "cover our legal butts for the FCC" programming.

Why can't more of us create a counter group?

I have stood on this same soapbox for years, but kids DON'T even like the dry or dated programs they shove at 5 Am on Sundays to fulfill a requirement that doesn't even make sense anymore.

Remember the 1990's when this crap took effect? We had all these studios trying very hard and coming up with brilliant ORIGINAL TV/EI programming like Histeria! and Disney's one Saturday morning line up of Recess, Doug and Pepper Ann. Now we have lazy programing execs on the local level that say "We can get more money airing infomercials, but we need to keep our FCC license!" and run dry, unwatchable garbage like Aqua Kids and Pets.TV... NO ONE watches those, they don't care, they don't make money, they don't feel they should bother competing... but they need to keep that FCC license... and I've said a million times by now, the FCC doesn't do what it's supposed to. it's supposed to REGULATE how many media outlets a single company can own. EHH! Not anymore. All it does now is overly regulate kid's television, and punish stations who air "indecent" programming when a bunch of joyless prudes call up to complain.

That lead to LESS competition. Does Disney want to compete with itself on Saturdays? NO! That's why their Saturday Line up is reruns (3 year old reruns, mind you) of old shows... NBC also paired up with a cable channel to give reruns... CBS was the first one who did it in the 80's with their horrid Nick Jr. line up, but now they have some original programming that SUCKS (who was calling for a Doodlebops cartoon?). Fox is gone... just infomercials, and 4Kids basically holds on with Sonic X and Yugioh. And they're the BEST ones. Now you can't even touch a cartoon unless you buy cable. There's like 4 kid's channels... there are more ESPN's than that. It's unprofitable, and no one wants to even do a cartoon series unless there's merchandise (where the REAL money is)... and they want to outlaw that merchandise. it's by far cheaper to slap someone on a box of generic cereal than it is to make a sculpt, prototype, mold and whatever of something that's too risky to sell. So we have cartoon development cut off at that level.

But on the subject... yeah, I know Plaza is on a Spanish channel... I seem to recall SW subletting Ghostwriter out to syndication at one point... but Sesame Street and the Electric company (and Square One for that matter) take advantage of PBS's commercial interruption free mode. They can parody whatever they want without S&P telling them not to offend the sponsors or mention something that ISN'T a sponsor (would you believe a Family Guy cutscene was banned from broadcast, not for being outrageously offensive, but for mentioning Pepsi?). Again, I've seen a few shows that were on PBS that were later in syndication or network... but they were made in such a way that a useless segment could be added/taken away... like for example, the Magic School Bus's fact check segment was cut from Fox and Qubo's broadcasts... When Liberty's Kids was taken off PBS, and put in the Incredible world of DIC, the Liberty News Network segments were cut. I don;'t think we'd want anything cut from Sesame or TEC....

Above all, a retro-network SHOULD manage to add retro cartoons on the line up... even ones that follow the TV/EI guideline. I hear tell every single RTV affiliate except for mine had a Saturday Morning Filmation line up with Fat Albert. And why must cartoons only be for kids? Underdog... Bullwinkle... you can put those in the middle of the day and BOTH adults and kids can watch it.