The Jim Henson Hour Appreciation Thread

minor muppetz

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One thing I must wonder: Most if not all episodes were among the lowest-rated programs of the weeks they aired, but how well did Sesame Street: 20 and Still Counting, which aired in the shows time slot a week earlier, do in the ratings during its initial broadcast? I wonder if the ratings for that special were significantly better (being a one-time special as opposed to a television series, and related to Sesame Street, though by that logic JHH should have had better ratings due to the Muppets).

It seems like Disney has been unsure whether they or Henson own the MuppeTelevision characters (and I don't know why Henson would retain them), since characters from this show had to be excluded from Muppet Snow White (when the writer had wanted to include them) and only a few appear in The Muppets Character Encyclopedia... When Craig Shemin was interviewed by Tough Pigs, he said that Disney gave him a list of characters the company got from the sale which did include those characters, yet speculated that Disney was unsure (and also speculated that Disney didn't want most of them included due to the fact that very few of them were used in major ways after the show ended... though that doesn't explain why the book has entries on Jacques Roach and Anthony and Fern). But then I looked in Jim Henson: The Biography, and noticed that almost each photo credit that included Muppets made a note of the Muppets being owned by Disney, and some with just Kermit listed Kermit as being owned by Disney... The book has a promotional photo for The Jim Henson Hour (the familair one with Jim by a TV with Kermit on top and new characters inside), and yet the photo credit for that one only lists Kermit as being owned by Disney, as opposed to Muppets.

Hopefully someday Disney will realize they own those characters/there'll be no confusion over ownership, and will have them return for future productions.
 
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