By fnord12 | September 1, 2015, 9:36 AM | TeeVee | Comments (4)| Link

TV for kids

With the news about Sesame Street going into HBO-first mode and the new Muppet Show, the question i keep bringing up is why do they have to keep making new episodes? I don't mean this (only) in a cranky old man way. But why aren't the Sesame Street and Muppet Show episodes that my generation watched as a kid appropriate for kids today? If Sesame Street is having budget issues, surely making a few edits and cuts to the old episodes is cheaper than producing new ones and would prevent them from having to go to HBO. And if the new voice actors can't get the goddamn voice of Sam the Eagle right (ok, now i'm a cranky old man), why not play the episodes with the original iconic cast?

I've been told that there are Reasons relating to changes in educational theory and that the Muppet Show human guest-actors are out of date, but i'm pretty sure the alphabet is still the alphabet and that kids don't care if they're seeing Mark Hamill and Alice Cooper or Oscar Isaac and Lady Gaga. I can tell you that we just watched the Lord of the Rings cartoons from the late 70s, and they were awful, but when i was a kid they were the most awesome things ever.

Interestingly (and the instigation for this post), Paul O'Brien starts a new topic today to say that they have essentially been doing what i'm suggesting with children's programs in the UK for years.