That Wacky Redhead

[Space Oddity]

Very nice update.

Is that an OTL logo? It does look very 1970s.

I can field this one. Yes, it is.

 

[phx1138]

Another good one. And congrats on 125K.

The format and style of presentation so closely associated with Mr. Rogers, on the other hand, was developed during his time in Canada.

one of his friends and associates, Ernie Coombs

I did not know that. I used to watch that all the time.

The Electric Company

I vaguely recall watching this, too. Strange how some things stick & some don't. (I do suspect it's why I noticed Rita Moreno doing Rockford, tho.)

a fantastic setting (the notion of a clean, happy, crime-free street in inner-city New York was very much considered such at the time)

It still is.

letters of the alphabet, numbers, and geometric shapes all became mainstays of the show’s curriculum

It's since been criticized for being too frenetic. The short duration of the sketches has been blamed for ADD.

Oscar the Grouch

My idol.

It originally aired under the clunky title Coming Soon to a Theater Near You! With Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel (the order of the two being determined by a coin toss)

Aren't you glad they changed it?

not a single episode went by without the two getting into an argument about one of their chosen movies

Was any of that staged? I always got the sense these two loved movies so much, the disagreements were...well, sincere but not divisive, & more than a bit for effect. (That may not have been true at first.)

part of this singular anthology series, which therefore would come to be known for its highbrow and quality programming

It also, to some extent, marked a person as either elitist or smart. (I can't help but remember the gag on "Lou Grant": Lou talks to Newman (Linday Kelsey), who's alone in a motel room & says, "I was just watching 'Masterpiece Theatre'." Says Lou, "Me, too." (I may have the order reversed... It's been about 25yr.)

Is that an OTL logo?

I can confirm it is. I recall seeing it.

they regarded it as "authoritarian" and "indoctrinating"

 

[ChucK Y]

Thanks for another great update. It does bring back memories of Mister Rogers and Sesame Street (although from a period a little later, watching the programs with my own children).

One tiny nitpick: Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian, so "church ministry" would be a more appropriate term for his early vocational direction than "priesthood".

 

[The Blue-Eyed Infidel]

(You will note the glaring absence of an aspect of PBS operations that is frequently associated with that network – one that leads station WNED in Buffalo to identify on-air as serving Buffalo and Toronto – or, more perfunctorily, Western New York and Southern Ontario – because they get more than half of their pledge revenues from across the border).

How true; when I was young, I always wondered why the PBS station shown on cable in Calgary (KSPS) made a point of saying pledges / donations were accepted in American & Canadian dollars; it wasn't until I was somewhat older that I realised that Calgary and Edmonton, combined, were eight times larger than Spokane at the time, and have grown considerably faster since then.

I don't remember the exact figure, but I'm sure that over 60% of donations to KSPS came from north of the border.

I am intrigued to see what you will make of this.

TB-EI

 

[NCW8]

Very nice update.

Hear, hear !

You mention PBS importing British shows, but I wonder about the reverse. In OTL, the BBC rejected Sesame Street in 1971 because they regarded it as "authoritarian" and "indoctrinating", meaning HTV (part of ITV) picked it up and it was later taken on by Channel 4, who were responsible for showing it when I watched it as a kid (though often they just showed old repeats of it). If you want to create something different for your TL you could have a different BBC decision, perhaps based on a different executive being the one to make the call. If the BBC had picked it up, perhaps their dissatisfaction with the tone could have led to a British localised licence of Sesame Street being produced, as has become the case in many other countries in OTL.

I suspect that it would take more than that to get the BBC to broadcast Sesame Street. The culture of the organisation was pretty much against importing educational programmes at that time.

Even ITV doesn't seem to have been very enthusiastic about the show. Here are the broadcast dates in the various ITV regions:

Sesame Street broadcast dates in Britain
HTV - 22 March 1971
LWT and Grampian: 25 September 1971
Granada: 8 July 1972
UTV: 6 January 1973
Westward Television: May 1973: Originally on Sundays, before moving to Saturdays in summer 74.
Southern Television: 19 November 1977
ATV and Border: 3 June 1978
STV 16 March 1979 - Sundays.
Anglia Television - Summer 1981
Tyne Tees and Yorkshire - 29 March 1982

There's something of a gap between Westward broadcasting the show in 1973 and Southern in 1977. It's possible that the popularity of The Muppet Show triggered a second wave of stations taking up the series.

It's interesting that ATV didn't broadcast the show until 1978 even though they produced the special Julie on Sesame Street in 1974.

Cheers,
Nigel.

 

[stevep]

Brainbin

Well the bit that rung a bell here was:

One such offering, Elizabeth R would win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Dramatic Series in 1972, under the Masterpiece Theatre name.

If only for one rather chilling exchange that stuck in a young mind. Someone was being accused of treason and promised execution. He pleaded that he didn't fear death as long as it was quick and relatively painless. The reply was something like 'death is always instantaneous, dying can take much longer'

Steve

 

[Glen]

A nice, subtle update - it sounds like The Bill Cosby Show is slowly morphing into a version of The Cosby Show.

I am delighted to see Monty Python getting an earlier start in the US. Always fun to see ATL attributions of different reasons for similar things to what happened IOTL.

 

[Thande]

I'm not totally sure what they meant by that. I've heard that they didn't like the idea of it enforcing modes of behaviour on children or something. But to be honest I think the same could be said of some BBC children's shows: I think it was just an excuse.

 

[Brainbin]

Thank you all for your lovely comments about my latest update! But first for my responses to prior comments:

Glad to be here. This is one of the best timelines going .

Thank you very much! I'm glad you like it

To answer your question, yes there were other factors and her name was Lynda Carter .

From my unofficial polling over the years, I've concluded that about 80% of men in my age group will cite Lynda Carter in star-spangled tights as causing them to enter puberty.

Ah yes - a very familiar name on this thread. One of the more fun elements of this timeline is that (inspired by the lechery of particular readers) I've added a defining font of puberty for those boys' older brothers: Connie Booth in Doctor Who. (Whether or not Carter will assume her rightful place ITTL is another question.)

I remember seeing the new series as a teenager and having a "you raped my childhood" moment, decades before it became a meme. That's the reason for my vitriol.

Perhaps this is why Scrappy was so hated - Gen-Xers shared this feeling (though they were not able to articulate it as such) and were (typically) very vocal about it.

Funny, for heterosexual males in my age group, it's Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

And for their younger brothers, Carrie Fisher in Return of the Jedi. The 1980s were a decade of skin and cleavage, no doubt about it.

And something I did not know until just now -- apparently, she's married to Kevin Kline. That's going to find its way into Dirty Laundry if I can help it....

Still less shocking than Billy Joel/Christie Brinkley and Lyle Lovett/Julia Roberts (though, alas, both of those ended in divorce).

Given "radioactive spider" is pretty stupid to begin with, I should reserve comment. I meant the show generally. (And it really should be "irradiated"...)

Well, really, the entire superhero genre is pretty stupid to begin with. It's fantasy! (Yes, even Batman. Yes, even Nolan Batman.)

When I stopped watching, Freddy and Velma were still part of the show and the real ghosts hadn't shown up. So yes, it was "Puppy Power" that drove me away. Of course, as you infer, I wasn't a young kid at the time.

So you corroborate 99lives's testimony, then: another vote for "they raped my childhood"?

You mean Adric ?

I was thinking later. And with more CGI. Much more CGI.

The Flintstones was a bit more than that. For example having the domestic appliances powered by animals who break the fourth wall to complain about their treatment.

True - although the presence of talking animals should go without saying in any Hanna-Barbera production.

I'm always amazed when I find out that an animated show I saw as a kid was produced in Canada, because thanks to dubs there's usually no sign of it in the finished product. And then I can shock all my friends of the same age. ReBoot is the obvious example.

Hold the phone. The British dub North American productions? I never would have expected that! The reverse, sure, but this? Wow And yes, ReBoot was the pride and joy of Mainframe Studios, which also produced Beast Wars/Beasties, as it was the very first CGI cartoon series (and beat Toy Story to the punch by almost a year).

Seriously, though. Surely they didn't dub Megabyte, who was himself played by a British actor (the late, great Tony Jay) and had the most wonderful voice (also that of Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame) already? The voice of Hexadecimal was terrific, too. And Long John Baldry! He was another one of your own!

My memory is a bit fuzzy but I remember that Disney created a new process of animation that used something akin to xeroxing with 101 Dalmatians in 1960-61 for economic reasons. That is why the lines appeared so scratchy from 101 Dalmatians all the way to Oliver and Company.

Xerography, yes. Although, on the whole, the 1960s movies still have much better animation. We can presumably credit the continued influence of Walt Disney himself for that (he died in 1966), and indeed The Jungle Book (released in 1967) is traditionally reckoned the last masterwork of his classic stable of animators.

It became even more evident with Robin Hood where Disney recycled its own animation. Disney apparently hates the film but furries seem to love it. Figures.

I've seen the clips on YouTube. The whole movie is basically cribbed from other sources (including Snow White, for crying out loud). I would be pretty ashamed, too.

Ah, Nelvana. Big part of my childhood in the late 80s/early 90s. Care Bears continues to give me the chills whenever I think about it.

Nelvana was definitely the studio I had in mind - a real titan of industry in the 1980s and 1990s. Oh, those Care Bears...

As for outsourcing the animation to Japan, it was better than Korea at the time.

Still better, in fact. Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS) is generally regarded as the best farm studio in the world, and of course there's plenty of anime that looks fantastic when they don't cut corners (yes, the Japanese do that too), not to mention Studio Ghibli. Korea has gotten better over time, yes, but they get most of the work because they strike the right balance between price and quality (TMS, for example, is apparently ridiculously expensive).

Heh, I loved that show back in the day. It, ReBoot , and the "SatAM" incarnation of Sonic the Hedgehog were the only reason I watched ABC on Saturday mornings (though the former two also ran on YTV.) It was further proof that Jim Cummings and Rob Paulsen are pure awesomeness.

Great shows, all. (I didn't really watch SatAM in its original run, because of my undying loyalty to Nintendo, but I will always remember that theme song. He's the fastest thing alive!) Also agreed on Cummings and Paulsen. I remember when I discovered that the voice of Winnie-the-Pooh was also the voice of Mr. Bumpy. I couldn't believe it! (Paulsen doesn't quite have that range - you usually know it's him doing the voices - but he is hilarious.)

Glad you're still reading, Pyro! Always nice to have another Canadian who is relatively close in age to myself following along

Very nice update.

Thank you, Thande!

I always find the discussions about Mr Rogers' Neighbourhood interesting--I wasn't aware of the programme until relatively recently but I find its place in American culture fascinating. The idea of the one guy on the children's programme who literally no-one has a bad word to say about and is a national institution...it's strange because on the face of it that's more the sort of thing you would expect from British television culture, given how it's set up, and yet it exists in the USA and not here.

The thing about Mr. Rogers is that he really seems too good to be true - and yet he wasn't. People treasure him because he was real - in a way that so few people (especially public figures) are, anywhere in the world, and because he was the kind of person who is regarded on all sides as a paragon of virtue. People like him are so vanishingly rare to begin with, perhaps there was never anyone like him in British television. So speaking ill of him really does make one seem like a terrible human being.

You mention PBS importing British shows, but I wonder about the reverse. In OTL, the BBC rejected Sesame Street in 1971 because they regarded it as "authoritarian" and "indoctrinating", meaning HTV (part of ITV) picked it up and it was later taken on by Channel 4, who were responsible for showing it when I watched it as a kid (though often they just showed old repeats of it).

I find it baffling that a show as accommodating and politically-correct as Sesame Street would be leveled with those charges, but TV executives are strange beasts.

If you want to create something different for your TL you could have a different BBC decision, perhaps based on a different executive being the one to make the call. If the BBC had picked it up, perhaps their dissatisfaction with the tone could have led to a British localised licence of Sesame Street being produced, as has become the case in many other countries in OTL.

Well, there's a different government in place at that point ITTL, but we'll have to see if that changes the culture of the BBC enough to have them take a chance on Sesame Street. With regards to a "localized" version, I think that the optimal solution for the UK is the same one that was implemented in Canada IOTL (and ITTL): importing most of the American-made segments as a "skeleton" to which locally-relevant ones were added (in the case of Canada, the Spanish lessons were swapped for French, and the American culture segments were replaced ones about Canadian culture). I imagine that a "British Sesame Street" would dump the foreign-language segments entirely - that means more time for British-specific content anyway. It worked well for the CBC for a quarter-century IOTL - until they did what the CBC always does and ruined a good thing by revamping it into the all-Canadian-made Sesame Park, which was cancelled after six years. Now Canadian kids can get Sesame Street only through PBS.

(Oh, and by the way, phx? Since the new version was set in a park, Oscar the Grouch was deemed too "urban" and was dropped entirely.)

I can field this one. Yes, it is.

Thank you for fielding that one, Space Oddity He's right, of course. Here it is, in action. The "P" formed the basis of all subsequent logos for the network, though it was turned to face to the right (designers seem to have an obsession with turning left-facing things to the right, always to represent "progress" or "looking to the future").

Another good one. And congrats on 125K.

Thank you!

I did not know that. I used to watch that all the time.

I vaguely recall watching this, too. Strange how some things stick & some don't. (I do suspect it's why I noticed Rita Moreno doing Rockford, tho.)

So you are young enough to have watched Mr. Dressup (which premiered in 1968) and The Electric Company (which premiered in 1971)! Excellent. You've already said what year you were born, of course, but it struck me as being borderline, and I wasn't sure how precocious you might have been in your childhood.

It's since been criticized for being too frenetic. The short duration of the sketches has been blamed for ADD.

This is true (though it's called ADHD now), but I understand that the show is a good deal more structured at present than it was in years past. I'm sure I have plenty of readers who saw it in their own childhood and now have children of their own who can tell us. (Meanwhile, autism is now the bete noire instead of ADHD )

Aren't you glad they changed it?

Not to Sneak Previews (Coming Attractions is a slightly better title). The title by which everyone knows them IOTL, simply Siskel & Ebert, didn't emerge until 1986.

Was any of that staged? I always got the sense these two loved movies so much, the disagreements were...well, sincere but not divisive, & more than a bit for effect. (That may not have been true at first.)

Was it staged? No, I don't think so. Did they play it up for the cameras? Probably, at least a little. But they both loved film and they both loved to argue, that's obvious.

Thanks for another great update. It does bring back memories of Mister Rogers and Sesame Street (although from a period a little later, watching the programs with my own children).

Thank you, Chuck I did choose to focus on Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street partly because of their great longevity, which helps to bridge the rather drastic extremes in age amongst my readership. I was able to briefly touch on the kind of show you did watch in your childhood, when I was discussing The Children's Corner: cheaply-made shows produced by local stations, often only a few minutes long and usually aired live. I really admire the pioneering experimental spirit of 1950s television...

One tiny nitpick: Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian, so "church ministry" would be a more appropriate term for his early vocational direction than "priesthood".

Duly noted; I have changed it accordingly. Thanks for the advice.

How true; when I was young, I always wondered why the PBS station shown on cable in Calgary (KSPS) made a point of saying pledges / donations were accepted in American & Canadian dollars; it wasn't until I was somewhat older that I realised that Calgary and Edmonton, combined, were eight times larger than Spokane at the time, and have grown considerably faster since then.

I don't remember the exact figure, but I'm sure that over 60% of donations to KSPS came from north of the border.

Thanks for sharing that, TB-EI. I would imagine many PBS affiliates that are carried in Canada face a similar situation. Odd that you're receiving the Spokane, Washington affiliate, though. Geographically, the nearest TV market to Southern Alberta - the only one that borders it, in fact - is Great Falls, Montana. But that's the way it goes...

I am intrigued to see what you will make of this.

There's only one way to find out!

Hear, hear !

Thank you, Nigel

If only for one rather chilling exchange that stuck in a young mind. Someone was being accused of treason and promised execution. He pleaded that he didn't fear death as long as it was quick and relatively painless. The reply was something like 'death is always instantaneous, dying can take much longer'

I've never seen Elizabeth R, myself, as what could have happened to the Tudor Dynasty interests me far more than what actually did

A nice, subtle update - it sounds like The Bill Cosby Show is slowly morphing into a version of The Cosby Show.

Thank you, Glen - and yes, you are exactly correct. The key difference is that this show has the younger, hipper Cosby character working to achieve success, and doing so through higher education, dint of hard work, and the support of his family - whereas on The Cosby Show, the character started out a success - a much bigger one, too. This is a more demonstrative and sophisticated take on most of Cosby's core values - and, perhaps, a more resonant one.

I am delighted to see Monty Python getting an earlier start in the US. Always fun to see ATL attributions of different reasons for similar things to what happened IOTL.

Indeed - can you tell I'm having a lot of fun with that?

 

[Andrew T]

(You will note the glaring absence of an aspect of PBS operations that is frequently associated with that network – one that leads station WNED in Buffalo to identify on-air as serving Buffalo and Toronto – or, more perfunctorily, Western New York and Southern Ontario – because they get more than half of their pledge revenues from across the border). The space program had its salad days; so too does public television. But what’s most fun about this update is that it should prove nostalgic to a wide range of my (North American) readers

By 'glaring' omission, do you mean the absence of Nova?

 

[Thande]

Hold the phone. The British dub North American productions? I never would have expected that! The reverse, sure, but this? Wow And yes, ReBoot was the pride and joy of Mainframe Studios, which also produced Beast Wars/Beasties, as it was the very first CGI cartoon series (and beat Toy Story to the punch by almost a year).

Seriously, though. Surely they didn't dub Megabyte, who was himself played by a British actor (the late, great Tony Jay) and had the most wonderful voice (also that of Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame) already? The voice of Hexadecimal was terrific, too. And Long John Baldry! He was another one of your own!

I should have been clearer with what I was saying: no, they didn't dub ReBoot, but the mix of accents was generic enough that we didn't realise it was Canadian. (I was referring to European programmes that were dubbed--generally they don't dub North American shows, but there are exceptions). The issue is that even many British cartoons had American-accented characters in them, usually in a vain attempt to sell the programme abroad (one of my favourite cartoons as a kid, the rather obscure "Captain Zed and the Zee Zone", was a good example of this--you can even see the awkward transatlanticism from the title!) so just because a cartoon had a Canadian accent in it didn't mean we'd think it was made in Canada. (Of course most Britons can't tell a Canadian accent from an American one anyway, but I am the exception, having been to Canada many times since my youth as my uncle lives there).

 

[NCW8]

So you corroborate 99lives's testimony, then: another vote for "they raped my childhood"?

I wouldn't put it quite that strongly, but yes.

I was thinking later. And with more CGI. Much more CGI.

Oh - I thought that you might have been refering to Wesley.

Hold the phone. The British dub North American productions? I never would have expected that! The reverse, sure, but this? Wow And yes, ReBoot was the pride and joy of Mainframe Studios, which also produced Beast Wars/Beasties, as it was the very first CGI cartoon series (and beat Toy Story to the punch by almost a year).

Occasionally and not consistantly. For example the version of Jakers shown in the UK has Piggley's grandchildren and their mother dubbed with English accents. Fortunately the rest of the accents, including Wiley the sheep, are left alone.

Well, there's a different government in place at that point ITTL, but we'll have to see if that changes the culture of the BBC enough to have them take a chance on Sesame Street. With regards to a "localized" version, I think that the optimal solution for the UK is the same one that was implemented in Canada IOTL (and ITTL): importing most of the American-made segments as a "skeleton" to which locally-relevant ones were added (in the case of Canada, the Spanish lessons were swapped for French, and the American culture segments were replaced ones about Canadian culture). I imagine that a "British Sesame Street" would dump the foreign-language segments entirely - that means more time for British-specific content anyway. It worked well for the CBC for a quarter-century IOTL - until they did what the CBC always does and ruined a good thing by revamping it into the all-Canadian-made Sesame Park, which was cancelled after six years. Now Canadian kids can get Sesame Street only through PBS.

It occurs to me that since ATV didn't make The Muppet Show ITTL, they might be interested in making a localized version of Sesame Street.

Thank you for fielding that one, Space Oddity He's right, of course. Here it is, in action. The "P" formed the basis of all subsequent logos for the network, though it was turned to face to the right (designers seem to have an obsession with turning left-facing things to the right, always to represent "progress" or "looking to the future").

Johnnie Walker inverted the Striding Man logo on their whiskey bottles for precisely that reason.

Cheers,
Nigel.

 

[Thande]

It occurs to me that since ATV didn't make The Muppet Show ITTL, they might be interested in making a localized version of Sesame Street.

Now that is a good idea.

The inverted letter thing does seem a rather common graphic design trick (cf. Toys Я Us considerably irritating the Russians).

 

[Stolengood]

Now... what about Doctor Who?

 

[Unknown]

Interesting thing about Monty Python...it first became popular in Texas (my home state), of all places (Dallas, to be exact).

 

[naraht]

The thing about Mr. Rogers is that he really seems too good to be true - and yet he wasn't. People treasure him because he was real - in a way that so few people (especially public figures) are, anywhere in the world, and because he was the kind of person who is regarded on all sides as a paragon of virtue. People like him are so vanishingly rare to begin with, perhaps there was never anyone like him in British television. So speaking ill of him really does make one seem like a terrible human being.

Yeah, protesting Fred Rogers's funeral is probably where Fred Phelps most came into the knowledge of a lot of Americans. Among other things Phelps objected to was that Fred Rogers was an Ordained Presbyterian Minister and yet ran a television which didn't do anything to bring GOD to those children...

OTOH, if Fred Rogers is in Hell, I think a lot of us would be happier joining him than going where he ain't...

 

[phx1138]

I don't remember the exact figure, but I'm sure that over 60% of donations to KSPS came from north of the border.

On the other side of that divide, WTVS Detroit (the station we got) said it was something like 50-55%. I suspect that's because they covered so much of Canada.

I think it was just an excuse.

That's be my guess, too. Any straw to grasp.

And for their younger brothers, Carrie Fisher in Return of the Jedi. The 1980s were a decade of skin and cleavage, no doubt about it.

A good decade, even for those of us a little older. (Don't think I didn't appreciate "Fast Times" any less for not being 12.) And don't think I disliked Carrie Fisher: her bit in "Blues Brothers" was funny. I just never got her appeal (nor do I). Then again, my tastes (as everyone here knows by now) are idiosyncratic.

Still less shocking than Billy Joel/Christie Brinkley and Lyle Lovett/Julia Roberts (though, alas, both of those ended in divorce).

Or, rather later, Billy Bob Thornton & Angelina Jolie. (And I still haven't figured out what Melanie Griffith saw in Don Johnson... After "Night Moves", however, it was pretty obvious what he saw in her.)

Well, really, the entire superhero genre is pretty stupid to begin with. It's fantasy!

There's stupid & there's stupid: even inside the genre conventions, that's pretty stupid. (Enough JLI could quip, "A radioactive wombat?")

With regards to a "localized" version, I think that the optimal solution for the UK is the same one that was implemented in Canada IOTL (and ITTL): importing most of the American-made segments as a "skeleton" to which locally-relevant ones were added (in the case of Canada, the Spanish lessons were swapped for French, and the American culture segments were replaced ones about Canadian culture).

That strikes me as a very smart approach. As opposed to the "signal substitution" approach...

Now Canadian kids can get Sesame Street only through PBS.

With no Canadian content at all...

(Oh, and by the way, phx? Since the new version was set in a park, Oscar the Grouch was deemed too "urban" and was dropped entirely.)

Also, I suspect, not nice enough for a Canadian show. (TBH, I was too old for it by then, tho I do recall its debut. I had the impression it was a spinoff...)

So you are young enough to have watched Mr. Dressup (which premiered in 1968) and The Electric Company (which premiered in 1971)! Excellent. You've already said what year you were born, of course, but it struck me as being borderline, and I wasn't sure how precocious you might have been in your childhood.

Don't know if "precocious" is exactly the word, but I was a smart kid. In '71, I'd have looked at "Electric Coy" (still reading Tom Swift, tho IIRC, I read my first Butterworth & the first Arnie Tasjian novel that year); a year or two later, probably not. (By 10, I was already reading Duelling Machine & Cyborg, & Stranger in a Strange Land & I Will Fear No Evil & Dune the next year.)

This is true (though it's called ADHD now), but I understand that the show is a good deal more structured at present than it was in years past. I'm sure I have plenty of readers who saw it in their own childhood and now have children of their own who can tell us. (Meanwhile, autism is now the bete noire instead of ADHD )

Well, there's so much pure garbage in pop psych (& psychology generally), I don't credit it. A whole generation grew up watching Wile E. make coyote-shaped holes in the ground; we didn't all turn into maniacs. Same nonsense as applied to comics & R&R & video games... What's the next thing they'll blame? Since obviously it's not bad parenting. And obviously, as the song says, it's not Johnny's fault.

Not to Sneak Previews (Coming Attractions is a slightly better title). The title by which everyone knows them IOTL, simply Siskel & Ebert, didn't emerge until 1986.

No, I just meant "changed from what they started with". Almost anything would be better.

Was it staged? No, I don't think so. Did they play it up for the cameras? Probably, at least a little. But they both loved film and they both loved to argue, that's obvious.

That was my sense of it: passionate & sincere disagreement over a subject they both felt strongly about. Which IMO is why it worked: everybody watching knew these guys were serious in praise & criticism, & you got to know where they stood. I can still pick a film I'll like, or not, just knowing what Ebert thinks of it, love or hate it, by what he says...& I almost never agree with him. It's the knowing how he thinks that does it. (I used to be able to select books based on Baird Searles' reviews in Asimov's, too, 'cause I knew his tastes were very like mine. I've never known another reviewer I trusted. Although I do agree with Spinrad's dislike of Orson Scott Card--I just don't share his mania on the subject.)

Thanks for sharing that, TB-EI. I would imagine many PBS affiliates that are carried in Canada face a similar situation. Odd that you're receiving the Spokane, Washington affiliate, though. Geographically, the nearest TV market to Southern Alberta - the only one that borders it, in fact - is Great Falls, Montana. But that's the way it goes...

At one time, that might have been. (We used to get the North Dakota locals here). A few years ago (more than a few, I guess), we were switched to Detroit, & I'll bet west of here, somewhere, they picked Spokane. (On digital, we get both, which is great: I'll never have to watch another simulcast. OTA broadcasters can go screw. Until they start forcing the cable company to charge me for their OTA signal...)

what could have happened to the Tudor Dynasty interests me far more than what actually did

Me, too, tho I take a view, if you don't know what did happen, it's harder to be credible about changing it.

This is a more demonstrative and sophisticated take on most of Cosby's core values - and, perhaps, a more resonant one.

I think I'd like this version better, myself. It strikes me easier to identify with. (That said, I never liked Cosby. Not disliked, just...)

One thing about Fred Rogers. I get the sense, if he ran the world, the show is how it would be. Kids know this, & that's why they like it. I also think they'd mostly love to grow up there. (Me? By the time I was eight, I was already asking questions teachers couldn't answer & disbelieving Sunday school teachers {enough, at maybe 9, I just walked away one day}; by 10, I was catching them in mistakes... {Yes, I'm sure they thought I was a PITA.})

 

[Brainbin]

By 'glaring' omission, do you mean the absence of Nova?

No, I meant the absence of pledge drives. PBS is (relatively speaking) awash with cash right now, and sponsors are lining up to underwrite their costs besides. It was only when government funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting became a lot more scarce that PBS was forced to appeal directly to the people for revenues.

We'll talk about science shows when the time comes. This was a "catch-all" update, to provide a "big picture" look at PBS.

I should have been clearer with what I was saying: no, they didn't dub ReBoot, but the mix of accents was generic enough that we didn't realise it was Canadian. (I was referring to European programmes that were dubbed--generally they don't dub North American shows, but there are exceptions). The issue is that even many British cartoons had American-accented characters in them, usually in a vain attempt to sell the programme abroad (one of my favourite cartoons as a kid, the rather obscure "Captain Zed and the Zee Zone", was a good example of this--you can even see the awkward transatlanticism from the title!) so just because a cartoon had a Canadian accent in it didn't mean we'd think it was made in Canada. (Of course most Britons can't tell a Canadian accent from an American one anyway, but I am the exception, having been to Canada many times since my youth as my uncle lives there).

Well, the thing with ReBoot, as I said before, is that a good portion of the voice cast was, in fact, British - and if they weren't, they were putting on really affected voices/accents (Hexadecimal, Phong, Mouse, Hack and Slash, etc.). I guess the core trio (Bob, Dot, and Enzo) are the ones who would sound most "Canadian" - I haven't really seen much ReBoot in the time since I started paying attention to stereotypical "cues" for Canadian accents. When I hear their voices in my head, they sound "flat" enough...

I wouldn't put it quite that strongly, but yes.

I agree, that term is rather... "emphatic" for my tastes, but it is the standard. The guy behind the Mr. Plinkett character that did those absurdly long Star Wars reviews likes to say that George Lucas "disappointed" his childhood, which I think is certainly a more tactful term (uncharacteristically so, if you're at all familiar with the reviews).

It occurs to me that since ATV didn't make The Muppet Show ITTL, they might be interested in making a localized version of Sesame Street.

I like this idea a lot. It means that Lew Grade and Jim Henson would likely meet ITTL (in order to develop British-exclusive Muppets, though obviously Henson's core team would be far too busy working on The Muppet Show to perform them). By the time this is done (the mid-1970s), Henson will already be working on his own show for Desilu and ABC, but Grade might well want to import it, which would give it a British audience practically from the outset.

The inverted letter thing does seem a rather common graphic design trick (cf. Toys Я Us considerably irritating the Russians).

Obviously it must have been a graphic designer's dream come true: inverting a letter and turning a leftward-facing symbol rightward.

Now... what about Doctor Who?

Welcome aboard, Stolengood! We'll find out about Doctor Who in two more updates.

Interesting thing about Monty Python...it first became popular in Texas (my home state), of all places (Dallas, to be exact).

That doesn't surprise me. Everything is bigger in Texas, after all

The Pythons were actually exposed to Canadian audiences first. IOTL, the CBC began airing the show nationwide in September, 1970, and actually aired them at such a pace that they had mostly caught up with the British run (a very rare thing for the CBC - to this day IOTL, Coronation Street is still several months behind) by Christmas, only for them to drop it from their schedule starting in January, 1971. (Apparently, this met with considerable protest.) They did not reverse their decision IOTL, but they did ITTL, because, once again, of Connie Booth, who had (briefly) featured in previous episodes (and would do so again in future ones), and who had memorably appeared on Star Trek (carried by the CBC), and would appear in Doctor Who, which would be aired on NBC starting in the fall of 1971 (which the CBC was therefore obliged to air as well).

In the US, PBS, as a network, decides to start carrying Monty Python's Flying Circus on its main feed after the surprising success of And Now For Something Completely Different, in the fall of 1972. Most PBS affiliates (including KERA in Dallas, of course) decide to air the program, which does very well.

Yeah, protesting Fred Rogers's funeral is probably where Fred Phelps most came into the knowledge of a lot of Americans. Among other things Phelps objected to was that Fred Rogers was an Ordained Presbyterian Minister and yet ran a television which didn't do anything to bring GOD to those children...

Thank you for proving my point, though I would have much rather you didn't bring him up in this thread at all...

On the other side of that divide, WTVS Detroit (the station we got) said it was something like 50-55%. I suspect that's because they covered so much of Canada.

Very likely. And again, why the Detroit affiliate? Shouldn't the "default" affiliate available to Canadian service providers be the flagship WNET in New York? But then again, the CRTC has often baffled me. Because, of course, having a station that serves Atlanta as part of our basic cable package makes so much sense

A good decade, even for those of us a little older. (Don't think I didn't appreciate "Fast Times" any less for not being 12.)

Like I said, those were the 1980s. (And can I just say? Having the song be "Moving in Stereo" is still one of the funniest visual puns ever.)

Then again, my tastes (as everyone here knows by now) are idiosyncratic.

You should put that in your user description

There's stupid & there's stupid: even inside the genre conventions, that's pretty stupid. (Enough JLI could quip, "A radioactive wombat?")

I can't help but be reminded of this video clip, with Kevin Smith and his thoughts on the subject (WARNING: language NSFW).

With no Canadian content at all...

A classic case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Also, I suspect, not nice enough for a Canadian show. (TBH, I was too old for it by then, tho I do recall its debut. I had the impression it was a spinoff...)

I had "graduated" from Sesame Street a few years before (not that I ever really cared for the show, even when I was supposed to watch it - it wasn't my cup of tea), but I did encounter the new Sesame Park titles and remember thinking: "What the heck is this? What happened to Sesame Street?" And, of course, being a kid (in the 1990s, without easy internet access), I figured that was the end of Sesame Street. Of course, what with Tickle-Me-Elmo and the like, it eventually became clear that the Americans were still getting Sesame Street. The sad fact about all this is that TV executives never learn anything. I'm sure TIIC don't regret their boneheaded decision in the slightest.

No, I just meant "changed from what they started with". Almost anything would be better.

Speaking from experience, titles can be a very tricky business

That was my sense of it: passionate & sincere disagreement over a subject they both felt strongly about. Which IMO is why it worked: everybody watching knew these guys were serious in praise & criticism, & you got to know where they stood. I can still pick a film I'll like, or not, just knowing what Ebert thinks of it, love or hate it, by what he says...& I almost never agree with him. It's the knowing how he thinks that does it.

I agree. Ebert in particular is actually very predictable as a reviewer: for example, he'll always give a movie a better rating than it deserves as long as it stars an actress that he personally finds attractive. Siskel was more enigmatic; he once changed his verdict on a film (Broken Arrow) on the air, from marginal "thumbs up" to "thumbs down". Here's the review where that happens. Ebert, for his part, was and is far too stubborn to ever admit that he was wrong about anything to change his verdict (even in the recent video games kerfuffle, his "apology" basically amounted to him saying "I know that I'm right about video games not being art, but I refuse to prove that I'm right by actually trying a video game out for myself, so I'll stop talking about it and you can pretend that you all convinced me, even though you didn't, and won't, ever.")

Although I do agree with Spinrad's dislike of Orson Scott Card--I just don't share his mania on the subject.)

I've made clear before how much I love "The Doomsday Machine", but Norman Spinrad really does seem an obsessive sort, doesn't he? He must thank his lucky stars every day that Harlan Ellison is around to make him seem subtle and understated by comparison

Me, too, tho I take a view, if you don't know what did happen, it's harder to be credible about changing it.

Oh, of course - that was just an in-joke between Steve and I, as we're both avid followers of a thread in the Before 1900 forum about an alternate destiny for the Tudor Dynasty (written by Space Oddity) called "Now Blooms The Tudor Rose". In it, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn have that son they both so desperately wanted!

And then it gets interesting...

I think I'd like this version better, myself. It strikes me easier to identify with.

I agree - also that it would resonate with white audiences as well as black ones (education and family are universal themes), just like The Cosby Show IOTL. It's something I also see taking on a life of its own in syndication, and becoming very popular with young people, much like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air IOTL.

 

[Thande]

Speaking of "And Now For Something Completely Different", I was just thinking the other day how interesting how complete the displacement from the original use of the catchphrase is. It's an example of what TVTROPES calls the Weird Al Effect, when the parody becomes better known than the original, but to a really remarkable degree: hardly anyone except from the people who were kids at the right time now knows that "And Now For Something Completely Different" was the catchphrase of Blue Peter. The original joke when the Pythons used it was that they were using it to precede going to to subject that would never have appeared on a kids' show like Blue Petter ("And now for something completely different--a man with three buttocks") yet now that is completely lost on modern viewers of the show. It's a remarkable case of displacement.

 

[Maltaran]

You mean Blue Peter's catchphrase wasn't always "Here's one I made earlier"?