Article about Q5's meddling in ABC' Saturday morning shows

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Danielle L

New member
A couple of years ago in a thread about an episode of The Life and Times of Juniper Lee (http://forums.rabroad.net/showthread.php?p=1803271#post1803271) I had stated that I was going to transcribe an 1987 article from the Los Angeles Times about how Q5 mucked up ABC's Saturday morning shows during the 1987-88 season.

Well, it was a long time coming, but I did it.

You can read the entire article here: http://www.geocities.com/dickmarino/q5.html

Now you young 'uns can see how truly dark the Dark Age of Television Animation (before 1990) really was. :evil:
 
This is what happens when you let a bunch of college professors with next to no knowledge of children's television decide what airs and how it's presented. I see that they said nothing about Bugs Bunny and Scooby-Doo, who'd returned to ABC by then.
 
I only have one problem. You mention ABC's airing of Disney's One Saturday Morning block. And this article was transcribed very recently (today actually). The One Saturday Morning block has been replaced for quite some time now by ABC Kids, which is the same thing, except with different branding. :shrug:
 
Whoops. It's been some time since I've seen ABC on Saturday mornings if the truth be told. Actually, I haven't seen anything on the Big Three--Prime Time or otherwise--in eons. Mainly I watch TV Land, TruTV, Cartoon Network (especially Adult Swim) and Turner Classic Movies.

Forgive me for just crawling out from beneath the rock. :lol:

However, as I said, there wasn't anything about this article on-line (not even at the Los Angeles Times' own Web site) and I meant to do this earlier, but craziness in my life (especially this past summer) prevented me from doing so until now.
 
And the show got cancelled after season 2 thanks to Q5's *enlighening*. Season 1 was brilliant, and then Q5 sucked all the life out of it.

Pound Puppies is currently running weekday mornings on Boomerang. Compare the wall-to-wall comedy episodes of Season 1 to the moralistic, sappy, talking down to the kiddies episodes of Season 2.

Those who've bought the Real Ghostbusters set from Time Life will also see the horrible changes Q5 made to the show.
 
I'm hoping the proportion of "untouched" to "heavily lobotomized" episodes leans in the former's favor. I mean, it costs almost 200 dollars. It's not 75% Slimer, is it?

Didn't know Pound Puppies was still on somewhere. Ruegger doesn't seem to have much of a problem with Q5 in that quote. It's the same guy that wrote "Bully for Skippy" ten years later; they must have eventually driven him nuts.
 
No, the bulk of the episodes are the syndicated/good era eps. Once the show gets into it's 3rd season, the show kind of take of takes a nosedive in quality, but there are still some good eps in there.

As far as Pound Puppies, S1 had movie parodies, Animaniac type gags, and stuff that actually would have gone over young kid's heads. I mean, they based a whole episode around Casablanca and the Bond Films.

S2 ditched ALL that, and focused of teaching morals and lessons. Then they resdesigned most of the characters to make them *cuter*.
 
I think that "Bully for Skippy" has less to do with the Q5 (as Animaniacs did have a number of "educational" bits before this episode) and more to do with one of the real killers of Saturday morning cartoons, the E/I law.
 
I think the mother of all the TV watchdogs was Peggy Charren. As I understand it, years ago she became the self-appointed governess of Kids' TV, and used to screech like heck if any proposed kids' show had any sort of "commercialism" attached to it. I did a paper on her once for class, and I found it pretty interesting that, while she railed against Smurfs and trashed the idea of shows based on Chester Cheetah and the Cheesasaurus Rex, she had no objection to Sesame Street, which rakes in huge amounts of cash for merchandising, has sponsors which air commercials in the beginning of each show, and get a government handout besides. Isn't commercialism still commercialism no matter what a given show's content? :sad: IMO there was, at one time, an awful lot of politics involved in ALL of the efforts by certain groups to influence the content of children's television. And I think the term "social engineering" used in the article by one of the interviewer's subjects is all too close to the truth. Ironic, isn't it, that the programming aimed at wiping out the sins of the past turns out to be the kind of kids' entertainment parents should REALLY fear? :anime:
 
As watered down as the Real Ghostbusters got when Slimer took over, I kind of wonder just how bad it would have gotten had Q5 gotten their way and got Ray written out of the show.
 
It wasn't commercialism per se that Peggy Charren fought. That was just one of her excuses. At heart, she had this homogenized, conflict-free, plastic-bubble vision of what kind of entertainment was appropriate for children, and she was a spiritual disciple of Frederick Wertham. She bought into the pop-psychology claim that children who watched violent entertainment became violent people by osmosis, despite a complete lack of legitimate evidence to back up that claim. Her solution was comprehensive government control of our entertainment choices. "Social engineering" didn't even begin to descibe her goals; she's was a know-it-all fascist.
 
You just said what I really wanted to say in my paper, but decided to be circumspect, because so many teachers seem (at least to me) to agree with Charren's view about children's entertainment (or edutainment, if you will). Sometimes I wonder, though, if so-called educational television for children is in fact a complete fraud. I suspect that the mix of cartoons, puppets and songs in PBS shows probably just make REAL school seem more boring to kids, and maybe actually hinder children when they actually enter a classroom and have to absorb plain ol' facts, words and numbers instead of watching Elmo wave his fuzzy little stick-supported arms around. Just a theory of mine...
 
I wonder how many quotes of those who 'agreed' with Q5 actually came from the person being quoted...or if they where pressured, or too afraid of the network to actually talk out against it.

If they had told me that Ray was a useless character and needed to be edited out, I would have laughed right out of the office. Obviously they didn't see 'Beneath these Streets', or 'Look Homeward, Ray'. It's organizations like this that help ruin something good. I can't help but wonder if someone came up with the idea of this company with the following thought:

'Hey Bob... You know, company executives are pretty stupid. Why don't we form a consulting company that doesn't really consult, but gently tries to convince them that their ideas are good ones. After all, no matter what we tell them, they are probably going to go ahead with their 'brilliant' new ideas anyway... This way, we get paid, and we don't have to think up any new ideas unless it's so stupid, we just have to pitch it out there to see if they buy into it?'

Maybe this company was run by the real life version of Peter Venkmans Father?

Curious, do you think these guys are the reason we got that ultra cute (re:Sickening) version of Slimer, where the guys where so horridly redesigned that they only appeared as background characters? I hope some of this stuff is talked about in detail on the new DVD sets, and in a no holes barred way..
 
It sounds like they took all the data and numbers and statistics and studies they could find, shook that up in a blender, aggregated it, and then threw it away and just made recommendations based on whatever stereotypes and hangups were in their employees heads at the time.
 
Does anyone know what the exact lineup of shows was for that particular season? The Real Ghostbusters and Pound Puppies were there, and I think Little Clowns of Happy Town and Little Wizards were on at that time as well, but it'd be neat to compare how watered down the entire lineup became, compared to the previous season.
 
You may be onto something with that theory. I certainly think that using television as teacher is something that should be approached with healthy skepticism, in not outright resistance. TV can't coax any useful feedback from kids, or monitor a child's learning process, or respond to a child's doubts, like a live teacher can. Plus there's the problem of placing education in the hands of a corporation. And make no bones about it; PBS is a corporation. It's just a corporation that is so badly run, it's never turned a profit and needs corporate welfare to stay afloat (and that alone should be cause for suspicion).
 
Man, I can't believe how many responses this article's gotten. :D

Anyhow, rather interestingly, one of the people who was anti-Q5 on the RGB staff was Michael Reaves, who wrote my own personal favorite ep "The Collect Call of Cathulu", which served as the inspiration for my Daria/RGB crossover fan fic The Prepaid Phone Card Call of Tommy Sherman (http://outpost-daria.com/fanfic/the_prepaid_phone_card_call_of_tommy_sherman.txt); of course in my story I used the pre-Q5 Janine, though after meeting Daria she decides to act and dress like her! :evil: (In a side note, the story also included an appearance by Annie Pott's other well-known character, Mary Jo Shively from Designing Women; the subplot was that the Sugarbakers were over at the Morgendorffers to redo their living room).

Also, I was a bit perplexed when I read that bit about their decision to give the Phantom a daughter in Defenders of the Earth; IIRC currently in the comic strip the present Phantom has twins--a son and a daughter. I guess they must use some Salic Law provision (i.e. male inheritance only) in cases like this, so the daughter would ironically be out of luck. Also IIRC he didn't have any ability to call forth the power of ten tigers in the comic strip and he certainly isn't a "feline" character; he's more a lupine one (given that one of his animal helpers is Devil the wolf). Rather ironically the only two times they try to give Lee Falk's Ghost Who Walks an animated series (Phantom 2040 being the other), they botched up the character, but then again when they did stick true to the character in the live-action movie, it tanked. Go fig. :confused:

In one rather amusing side note, ISTR a few pre-Q5 eps where Janine wasn't wearing the miniskirt get-up; one had her wearing an ankle-lenght skirt, in another she was wearing a denim overalls get-up and in a couple she wore her own Ghostbusters uniform. But of course the punkish hair and the acerbic attitude were still there. :D

Rather ironically, it was Janine who inspired the likes of Daria Morgendorffer, Mandy from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Raven from Teen Titans--women who had attitude and weren't afraid to use it. Heck, in a way, a few anime women like Rukia Kuchki from Bleach, Talho Yuki from Eureka Seven and Major Motoko Kusinagi from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex could also be considered the spiritual heirs to Janine.

Of course, there were all those females in G. I. Joe like Lady Jaye, Scarlett and Baroness. :evil:
 
I never saw a problem with the early years of Janine. In fact, when she got her *new* look, I was like 'Why'd they change her? She's just another generic girl now'.
 
I don't think it's about male inheritance. I thought the whole gimmick of the Phantom relied on the outside world thinking it was the same guy who's been patrolling the jungle for centuries. Nobody is supposed to know that there have been multiple Phantoms over the years. That's kind of hard to keep secret if the Phantom suddenly gets a sex change ;).

-- Ed
 
LOL...Glad to see this posted, though it was three years ago. As you may have read in the Retro forum Pound Puppies...I linked to that L.A.Times article straight from the actual Los Angeles Times site [Diane Haithman, Sept.12,1987]. My Facebook page [now added to my signature] links to it, too. Sidenote: while I'm at it---you can find lots of archived gems in that L.A.TImes official newssite!
Here's the link, especially since the 2008 poster's link no longer works and it is from a concurrent article:
http://articles.latimes.com/1987-09-03/entertainment/ca-5843_1_tv-shows
 
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