F ³: The Mysterious Disappearance

I need your help. I’m on the trail of a mystery and the clues are few and far between. Here goes: What has happened to all the creative, high-quality children’s television programming?

With the exception of Bluey and PBS offerings, everything feels junky and ordinary to me these days. Yet when our youngest was little we had our pick of Blues Clues, Out of the Box, Bear in the Big Blue House, Wonder Pets, the Backyardigans, Jack’s Big Music Show plus excellent PBS shows like Between the Lions, Fetch!, and Postcards from Buster. 

What happened?

Now, when I was little children’s programming was still a new thing and most of it was junk. Captain Kangaroo was probably the high point of those years. If we could get UHF to come through clearly we could watch Educational Television (and eventually Sesame Street made its debut) but most of the animated shows for kids were unmitigated crud. Some that I remembered fondly do not hold up well. 

Mostly, though, you had Saturday morning cartoons and that was it. Public television eventually transformed what was available for kids and contributed to both of my children’s childhood years.

Enter cable TV, which I never had until I remarried and moved to Columbia. Suddenly there were premium channels just for kids: Playhouse Disney, Noggin, and HBO Kids. That’s where all the magical stuff was, but you had to pay extra for it. I’m probably talking the early 2000’s here. “Saturday morning cartoons” eventually dried up as special cable channels made kids programming more widely available. That is, if you could afford cable. Or the special premium “pay extra” channels.

Thank goodness PBS has stayed committed to children’s programming despite all the commercial competition. I just caught a wonderful new show yesterday called Carl the Collector. It’s the first PBS children’s program centered on an autistic character. I liked it. 

When I taught preschoolers I considered it my responsibility to keep up with the shows they were watching - - especially to find songs I could use in my teaching. These days I don’t know where I’d look for anything that would inspire me. There are about ten cable channels aimed at kids and the offerings are mostly dreck, with the exception of Bluey.

Where has all that brilliant programming gone? Why does it feel like these production companies are just phoning it in? Or am I just old and having one of those “get off my lawn” moments? 

I have another suspicion. As more and more cable channels branch out into selling premium streaming services, is that where high quality imaginative children’s programming is going? Is it there but just behind a new layer of subscription fees? Or have the powers that be just decided that the good stuff is too expensive to make and convinced themselves that churning out one lazy concept after another is good enough?

Or (horrors!) are kids spending so much time on electronic devices that high quality children’s television has ceased to be relevant or profitable? 

Help me out. If you have young children - - or know someone who does - - perhaps you can help me solve this mystery. 

Village Green/Town² Comments

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