Childrens Shows
Ah yes, the nostalga of our treasured childhood shows. Growing up, I didn't get cable until I was in middle school, so I spent the majority of my time watching far more educational shows that know I would have watched, as the only real time I could watch cartoons was early saturday morning. I watched pretty much every children's show that aired on PBS between the years of 1992 and 2000, including ZOOM, Puzzle Place, Sesame Street, Barney, Arthur, The Krat Brothers, Zaboomafo, and one of my favorites, Bill Nye the Science Guy. I remember them all vividly, I mean I watched them every day for like 8 years. One of the shows I have never really stopped watching is Sesame Street, as I babysit very frequently. It still has the same general outline, same main characters, but there are a lot of things that have changed and added. The most notable in my mind is a segment called Elmo's World. This segment seemed to be aimed especially at the youngest viewers of the show. Featuring a silly man called Mr. Noodle that would always twist the directions Elmo gave him in a funny way as well as a TV that had every available channel Elmo happened to need, like the Joke channel or the Dance channel. Like the predictability of Blues Clues, Elmo's World was a daily segment, running the exact same way every day.Although childrens shows have remained somewhat the same over the years, there are still new shows popping up. Most of them remind me of an acid trip, so many colors, strange shapes, and 'magical machines'. Take for example the Doodle Bops. For those of you not familiar, they are three colored alien looking people who are on a constant concert tour, which they actually do in real life around the country. Now I know the creativity so to say of the shows is nothing new, but now, even childrens shows seem to have so much going on in them. Not so much as to lose the child, but its a vast amount of information overload for a little kid. Is this just a sign of our changing world? With email, computer, and TV, most teens are used to multitasking, is this just a way to get our children prepared for life? Hmm.....
Posted in: on Sunday, May 18, 2008 at at 11:42 PM
