At the congressional debates, Republicans chided PBS for not benefiting from the huge amount of money Barney, the popular purple dinosaur, was making for its parent company. PBS will not make that mistake again. Given the enormous popularity of programs like Arthur and Barney , it's not surprising that corporate interest in children's programming on PBS has been growing. They account for 70 percent of retail sales for licensed properties. Brand loyalty begins early and children are seen increasingly as a legitimate and lucrative target for marketing.
According to Peter Downey, PBS senior vice president for program business affairs, guidelines for corporate underwriting of children's programs were changed two years ago, when Libby's Juicy Juice began underwriting Arthur.
Up until then, there had been little corporate interest in underwriting PBS children's shows. At present, PBS has relatively few product licensing and merchandising policies-although PBS does now require that copyright owners share whatever financial benefits are created from these deals.
According to Downey, PBS has learned from experience that its interests and copyright owners' interests are usually in line, since no one wants to offend parents or viewers. Downey's viewpoint is worrisome. It is true that as long as copyright holders and PBS officials share a goal of not offending parents or viewers, their interests will be in line. But the primary interest of a public, educational children's television pro gram should always be to educate children and promote their well-being.
While copyright owners may share that goal, their interest in a particular program might extend only as far as making money without offending viewers, and not to careful scrutiny of the actual educational value of the show's content. In , most new children's programming on PBS is funded, at least in part, by corporate sponsors or product licensing.
An officer of the Children's Television Workshop has been heard to say that the critically acclaimed program Ghostwriter went off the air because it was built around an invisible main character and therefore didn't have much to sell.
Given that PBS provides a block of programming for children that consistently promotes diversity and nonviolence, and given the very real threat that Congress will cut off its funds, it may seem counterproductive for people who care about children to publicly criticize PBS.
Therefore, when the Child ren's Television Workshop began aggressively marketing Sesame Street products, there was not much outcry. Even when Sesame Street characters began to turn up in commercials for Kmart and Ford Windstar, responses were mostly muted. Public television was doing what it needed to do to survive, and popular PBS shows like Sesame Street and Arthur provided prosocial programming alternatives to network television fare.
The advent of commercials before and after children's programs created more grumbles, but vigilant parents could tape the shows and eliminate the commercials. Most felt that PBS programs had both integrity and demonstrable educational content and allowed children to watch television while avoiding the frequent commercial breaks and violence that characterized most commercial broadcasting.
But Teletubbies steps over an important line. It violates a fundamental tenet of PBS's noncommercial mission. When Mister Rogers ' Neighbor hood and Sesame Street first appeared on PBS in the late s, there were already programs on commercial stations that were aimed at preschool children. PBS was providing an alternative for children by airing prosocial, nonviolent programming based on sound educational and developmental theory.
In targeting one-year-olds, Teletubbies is not luring children away from commercial television. It is creating a new market. Teletubbies arrived in the United States in a swirl of publicity that Kenn Viselman, president and chief executive officer of itsy bitsy Entertainment, which holds the American licensing rights on the program, described as "more advance press than Titanic.
Magazines geared toward parents also carried ads. Television talk shows like Good Morning America and major newspapers and news magazines carried interviews with Viselman, Alice Cahn who was then the director of PBS Children's Programming , and Anne Wood, the show's creator and head of Ragdoll Productions, the producer of the program.
Teletubbies landed here with some baggage from Britain. The show had created a swirl of controversy, mostly about whether the made-up language used by the Teletubbies was actually beneficial to children. From the beginning, it was intended for the world market, and is now distributed in over 50 countries.
Supported by an annual licensing fee on television sets, the BBC has long been held up as a model of public television success and integrity. In recent years, however, the BBC has been subject to commercial competition from satellite and cable companies, a dwindling audience share, and pressure to revoke the licensing fee. They are also funneling a great deal of their funding into new digital broadcasting technology. They are hoping for another megahit in a new program about dinosaurs, featuring animatronic figures with lots of licensing possibilities.
Teletubbies was also the center of great debate at the Second World Summit on Television for Children in London, where Ada Haug, the head of preschool television programming in Norway, called the program the most commercial she had ever seen, and announced that it would not be shown on Norwegian public television.
At that session, in March , Cahn and Wood staunchly defended Teletubbies. When asked directly about the target audience for Teletubbies , Wood replied that the program was for two-year-olds. Given that PBS was already marketing the program to an audience of one-year-olds, it is interesting that neither she nor Cahn corrected this misstatement. From a marketing standpoint, PBS is an ideal venue for Teletubbies.
In a climate of apparent concern over the effect of media on children following passage of the Children's Television Act, President Clinton's recent conference on children and television, and concern about content ratings and the V-chip, it would be hard for a commercial station to convince American parents that their motives for producing a program for one-year-olds were in any way altruistic.
The publishers of Good Housekeeping were once sued by the Federal Trade Commission for selling the seal to corporations eager to boost sales. Now the seal is limited to products advertised in the magazine. In an interview in the New York Times , Viselman predicted, "If this [Teletubbies] isn't the most important toy at Christmas this year, then something desperately wrong will have happened.
Our attraction to looking at anything bright and fastmoving is an evolutionary mechanism, a survival instinct. These images on screen trigger what psychologists call attentional inertia — we are dazzled and cannot take our eyes off the screen.
The same behaviour is seen in some animals. But it seems we pay the price for tapping into these primitive urges. Scientists have observed effects ranging from the immediate release of hormones into the blood, which can contribute to long-term health problems, to actual physical changes in the brain and learning disorders. Physiologically damaging: Images in violent video games such as Call of Duty trigger what psychologists call attentional inertia, where we are dazzled and cannot take our eyes off the screen.
A study from the University of Florence in of children aged six to 13 who spent an average amount of time watching TV found that their levels of melatonin — a hormone that causes us to sleep, but is also important for a healthy immune system and regulating the onset of puberty — shot up by 30 per cent after one week with no screen time. If TV does suppress melatonin release, could this explain why puberty now begins in girls, on average, aged nine years 10 months — a year earlier than two decades ago?
Hormones related to metabolism are also affected. A study at the University of Sydney published this summer found that of a group of boys aged 15, those who watched TV or DVDs or played computer games for more than two hours a day had elevated levels of chemical markers related to the development of coronary heart disease in later life.
And this year the University of Copenhagen found that individuals given 45 minutes of computer screen time subsequently consumed calories more from a buffet than those who were given no stimulus.
These findings were backed up by a study from Birmingham University that found women who watched TV during a meal were likely to snack more in the hours after. One theory is that screen time interrupts the release of chemicals in the blood linked to hunger and satiation. Or perhaps memory is affected, so we forget we have eaten.
Perhaps the most compelling study, from the Dunedin School of Medicine, New Zealand, was published in Researchers followed 1, individuals from early childhood, for 26 years. Bright yellow Teletubby Laa Laa was depicted by Nickey Smedley, an English choreographer and dancer, And Tinky Winky was played by the late Simon Shelton, a male ballet dancer who unfortunately passed away in January of In the interview, Pui Fan Lee recalls seeing journalists hidden "in the bushes, just trying to find any bit of dirt on the Teletubbies, but in ten years, they didn't even scratch the surface.
A lot of things that are weird, wonderful, and original have traditionally been condemned for being "subversive," and Teletubbies was no exception. In , televangelist Jerry Falwell made headlines when he claimed that one Teletubby, the purple Tinky Winky, was probably a homosexual. He also voiced his distress about the bright red purse that the character routinely carried around, despite the fact that he had "a boy's voice. Falwell would reiterate his "concerns" on the Today Show , telling Katie Couric that the idea of "little boys running around with purses and acting effeminate But the character is supposed to be a three-year-old, so the question is really quite silly.
North Korea, the world's most enigmatic "hermit kingdom," has long been a source of distress and speculation for those not living under hereditary dictatorships. Nevertheless, western pop culture's influence is ubiquitous, and at one point, the BBC seriously considered syndicating the show into North Korea. According to Business Insider , Kim Jong-un spent a substantial part of his childhood in Europe, and was subsequently exposed to influences like Disney, etc.
He was said to have taken a particular fancy to Goofy, so the network was led to wonder about the viability of the Teletubbies on North Korean shores. In the end, however, Jong-un wasn't interested in opening up life so much as he was in gleefully watching Disney films and ordering executions, presumably not simultaneously, but who knows.
Teletubbies with child? How could it be? It was an idea that nonplussed many fans , even though "Tiddlytubbies," who debuted in , could theoretically have come from anywhere — including the stork or the Sun Baby. According to the official Teletubbies website , the Tiddlytubbies include the purple and red twins Nin and Duggle Dee, the noisy, violet-colored Ping who loves "clapping and banging," and Baa, who is "a deep blue color" and "is always in a different place to the other Tiddlytubbies.
Bottom line: it's probably best to assume that the Teletubbies did not, in fact, procreate as we know it.
They likely just beamed down, or sprouted up with the flowers. Or perhaps just hatched out of a species of alien eggs. The next day at precisely a. I thought we were all in agreement. Daniel had allowed Nicholas to check it out of the library. I was indignant, but they promised to watch it only when I was out of the house, believing that the whole issue was with my personal hatred of cloying baby-talk and fiendish giggles.
At a. He was clearly possessed. Now that this was shown to be a clear pattern of behavior rather than an isolated incident, Daniel was convinced of the wisdom of forbidding all future Teletubbies viewing. For months, they did it every day when Nicholas and I were leaving for school. But at least nothing was said about it being time for bye-bye. My kids are all relatively grown now … well into the teen years and beyond, but they still tease me over the fact that I forbade the watching of teletubbies.
It seemed to be blatantly attempting to seduce and brainwash those most malleable of minds. Whether Tinky Winky was gay or not was utterly irrelevant to the fact that a giant baby in the sky told them what to do, say, and think! It really is an evil show. Also, I really liked your post about TV. Thanks for sharing it at my link up! Seriously, is there anything GOOD on tv? This is hysterical! For similar reasons, my children are not allowed to watch anything… and by anything, I mean anything that will result in me being annoyed when they act it out or repeat something over and over and over for the most part that leaves edited documentaries and Signing Time.
Really, I enjoy the program myself the one time I let them watch it each December , but then they talk about and act out all the little silly parts. Thanks for the perspective.
He never did anything like that except after watching Teletubbies, so I see a connection. There are plenty of other television shows that make my child happy, and he has spent many hours of his life enjoying them. We did not allow him to watch television when he was a baby or 1-year-old, for very good reasons which I explained in this article.
If not, then you escaped this particular influence. Why is it dumb to protect myself against getting my neck broken, or even just being annoyed by being waked up at 4am?
If the show some how posses your child you may really need to take him to a church. If he is being posses then you should ask a priest. I am not saying your child is on a bad side but he could also watch to much TV and put together bad things in his mind from everything he watches.
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