Tag The Hub

Happy Trails to The Hub

silverstar 22 Comments

Stick The Hub with a fork, ’cause it’s done.

Hub Network logo

HUB NETWORK
2010-2014
For months now, there have been rumors circulating that the network was in trouble and its’ future murky, well, apparently those weren’t just rumors. Deadline reports:
“The long-rumored takeover and rebranding of the children’s network is about to take place, The Wall Street Journal reports. Discovery  would acquire some of Hasbro’s share in the struggling joint venture — but still leave the toymaker with a sizable stake —  and then likely rename it Discovery Family. It would target parents as well as kids, and still enable Hasbro to program the channel from 9 AM to 3 PM.
 
While the deal isn’t complete yet, it’s being reported that the channel likely will become part of Group President Henry Schleiff’s growing fiefdom — which includes Investigation Discovery, Destination America, and the American Heroes Channel. The joint venture has had little success taking share in a crowded market dominated by Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, while kids advertising has declined, HUB had already expanded into family-oriented programming, airing movies in primetime and adding older-skewing fare like popular 1990s teen comedy series Blossom.”
So that would seem to be it for The Hub. Shame too, because the channel had so much potential. It takes most cable networks at least a decade or so to hit their decline, The Hub did it in just 4 years. That’s gotta be a record. The channel had much more diversity when it first hit the scene 4 years ago than it has now. Back when the Hub first launched in 2010, audience’s reaction was this:
…Now in 2014, it’s this:
Hasbro had big dreams for this network: they wanted to run with the Big Dogs and turn the Trinity of Kids and Family Networks, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, into a quartet, but while the Big 3 kids networks typically attract millions of viewers in a given broadcasting day, The Hub was lucky to score 100,000 viewers.
The Hub used to offer a variety of programs. There was at one time a preschool block called Hub-Bub and an action cartoon block called HuBoom!, but those shows were mishandled and lacking in premiere shows, so they were soon gone. However, while we’re a tad nonplussed by this news, we can’t say we’re too disappointed, seeing as how the only shows that we’re currently watching on The Hub (Now that The Aquabats Super Show! was given the boot) are My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Littlest Pet Shop, and even then, that’s only when it’s a new episode. Really, this was to be expected. The channel was hemorrhaging money, and yes, the kids’ entertainment market is indeed crowded right now with the Big Three (Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network) but they still could’ve managed to cut a swath or at least carved a niche for themselves had they not chosen to rely solely on My Little Pony and 80’s nostalgia to carry them along.
Over the past few years, Hasbro had become complacent, thinking that the success of MLP and the moderate success of LPS alone was enough to carry the network, and they allowed The Hub to essentially become the Ponies, Pets and Nostalgia Network, not a wise move considering Hasbro’s plan was for the Hub to join the ranks of Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney Channel. We can’t sum it up better than this post from the MLP forums:
“I knew Hasbro’s expectations for the Hub’s performance were unrealistically high from the start. After launch, they said that their goal was to become “half as big as Cartoon Network” in 5 years.
 
This is obviously not the case, and this is because Hasbro has failed on multiple fronts. They failed to adequately promote the network on a large scale since its launch, and they failed to distribute it wide enough where it would be on a level ground with Nick, Disney, and CN. Additionally, they expected to be able to do this with a relatively weak lineup. Besides the success of MLP and the moderate success of LPS, they tried to help themselves with only a short slate of original programming, most of it based on established franchises, while pinning the rest of their hopes on a full slate of reruns and imports. In the mature industry of today as opposed to the past, with all the competition, reruns and imports won’t really do you the best.”
Basically, Hasbro wanted to conquer the Seven Seas without leaving the comfort of their own bathtub. The Hub’s failings can be summed up by 2 main bullet points:
  1. Over-Reliance on Nostalgia, and
  2. Over-Reliance on Ponies and Pets.
A prime example of The Hub’s relying far too much on nostalgia is embodied by this promo:

This spot immediately got under my craw from the very first time I saw it, but I couldn’t figure out why it bugged me so much. I don’t fault Rob Paulsen and Jess Harnell for doing it, those guys are awesome and they’ve still got it, but something about this just left a burr under my saddle. Then, in the wake of recent events, it hit me: The Hub shouldn’t have been kissing up to Animaniacs (and later Tiny Toons) like this, touting them as their latest and greatest stars and having the stars of their other shows shining the Warners’ collective asses, because A! is 1) old and 2) over. If A! was being revived on The Hub and these were new, never before seen episodes, then the network could rightfully make a spot like this, since then they’d have something legitimate to brag about, but these were same old repeats which have previously aired on numerous other cable networks and currently are on DVD.  A! and TTA simply didn’t deserve this level of hype, especially not over their original programs. The spot just came off as a thinly veiled attempt by Hasbro to expand their Brony audience and attract more older viewers. There’s nothing wrong with lightly sprinkling some older nostalgic favorites around the schedule here and there, but too much nostalgia is just overkill, and it does very little to attract and gain viewers. A! and TTA went on to receive as much as 5 airings in a day, only for the nostalgia balloon to burst and for them to go back to just a single airing a day, which they should have been doing all along. To put it simply, nostalgia just doesn’t work when it’s overused. A network can’t, and shouldn’t rely solely on the classics to get by. Older acquisitions should be lightly peppered around non-peak viewing hours to fill those little gaps in the schedule; you don’t treat an older canceled acquisition like the Next Big Thing and the network’s savior. The notion that canceled reruns of A! would or could become The Hub’s next Brony phenomenon was quite frankly, stupid of The Hub. When Cartoon Network would occasionally bring back an older show, it will just air during the day for a little while and then disappear when something newer is available to air, and Nick doesn’t even bother digging up older shows for their main network since they have offshoot channels like TeeNick and Nicktoons for that. A show like A! is OK to show for a little while, but it should have only been treated as filler, not embraced by the network as the Holy Grail.

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This brings us to the second bullet point. They let the monster success of MLP and the moderate success of LPS become their crutches, and rather than developing other new and diverse shows based on their other toy properties as well as new originals and unique 3rd party acquisitions, they instead chose to simply repeat MLP 5 times a day and LPS another 4 days a day (to be fair, this is a common network practice: when a show proves successful, fill every available space with it; I’m looking at you, Simpsons, Family Guy and Spongebob), and in the process they tossed their other original series like Pound Puppies, Dan VS, The Aquabats Super Show, Kaijuto et all under the bus and eventually stopped developing new shows altogether outside of cheap-to-produce stuff like Kid President and Parents Just Don’t Understand. Come on, Hasbro. You’re the 3rd or 4th largest toy company in the world; you have dozens of toys and games at your disposal that you could have made shows out of, too many for you to only capitalize on MLP, LPS and Transformers. Where’s the new MASK cartoon? Where’s the new Jem show? (Though a Jem movie is said to be in the works.) Where’s the new C.O.P.S. show? Where’s the new Candy Land cartoon? Where’s the new Mr. Potato Head show? Where’s the new Play-Doh cartoon? Where’s the new Clue show or Monopoly show? I’m not saying shows based on those properties would all be masterpieces, but that would at least be a variety. Though personally I think a Monopoly show has the potential to be epic:
And Hub’s nighttime schedule was a joke: they just looped the same 10 B and C grade level movies again and again every night then cap off their evenings with a bunch of reruns of 1970’s and 1980’s sitcoms like some dime store Nick @ Nite. Running a bunch of old sitcoms during prime time was a PHENOMENALLY, HILARIOUSLY stupid idea, as that does little to nothing as far as attracting and keeping viewers for the simple fact that nostalgia is fleeting. No one is going to switch off the latest episode of True Blood or Arrow or The Walking Dead or Once Upon a Time for a 40-year-old rerun of Happy Days. Silly Hasbro, nobody wants another TV Land, not even TV Land wants to be TV Land anymore.
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The statement that “in the mature industry of today as opposed to the past, with all the competition, reruns and imports won’t really do you the best” is quoted for truth, and to paraphrase Yoda, this is why Hub failed. They expected MLP, LPS and nostalgia to carry the entire network, which was a HUGE mistake, and they let their few first-run productions like Dan VS and Aquabats slip through their fingers in favor of the more “cost efficient” reruns and imports, another huge mistake. News flash, Hasbro: it’s not the 1980’s-1990’s anymore; a channel that consists mostly of repeats isn’t going to cut the mustard in today’s cutthroat industry. No one is going to rush home to watch a bunch of cancelled broadcast TV shows that they just as easily buy as entire series DVD sets at their local Wal-Mart or Best Buy for $20. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Hub needed a TGIF. It needed a SNICK. It needed a Cartoon-Cartoon Fridays. It needed a Miguzi. It needed a Funny For Your Face (and yeah, I know they had Animaniacs and Tiny Toons for a while, but acquisition rights don’t last forever and nostalgia is fleeting; what they needed were NEW shows done in the vein of those shows). Heck, it could have even stood a Secret Slumber Party/KEWLopolis. It needed some other new and original shows besides MLP that could appeal to multiple age groups across multiple platforms. While they did it as an effort to save money, dropping The Aquabats Super Show! was one of the single stupidest moves The Hub could make. It was a potential breakout hit which was watched equally by kids and parents alike. One major factor that did Aquabats and Dan VS in (aside from The Hub’s poor scheduling of the shows–seriously, who premieres new episodes to run on the middle of Saturday afternoons?) was that there weren’t any other shows like them on the network. For a while Hasbro tried to lump Dan in alongside of their action cartoons on the now-defunct HuBoom! block, but it really didn’t belong there; Dan stuck out just as badly alongside superhero cartoons as it did alongside MLP and the like. The only show Hub had that kind of clicked with Dan was Aquabats, since both shows were zany comedies which skewed slightly older than the rest of The Hub’s fare and were popular among adults, perhaps more so than with kids. Dan VS might have fared better premiering at night on a prime time block with similar skewing shows.If Hasbro had invested in some other older-skewing scripted comedies and put them all together on a premiere block, then both Dan VS and Aquabats might have found a sizable audience. As it was, those shows were all alone and badly scheduled and promoted.
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So now, Hasbro will be divesting in their share of the channel and Discovery will be taking over. The Ponies will still be around, at least for now, since there’s another 26-episode season coming in due time. Plus, MLP is currently The Hub’s biggest cash cow, so I doubt that Discovery would want to get rid of it. Of course, if Hasbro chooses to take the show to another network or make it an online exclusive like Mattel currently does with some of their current properties, that’s another story. I guess it’s a good thing that The Hub will still exist in some way, shape or form, but I have to say, I’m really not getting a savior vibe from Discovery. They’re the network that let Discovery Kids go to turd to begin with. Yes, Hasbro dropped the ball big time on this channel, but lets’ face it: Hasbro’s stepping in was the best thing to happen to Discovery Kids. Hasbro made a lot of wrong moves, but they did manage to get some decent shows and properties out of the channel that people like(d) to watch and talk(ed) about. When was the last time you heard anybody talk about Discovery Kids? While it’s true that The Hub as of late hasn’t been that great, I really have a hard time believing that Discovery can make the channel any better. If Discovery knew how to run a family oriented cable channel in the first place then Hasbro wouldn’t have had to bail them out in the second place. If Discovery’s idea of saving this channel is polluting the airwaves with more reality shows about junkyard pickers, Amish mafiosos and bacon enthusiasts, then this re-branded channel is dead before it’s even started. I cringe at the thought of this channel becoming another TLC; one TLC is more than enough. And if this channel is really going to undergo a rebrand, I really hope they can come up with a better name than Discovery Family. For one thing, DiscFam sounds too similar to Discovery Kids, and NO ONE is begging for the return of that channel. For another, “Discovery Family” is 7 syllables, the name takes too long to say. Channel names have to be short and memorable. For yet another, placing the word “family” in a channel’s name can often result in the channel being DOA, as many viewers equate “family friendly entertainment” with “transmitting bland garbage that’s so tame, watered down and homogenized that only Quakers and heart patients can enjoy it”. Of course it’s possible that Discovery has something amazing in store for The Hub and they’re just keeping it under wraps, but frankly, I’m not getting that feeling.
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Personally, we discussed what we would do with Hub Network. We would place the channel’s emphasis on comedy and fun and aim it towards kids and teens during the daylight hours and adults during the nighttime hours. Basically it would be Nickelodeon during the day and HA! at night. There’s be a block of original and 3rd party edutainment shows for younger kids and preschoolers in the mornings, blocks of acquired cartoon favorites and teen sitcoms in the afternoons, a block of girl-centric shows such as Ladybug and LoliRock, an block of action cartoons and superhero shows such as Max Steel and Super Sentai, music videos and shows about video games, extreme sports, comic books and manga/anime, at night we’d air reruns of Mystery Science Theater 3000 every night from 8 PM to 10 PM except on Friday and Saturday nights, which would be devoted to original premiere programming blocks and on Sunday nights we’d run an “art house” animated short show, a show spotlighting memorable cartoons, the making of them and giants of the animation industry (think Cartoon Network’s Toon Heads meets G4’s Icons), nights would consist of an original parody newscast, a riff show, a sketch comedy show, a hidden camera prank show, a mini-block of “edgier” adult cartoons both Western and anime (sort of an Adult Swim lite), a show featuring stand-up routines accompanied by visualizations and comedy clips from around the world (think Turkey Television meets Mash-Up), a block of British comedies, a classic sitcom block and a block of classic cartoons from the baby boomer era. We’d call this channel POP or KABOOM TV, but you don’t have to. Not saying this is the best way or the only way, but it is a way.
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So for now, that would seem to a wrap for The Hub. No date has been announced for the rebrand yet, (EDIT: Hub Network officially switches to Discovery Family on October 13, 2014.) but for all intents and purposes, The Hub is just running on fumes now, waiting to be snapped up and recycled into something else. Hasbro had a potentially pretty decent thing going for a while, pity that shortsightedness and a lack of imagination killed it. So we at Twinsanity say…..

Bad Show, Jolly Bad Show!

goldstar 6 Comments

Well, folks. It looks like we at Twinsanity have been dealt another blow.  The latest news is that at the San Diego Comic Con, the Aquabats revealed that The Hub has cancelled The Aquabats! Super Show!.

What do we think of this?

In my opinion, this news royally sucks, as The Aquabats Super Show was one of the few shows that we watched regularly on The Hub. The Aquabats was an acquired taste, I’ll give you that, but at the same time I have to question the logic of The Hub pushing the series so far back into the early afternoon hours of Saturdays. Anytime after 11:30 AM is generally considered to be a loser time slot for a SatAM show, as kids are usually forced to relinquish control of the TV sets to the adults in the house around 11:30 or noon. The Hub had The Aquabats! airing as late as 2 PM at one point. They push the channel back to a time slot when many kids have left the TV and gone outside to play because they want the early hours for 3 more airings of MLP and then they wonder why the show is getting low ratings. Did that come off as snarky? Well, maybe a little.
First Dan VS bites the dust, then Kaijuo: Rise of the Duel Masters is kaput, then Care Bears: Welcome to Care-A-Lot gets canceled and now this. It’s getting so that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Littlest Pet Shop and Transformers Rescue Bots are pretty much the only things airing on The Hub during the day now, while the channel’s night time hours are still being devoted solely to nostalgic sitcoms from the past. The Hub just doesn’t seem to care about airing any other type of programming. They honestly seem to believe that Kid President has what it takes to save the channel, despite the fact that last weekend, KP brought in less than 10,000 viewers. For those who don’t feel like doing the math, that’s not good.
I’ve always thought that moving Dan VS to Saturday afternoons was a bad idea. Dan VS was an Adult Swim-lite type of show that belonged on Prime Time. here should have been an entire block of this type of programming airing at night and shows such as Dan and The Aquabats could have headlined this block. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I still don’t understand why (aside from money, of course) why The Hub doesn’t have a weekend evening premiere block. The Hub needs a T.G.I.F. They need a SNICK. They need a Cartoon-Cartoon Fridays.
My chief concern is that the cancellations of The Aquabats Super Show! and Dan VS will lead the heads of the network to believe that shows about ponies, pets and transforming robots and nostalgic sitcoms are the only types of shows that can succeed on the channel, and so that’s all that the network will be giving it’s viewers from now on. I’m going to be brutally frank here; the only chance that I see of The Hub surviving another 4 years is if they learn to go outside of their comfort zone and start allowing some different types of programming (and no, I don’t mean TV MA rated adult humor or trashy reality TV), and they truly need to stop using Friendship is Magic and Littlest Pet Shop as a crutch to lean on. The more dependent that The Hub is on these shows, the weaker their schedule gets. Hasbro isn’t doing much to dissuade the belief that The Hub is basically the My Little Pony channel. In fact, they seem to be going out of their to promote this misconception. These shows are fine. I’m glad that they’re gaining attention and that the’re getting high ratings, but if The Hub is to succeed in today’s market, it can’t live solely on Ponies, Pets and nostalgia.
mrt

“I pity this channel! I don’t hate the channel, but i pity it!”

ADDENDUM: I was mistaken. The Aquabats Super Show! was not canceled due to low ratings. In fact, it was doing well with both kids and parents and it actually helped the band find a new audience and also helped the Aquabats celebrate it’s 20th anniversary as a band. Rather, the show was terminated due to the network’s downsizing and abandoning it’s kid-friendly schedule in favor of more cost effective programming. The future of the series is unknown as of this point. Christian Jacobs (the band’s leader and The MC Bat Commander) is optimistic for the show’s future, but it still sucks that we won’t be seeing the series again until ????.

The Couch: Cosmic Quantum Ray

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It’s time for another installment of The Couch. Today we look at one of the first shows to air on The Hub, the science themed animated sci-fi comedy Cosmic Quantum Ray.

Cosmic Quantum Ray premiered on October 10, 2010 on Hub Network, and ended on December 9, 2010 with 26 episodes. It was produced by Moonscoop, Mike Young Productions, Method Films, and Telegael Torenta. The series had reruns on The Hub until November 4, 2013.
Although produced by Germany’s KI.KA and France’s M6, the show was written in English, the writing supervised by Head Writers/Co-producers and Emmy winners Pamela Hickey and Dennys McCoy. In 2009, the series beat out Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network to win the Pulcinella Award for BEST TV SERIES. The series was created by cosmologist Dr. Mani Bhaumik. Hickey and McCoy based all their stories on principles and theories from quantum physics, with Dr. Bhaumik literally providing the math.
 
 
Cosmic Quantum Ray was billed as a bizarre comedy/sci-fi adventure (emphasis on “bizarre comedy”) that, at the end of each episode, explained the quantum physics associated with a story and/or physical gags found within the series.
CQR centered on Everyteen Robbie Shipton, an average kid with an average life and a fairly hot seemingly single real estate agent mom, who through means which were never explained, possessed a shoe box leading to the 9th Dimension (the point in space-time of uncertainty, probability, possibility and chaos wherein we can compare all the possible universes’ histories starting with all the different possible laws of physics and initial conditions, according to some string theorists). Sound weird? Well, Dexter has a super-advanced high-tech science laboratory with TARDIS-like diemsnions within the bowels of his ordinary suburban home, and Lydia Deetz is best friends with a gross con-artist ghost from the Neitherworld. So why not a shoe box leading to the 9th Dimension? Said shoe box is also the home of intergalactic superhero Quantum Ray, leader of a band of sci-fi weirdo do-gooders known as Team Quantum, dedicated to upholding Natural Law throughout the cosmos or something similar, with Robbie in tow as the Eager Young Space Cadet, fighting such space and science themed baddies as a body-snatching spore, a haughty space worm who would make portable wormholes (get it?), a purple skinned mad scientist and his nagging mother who was trapped in the body of a hamster, an indestructible surfer dude who rode a gamma ray powered surfboard and a pair of militant military squirrels. Team Quantum consisted of:
  • Quantum Ray himself is the leader of Team Quantum, but in truth he’s captain of the team in the same manner that Arthur “Big Guy” Carlson was in charge of the radio station on WKRP in Cincinnati. Ray is a big muscular man-child of a superhero, sort of a cross between The Tick and SpongeBob Squarepants. (The latter comparison in particularly ironic, since Ray was also voiced by Tom Kenny). Ray was a cosmic being from the 9th Dimension. He is brave, determined and occasionally clever, though he sometimes comes off as a bit “flaky” or “weird” – but he’s just thinking “differently” than we 3-dimensional creatures, as his mind occupies 6 additional dimensions. He possessed a uniquely bizarre but still kind of kick-ass super power set: As a being from the 9th dimension, not all of Ray’s body can be seen – his elbows, knees and midriff are all in “higher” dimensions (we can’t see them, but Ray can). Ray’s body parts can also be detached at times when called for; he is held together by a cosmic essence of unknown origin that only Ray or other higher dimensional beings can see. As a 9th dimensional man, Ray can also see celestial objects and scientific phenomena that 3-dimensional beings cannot, like P-branes and tesseracts. Ray was also super-strong, able to fly and he could also control and change his atoms into any inorganic material he wants: he can turn to titanium, diamond, rubber, brick, iron, gold, and silver – anything he needs to get the “hero job” done. As a higher dimensional being, Quantum Ray sometimes forgets that not everyone occupies several planes of time, space and reality simultaneously, not everybody’s appendages are modular, and that most people have to obey the basic laws of physics. He referred to Robbie as his “young sidekick” and his tagline was “Halt! In the name of Natural Law!”
  • Atee and Geecee are a pair of super-cute pint-sized, green-skinned, pointy-eared, hovering teenage twin alien honeys from the planet Tooferwun –a planet where everyone is a twin (and you used to wonder where we came from) therefore they count as a single member of Team Quantum. Identical in appearance, the only way to tell them apart was by their costumes and demeanor: Atee, who wore a pink costume, was sweet-voiced and dainty, whereas Geecee, who wore a baby blue costume, was gravelly voiced and scrappy. The twins were the lead-footed pilots of the ship, knowing only 2 speeds: fast and faster. They were also lazy, declining to perform any other duties with their line, “We’re pilots. We don’t do (whatever additional task they were asked to perform).” In addition to the ability to hover and fly (the twins are seen floating more often than walking), the twins have a superpower that only works when they combine their bodies together to form “Double Helix” – a large band of super-strong, super-elastic DNA that can catch, launch or catapult villains, dangerous objects (like out of control meteorites) – or even their fellow teammates. The twins generate their “Double Helix” ability through the soles of their feet as a sort of contrail, and they control the helixes by flying around. The twins’ “Double Helix” power is activated when they touch each other and speak the phrase, “Two for one, we’re double fun! We’re Double Helix!” (It was unclear if this phrase was necessary or just a habit of theirs. Physical contact, however, is required. If the two are out of reach of each other, they are unable to activate their power.) Their one weakness is separation. They are “connected” on a quantum level…should they be separated they would be powerless. And if they are separated for a very long period of time… they could cease to exist as we know them (but being quantum, we’re not quite sure what they would become). Being teenagers, Atee and Geecee seemed to have a mild crush on Robbie, they were definitely ga-ga over his hair, as they tried to touch it, snip it or sample it in just about every episode. Their names didn’t just sound science fiction-y, they were also a reference to the components of a DNA molecule: Adenine Thymine (Atee) and Guanine Cytosine (Geecee).
  • Bucketworth was a bronze plated sentient robot and the brains of the team. Luminously intelligent, educated and refined, he was designed with a mustache, bow tie and a monocle from which he could project holographic images. Bucketworth acted as the sarcastic Mr. Spock to Ray’s clueless captain Kirk. While he possessed no super powers (beyond being a self-aware robot) he possessed a genius level IQ, and could invent handy devices and impeccable strategies to win the day. Bucketworth also delivered the science lessons at the conclusion of each episode. Ever the refined gentleman, he always referred to Robbie as ‘Robert’ and Ray as ‘Raymond’.
  • Robbie Shipton himself acted as Ray’s protege and the show’s audience avatar. He had no super powers, but provided common sense and oasis of calm within the group. While in ‘space hero’ mode, Robbie’s outfit switched to a snazzy navy blue and gold space suit with pointed shoulder blades and his glasses would mysteriously disappear.
Robbie had another distinction: he was the only member of Team Quantum who had a secret identity. Robbie led the obligatory double life on Earth, and all of the episodes would somehow involve his high school and the usual string of colorful high-school characters: Lucas, the uptight overachieving nerd, Allison, the cute but annoyingly preachy vegan/animal rights activist, Scott Stotz, the jock jerk, Scott’s hulking goonish cronies Dustin and Justin, who never spoke but whose ‘dialogue’ usually consisted of them giggling like Beavis and Butthead, and Chip Monohan, the school mascot who never took off his squirrel costume (the show’s producers seemed to have a “thing” for squirrels, since a pair of squirrels were also among the show’s recurring villains). Chip also holds the distinction of being the only cast member outside of Team Quantum to have appeared in every episode of the series. So Robbie and crew had to spend many an episode making up hee-larious excuses for all of the bizarre events that went on around them, and the other kids just thought Robbie was a weirdo geek who made up loony space stories.
Cosmic Quantum Ray wasn’t a bad show by any means; it was pretty fun, and I did learn some cool science stuff from it (it was from CQR that I learned what a quantum computer is, what qubits are and it’s what got me interested in string theory), but in short order, it did become a bit repetitive, what with the heroes facing the same revolving door of villains every time, and how each episode had to somehow involve Robbie’s school, invariably leading to another character discovering the truth about Robbie’s outer space escapades and exclaiming, “My gosh! Those stories you tell! They’re TRUE!!” only to get their memories erased (usually by Bucketworth) again and again and again. This happened so frequently that one episode even turned it into an in-universe joke. I would’ve liked to have seen a few episodes in which Robbie’s school chums were altogether missing, which took place completely in space and where they dealt with no villains at all; surely there were enough scienctific and astronomical themed disasters and anomalies which would’ve made for interesting stories without the constant need of a costumed antagonist and adherence to the standard “wash, rinse, repeat” formula. And I REALLY would’ve liked to have seen another character learn the truth about Team Quantum and NOT get their minds wiped at the end. I’ve never liked that “I am/have/can do something really cool, but have to keep it a secret from everybody” trope, especially when no reason is given for why everything must be a big secret. I can understand keeping the existence of aliens a secret from the feds; you don’t want your homies getting locked up and dissected (indeed, the gang did go to Area 51 in one episode and nearly met with such a fate), but I think you can at least let family and close friends in on it. I especially didn’t see why Robbie’s mom Debbie couldn’t have known about it; she actually found out about Team Quantum in 2 episodes, “What’s Up with Gravity?” and “Unreal Estate”, and each time she found out, she seemed okay with it, in fact at the end of the former episode she confides in her son that she really liked Team Quantum, so she obviously wasn’t going to blow the whistle on them, so why did she have to get her mind erased? You’d think having a parent in your corner would work to your advantage; she could cover for you when people start to ask why you keeping missing class or whatever. Not to mention Debbie got her Crowning Moment of Awesome in her first appearance by stating that she’d totally mess up any villain who screwed with her kid, and later does it! any lady who can pull a villain’s lower lip up over her head–literally!–is A-OK in my book.
You go, Mom.

More Hub PM Pondering

goldstar 2 Comments

The following is in response to a thread which came up recently in the Toon Zone Entertainment Forum titled  “Other Sitcoms That Should Air on The Hub”. I’m just going to post my 2 cents on the subject here. To avoid confusion, all of the posts from the thread itself will be typed in italic, while my responses will be typed in purple. The OP begins the discussion with:

What do you guys think? I’d hypothetically say something like “Seinfeld” or “Family Matters”.

To which, my brother Damon responded with:

I’d personally like to see The Hub expand its’ horizons to air more than just domestic sitcoms at night, honestly. I’d like to see more sketch and alternative comedies such as SCTV, MST3K, Fernwood/America 2-Night, The Best of Saturday Night Live, The Monkees, Get Smart!, Police Squad!, Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection, etc. Heck, even The Muppet Show, The Jim Henson Hour or Muppets Tonight would make for some nice variety, although the former would probably look horribly dated now.

 
Now, I realize that this will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, but I agree with Damon. I really think that The Hub is severely limiting itself by airing nothing but family-friendly sitcom reruns. They could be doing so much more at night, especially during the hours after 10 PM, after the kids have gone to bed. Channels like Nick at Nite and TBS pretty much have the sitcoms covered, so why not do something a little different on The Hub?

In any case, Seinfeld isn’t a family show, and neither is MST3K, really (especially in later seasons where I understand that they talk about some stuff that wouldn’t exactly be appropriate for a family show).

 

You keep saying that, but I’ve actually seen all of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes that were produced for the Sci-Fi Channel, and they weren’t any more raunchy than the that ones made for Comedy Central. The randiest MST3K has ever gotten was in the 1996 theatrical movie, which contained more curse words in the wise cracks than in the average TV episode. Also, unlike you, I’ve actually seen all of the MST3K episodes made for Sci-Fi Channel; I’m not just making assumptions based on something that a little bird told me. If you haven’t actually seen the later seasons of MST3K, then you’re not in a position to determine whether the show is appropriate for family viewing or not. At least see the episodes for yourself before making pat judgments about them. I personally think that MST3K or Rifftrax would make a great addition to The Hub’s PM lineup, and it would certainly add some much needed variety to the channel’s night time schedule.

Police Squad? Considering it was later adapted into the Naked Gun movies, probably not.

Why not? Police Squad originally aired on prime-time and even ran on Nick at Nite for a brief time. If Nickelodeon could air Police Squad, then I see no reason why the series can’t or shouldn’t air on The Hub. And again, we’re not talking about running Police Squad! right after My little Pony. We’re talking about airing the series at night, after the kids have gone to bed, so where’s the harm in that? Plus, kids saw the Naked Gun movies also.

The Hub may have not been using their tagline “a network for kids and their families” for some time now, but that’s what this network still is: “a network for kids and their families”, and I don’t want them to start subverting that, or themselves (by, among other things, resorting to various technicalities) just to cater to only what some older viewers want to see.

 
Again, I fail to see the problem with “catering to what older viewers want to see” during the hours of the night when kids aren’t watching TV. It just doesn’t make sense for The Hub to run kid-friendly programming all night long. Adults want to be entertained also. Most kids’ networks stop programming for children in the evenings because ad buyers don’t want to support anything in those hours, and I don’t understand why it’s OK for Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network to program for adults at night, but it’s somehow not OK for The Hub to do the same. Why should a network risk losing viewers by being forced to placate to an audience that isn’t there just to satisfy some imaginary ideal? I honestly and truly don’t understand this logic.

Seinfeld? What next, Friends? The Big Bang Theory, perhaps (not that I watch any of those three shows, but I know they aren’t family shows)?

You know what I love about you? It’s how with you, everything is always so black-and-white, and gray doesn’t exist at all. With you, it’s either Sesame Street or South Park with absolutely nothing in between. The difference between you and I is that we have different ideas of what does or doesn’t constitute a subversion. You see The Hub airing anything edgier than say, Leave It to Beaver as a subversion, whereas I believe that a middle ground exists and The Hub should try to meet that need.
I’ve never watched Friends myself, and TBS currently owns the broadcasting rights to The Big Bang Theory. As for the prospect of either series being shown on The Hub, I wouldn’t be against that, but I really feel that The Hub needs to expand it’s horizons beyond just airing sitcom reruns. And so what if they’re not family shows? No one’s suggesting that The Hub run Seinfeld on weekday afternoons right after Transformers Rescue Bots. Again, we’re talking about late nights, after the kids have gone to bed. It shouldn’t matter one whit if the content isn’t appropriate for children if said shows are airing at a time when kids aren’t watching TV anyway.

I would suggest older black and white sitcoms from the 1950s, but that would really be pushing it…

 
Ehh…..No offense, but I don’t think that would be a good idea at all. You’d have an easier time trying to split an atom than trying to get today’s generation of kids to watch something in black-and-white, and that 1950s stuff is cornball. My parents grew up with those shows and I’m 44. That stuff was considered to be old hat during my childhood, and I really don’t think that’s the image that Hasbro wants to create for it’s channel. I don’t think that Hasbro wants The Hub to be thought of as the “Jitterbug” of cable channels. The only b&w show that might be worth airing on The Hub is possibly The 3 Stooges, since the recent (2012) movie may have spawned a renewed interest in the franchise.
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Anyways, this is how I would program The Hub’s PM lineup:
I would designate the hours between 7 PM and 10 PM as Family Time. That’s when the family-friendly shows such as Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Family Ties, Mork & Mindy, ALF and The Facts of Life would air. As well as some non-sitcom programs such as Carol Burnett & Friends, The Monkees, The Muppet Show/Muppets Tonight/The Jim Henson Show, Police Squad! Carson’s Comedy Classics, etc.
The hours from 10 PM and onward would be designated as Adult Time. The kids have gone to bed and now The Hub’s line up would get a tad “naughtier”, and by this I don’t mean the likes of South Park, Drawn Together or The Whitest Kids U Know. But rather, I mean just airing some less family-oriented programs such as The Best of Saturday Night, SCTV, Mystery Science Theater 3000/Rifftrax, The Red Green Show, Mad Movies with the LA Connection. Perhaps even some of the former Adult Swim acquisitions such as Home Movies, Baby Blues, Mission Hill and The Oblongs, all of which originally aired in prime-time. Hey, while were at it, why not import some British comedies like Red Dwarf, Black Adder, French & Saunders, My Hero or Monty Python’s Flying Circus?
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I’d watch a lineup like that. How about you?

Talkin’ Nerdy: Hub Needs Moms

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Today on Talkin’ Nerdy I’d like to discuss something which has getting up my craw for some time now, and is really just part of a darker, more disturbing trend that’s been grinding my gears for much of my creative life:  namely, the trend of leaving mother characters out of the fun in fiction, specifically the curious lack of mothers on notable Hub shows.

For instance, take Transformers Rescue Bots….please. OK, that was kind of a cheap shot, but when I first heard about this show and it was compared to the likes of Marvel’s Super Hero Squad Show, I actually thought TRB was going to be lighthearted wacky spoof show a la SHS or Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Instead, we get this somewhat stale show meant to teach kids about safety and clearly and very visibly intended to sell a new wave of Transformers toys to prepubescent boys. Look, I have nothing against safety and lessons about safety; heck, as a kid I received an Officer Friendly coloring book and I liked it well enough, and I understand that it’s show business and many of The Hub’s shows are designed to sell toys, but I have a greater appreciation for the ones that at least try to entertain me a bit in the process of pounding lessons into my head and coaxing me to buy stuff. Rescue Bots‘ biggest crime is that it’s just dull.

It’s second biggest crime is the point of this discussion: OK, the premise of TRB is that these 4 Transformers land on an island town somewhere in Maine called Griffin Rock, where a group of Autobots named Heatwave, Boulder, Blades and Chase respond to Optimus Prime’s message for any active Autobots in space to arrive to Earth. Coming out of a long stasis, learning what became of Cybertron and that they are the only Rescue-Bot team remaining, they are partnered with the Burns family composed of first response rescuers. Together, they learn teamwork and heroism alongside their human friends as they deal with various disasters. Each bot is paired with a different family member relating to what type of vehicle they are: Chase turns into a police car and so is partnered with dad Chief Charlie Burns, Heatwave turns into a fire engine and is partnered with firefighting son Kade Burns, Boulder turns into bulldozer and is partnered with construction engineer son Graham Burns, and Blades turns into a rescue helicopter and is partnered with helicopter pilot daughter Dani Burns. The youngest member of the family, the very blond Cody Burns, is the bland kid protagonist of the show. What’s wrong with this picture? Where’s Mama Burns? Forget where is she, who is she? They never mention a mother or her whereabouts. If Charlie’s a widower or a divorcee, then it must have just happened, since Cody doesn’t appear to be any older than 10. But why does the Burns family not have a mother? Would it have killed the show’s writers to include a mom as part of the team? Actually, from a marketing standpoint, I think I know why: Transformers Rescue Bots is aimed primarily at young boys, who by and large think “girls are icky”, and only a boy with mountain-sized self-esteem would be willing to own a Rescue Bot piloted by a mom. I think the only reason they have a daughter character is to avoid pressure from women’s groups. This show is so overtly boy-centric that the only 2 female characters of any importance on TRB have the androgynous names Dani and Frankie. So while I can see why there’s no Mom Burns, I still think it’s bullocks. If you’re going to put a daughter on the team, then you might as well have a mom. And for anyone who says that moms don’t make good action heroes, Helen Parr/Elastigirl from The Incredibles and Drew Saturday from The Secret Saturdays say hi. Heck, even the Bionic Six had a mom, and she was actually one of the heroes, she didn’t just stay home and bake cookies while the rest of the family was out saving the world.

 

The Transformers Rescue Bots family. But where’s Mom? Is she vacationing on Cyberton or did she just sample some of Sam Witwicky’s college roommate’s brownies??

But, wait: Cody’s platonic little friend Francine “Frankie” Greene doesn’t have a mother either. She has a dad, Doc Greene, but again, no sight, sign or mention of a mom. What the what, Hub? Do the producers of this show have some kind of mother-phobia or something? I could probably see 1 motherless family on the show, but 2? Really?? To add insult to injury, one episode featured a lady scientist whom Doc Greene seemed to have a thing for, and those feelings seemed to be mutual. OK, so it’s all right to have potential girlfriends dangled before the audience’s eyes, but moms are a big no-no? WTH? If the writers are going to give Doc a potential girlfriend, they could’ve just given him a wife to start with, and been done with it.

The Hub’s “Moms are kryptonite” mentality unfortunately isn’t restricted to 1 show on the network. Another guilty party in this alarming trend is Littlest Pet Shop. I actually like LPS so it pains to have to put this show on my hit list, but they’re guilty of the same crime: its’ protagonist, Blythe Baxter, lives with her dad, your typical goofball father Roger Baxter, but Mrs. Baxter is nowhere to be seen and is never mentioned, not even in passing. Even during a series of flashbacks in the “So You Skink You Can Dance”, we see little Blythe and her dad interacting, but still no mom to be seen or heard from anywhere. So was Blythe grown in a test tube or what?? I can at least understand why the Burns family on TRB doesn’t have a mother, though its one of the things I hate most about the show, but I at least get why from a marketing standpoint. Littlest Pet Shop, by contrast, is based on a toy line aimed squarely, if not exclusively, at girls, so I really don’t get why Blythe couldn’t have 2 parents on the show. Part of the reason why Roger is so frequently annoying is that there’s no contrast; the household needs a somewhat more competent parent to provide a counterbalance to Roger’s goofiness. It’s like having the Odd Couple with only Oscar. Heck, I would even take a goofy embarrassing mom over no mom at all. And what’s more, the show’s rivals/frenemy characters, Whitney and Britney Biskit, likewise don’t have a mother. They’re constantly mentioning their father, Fisher Biskit, whose even made a couple of appearances on the show, but again no mother. At first I though maybe Mrs. Biskit was just perpetually off-camera, but then the episode “Bakers and Flakers” aired, and the only parent to show up at the school bake-off was Fisher, basically confirming that the Biskits are likewise motherless.*

The closest thing Littlest Pet Shop has to a mother figure is the character of Blythe’s friend Youngmee Song’s Aunt Christie, but as her title implies, Christie is Youngmee’s aunt, not her mother. Though given her quasi-maternal relationship with her niece and also how so far we have yet to see any of Youngmee’s other adult relatives, the LPS writers could have easily made Christie Youngmee’s mom and it wouldn’t have altered the stories in any way. But apparently protagonists on Hub shows can’t have moms or else it would split the Earth in two. Even an upcoming Hub acquisition, Wizards VS Aliens, features a lead character who lives with his dad and grandma. So grandmothers are OK, but mothers? That’s the line, right? Got it, Hub.

 

Roger Baxter and his daughter Blythe, who was sculpted from magical clay on the island of Themyscira. Hey, show me where Blythe’s mom is and I’ll take it back.

I’m just going to say this right now, if you haven’t guessed already: I hate single fathers in fiction. The Dead/Missing Mom trope is one of my least favorite cliches in fiction, and it’s one I’ve vowed to never employ as a writer. Why, you may ask? I can’t provide a better answer than Jason, who when asked the same question, responded with this: “Because I like marriage humor and MILFs, and with single dads, you don’t get either.” I can’t speak for Transformers Rescue Bots, as I don’t proactively follow that show nor do I regularly converse with its’ fans, but I know that I’m not the only one who’s been asking about the identity or whereabouts of Blythe’s mother. It’s probably a subject that the show’s writers have no plans of ever addressing unless they’re pressured to by fans, similar to the question of whatever happened to Chuckie’s mother on Rugrats; the producers largely ignored this question but fans persisted in asking about it, so the producers were finally forced to acknowledge it and change the status quo accordingly, first with a Mother’s Day special, then by making it the plot of the 3rd movie. I don’t know if LPS needs to go that far, but it wouldn’t kill them to address it at least once, like, say, have Blythe lament “I miss Mom” in some given scene. Of course, if they had given Blythe a mom in the first place, they wouldn’t have to do anything.

Finally, I’d like to give an honorable mention to Dreamworks’ The Croods. It remains to be seen how well this movie will perform at the box office, but I’ll give Dreamworks one iota of credit in regards to the mother of the cave family, Ugga, namely, that they actually have a mother! In far too many animated family movies of this ilk, the mother is just straight-up dead before the movie even starts, but Dreamworks avoided that cliche here, and for that, I’m grateful. If we can see this tired old trope continue to get snuffed out over time, I’ll be a happier camper.

*ADDENDUM: In the subsequent seasons since this article was written, Hasbro has since rectified their ‘no mother’ situation on Littlest Pet Shop at least. Season 4 featured the first ever on-camera mention of Blythe’s mom Betty, and in an admittedly clever bit of comedy, in this same season it was also revealed that Whittany and Brittany Biskit also indeed have a mother. Furthermore, the writers turned the Biskits’ mom Eliza’s sudden appearance into an in-universe joke, implying that Eliza Biskit had been there all along and we the audience had simply never seen her before. Jason plans on doing a full retrospective on LPS’ 4th (and evidently, final) season sometime after season 4 is complete, but in the meantime…

Eliza_Biskit

Good on ya, Hasbro. Well played.