Animation invasion

By Martin F. Kohn
Knight Ridder News Service

"Blue's Clues," 1996-present, Nickelodeon. Blue herself is a computer-animated puppy. Her human sidekick, Joe (Donovan Patton), is the one who talks to young viewers, asking for their help in solving puzzles. Nickelodeon and Advertiser library photos Gentle old friends "Captain Kangaroo," 1955-1984 CBS; 1986-1993, PBS. Bob Keeshan portrayed the genial, grandfatherly captain. "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," 1968-present, PBS. Gentle Fred Rogers conveyed a "you're OK" message to kids with the help of his puppet and human friends. "Pee-wee's Playhouse," 1986-91, CBS. With his zany, wink-wink personality, his bow tie and too-small suit, Paul Reubens' character, Pee-wee Herman, looked postmodern but was also a throwback to Rogers and Keeshan with his human-centric show. "The Shari Lewis Show," 1960-1963 NBC. Also: "The Shari Show," 1975, NBC; "Lamb Chop's Play-Along," 1992, PBS; "The Charlie Horse Music Pizza," 1998, PBS. One of the few women to make a mark as a children's TV host, ventriloquist Shari Lewis created a little universe with her sock puppet Lamb Chop and Lamb Chop's compadres, Charlie Horse and Hushpuppy. Lewis died in 1998. "Sesame Street," 1969-present, PBS. It has taught two generations about numbers and letters, and it has made household names out of puppets Kermit, Elmo, Grover and Oscar the Grouch and costumed character Big Bird and Snuffleupagus. But "Sesame Street" always gives plenty of face time to its human cast, from the late Will Lee (Mr. Hooper) to longtime mainstays like Bob McGrath (Bob), Roscoe Orman (Gordon) and Sonia Manzano (Maria). Newer faces of TV "SpongeBob Squarepants," 2000-present, Nickelodeon. He lives in a pineapple under the sea in a town called Bikini Bottom. He's a square-shaped sponge named Bob. He's bright yellow (or perhaps not all that bright). "Powerpuff Girls," 1998-present, Cartoon Network. Don't be misled by their names or their looks. Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup may be kindergarten kids with great big eyes. But they possess superpowers and they're as tough as they come.

The days when kids, particularly younger ones, watched shows starring humans — Captain Kangaroo, Mister Rogers, Shari Lewis, even Pee-wee Herman — are for the history books. Now it's "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Fairly Odd Parents" and "Powerpuff Girls," with occasional breaks for human-animated hybrids like "Blue's Clues" and costumed characters like Big Bird and Barney.

On children's TV, it seems there isn't a live human left.

When Fred Rogers died a year ago this month, pediatrician and author T. Berry Brazelton mourned the loss of someone who "talked to kids at the ages of 4 to 6 about feelings." The show "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" still airs in reruns, but it has been decades since Rogers — and before him, Bob Keeshan as Captain Kangaroo (Keeshan died in January) — ruled children's TV.

Do young viewers miss out by not having a Captain Kangaroo coming into their homes?

"As a parent and consumer of TV myself, I would have to say, yes, I think that there probably is something that is lost there," says Julie Dobrow, director of the communications and media studies program at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.

She can't say children are losing out in terms of learning because there are studies that suggest animated programming has its benefits. But even if that is true, it doesn't mean something hasn't been lost.

"There is a kind of connection that kids can make with a real live person that they don't necessarily make with an animated persona," Dobrow says. "Kids can have a very wonderful relationship with 'Arthur,' but let's face it: He's an aardvark."

At the Schildcrout home in Huntington Woods, Mich., Abi Schildcrout, 34, and her husband, Doug, have to be careful to limit their boys' TV viewing.

"If they were allowed to watch whatever they wanted, they'd never stop," she says.

Abi says she watched quite a bit of TV as a kid, favoring "The Electric Company," "Zoom" and "Sesame Street." Even back then, she found Fred Rogers a bit too sedate, though her mother was a big fan of his show.

That's no surprise, says Bob Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television. He says "Captain Kangaroo" and "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" were old before their time, considered archaic by many by the 1970s.

"Essentially, they come out of a tradition of local programming where, way back in the '40s and certainly into the '50s, virtually any city of any size had its own little local TV show, long before Nick at Nite, long before PBS."

Such shows, says Thompson, tended to mix direct address to the camera with other inexpensive means of programming, including puppets and old cartoons. It was Keeshan in the '50s and Rogers in the '60s who made the notion national.

"It was kind of the basic way of doing children's programming," Thompson says, "and because of the nature of the people who were doing it and because it was for preschoolers, it tended to be kind and gentle and really kind of warm and fuzzy."

The big shift in young children's TV began in 1969 with the debut of "Sesame Street." Combining lively, innovative visual effects with puppetry and some gentle times, the show "upped the voltage of children's programming," says Thompson. From there, we saw the slow disappearance of the Captain Kangaroo type. "Sesame Street," with contemporary-sounding songs, flashy graphics and genuine wit, became popular not only among kids but also among parents.

Fast forward to 2004 and you see what Thompson calls "the SpongeBob-ification of American children's television," although the phenomenon long predates the popular Nickelodeon cartoon. The trend may have been long in coming, "but SpongeBob has been its ultimate manifestation — where you've got something the parents are as anxious to turn on" as their kids are, he says.

"Things like Mister Rogers and Captain Kangaroo gave you a grounding in actual communication — people attempting to say something that they actually meant, as opposed to saying something that was going to show what a wise guy they were," says Thompson. "I think an awful lot of kids pick up an awful lot of this stuff from these really funny and good children's shows."

There's nothing wrong with sincerity, though.

"Every now and then to say 'I like your sweater' and really mean 'I like your sweater' is also a way of communicating."