I think this is one of the few examples of something that was actually better “back in the day”. I’m not saying TV shows were better back in the 80s than they are now. But there is something to be said for shows that the whole family can watch together, without too much embarrassment.
Remember those “Very Special Episodes” that were the hallmark of 80s television? I wouldn’t have known anything about child molestation if it hadn’t been for the Dudley and the Bicycle Man episode. Those shows seemed like they were designed to promote discussion of sensitive topics. I don’t watch children’s television shows, so I don’t know if this the case now. Maybe kids are just naturally wiser and more sophisticated than the kids of the 80s and they don’t need very special episodes to teach them about the world? I don’t know. But some of it was good stuff. Edith fighting the rapist off wasn’t age-appropriate, but kids still need to know that a cake can be used in self-defense.
I hardly ever got to watch TV in the evenings until recently. My dad still watches the telenovelas like he did with Mom when she was alive, only now he watches them in his room instead of the living room. My daughter used to have Disney Channel and Nickelodeon on all the time, but as she has gotten older the shows on those channels don’t really appeal to her as much as they used to, also she has so much homework lately that by the time she’s done, she just wants to go online or play with her 3DS rather than bother with the TV. As for me, I’ve gotten used to not having any time to watch TV, and now that I have the living room TV all to myself, there’s nothing in particular I like to watch on a regular basis. I will sit down and watch a movie with my roommate if she’s watching one, but mostly she’d rather watch her “Modern Family” reruns in her room.
I have noticed, however, that when I visit my sisters with young children, whatever the little ones want to watch is on the TV. My niece has seen “The Little Mermaid” so many times she knows all the songs by heart, and my nephew has seen every single episode of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” and so have my sis and BIL. :smack:
Our tv isn’t on much during the day. The kids aren’t allowed to watch it often - it makes the five year old grumpy if she’s had too much tv time. On the rare occasions that the main tv is on during the day, it would probably be kid-specific content playing because there isn’t much whole family friendly entertainment that we’re interested in watching. Sometimes I take over the tv while the kids are around and watch something that’s mild enough for them but still more targeted at my age group.
You have to get DVDs from Netflix (no streaming AFAIK) but Eerie, Indiana was a great, if tragically short-lived, show. The premise is that a kid (I think he’s about 12) moves to Eerie with his parents. He’s the only one who seems to notice that the whole town is freaking strange, until he meets a neighbor kid who’s noticed it too. Together, they investigate Eerie’s oddities. Mildly paranormal hijinx ensue. example: in the pilot, a mother keeps her children from aging by storing them in special Tupperware every night.
The Wonder Years is available on Netflix & Amazon instant. In it, a Boomer recalls his middle school years in the early 60s.
I don’t care about TV in general. Mrs. FlooP watches the gritty stuff after he’s in bed.
Otherwise, it’s up to the boy, now 4.5 y.o. He only watches on our work days off. I like watching his shows with him because I’m watching them through his eyes, but also because I like his taste in kid’s shows (mostly :)). He only watches Netflix streaming now, so no commercials, and that’s a big plus for me. He introduced me to Transformers Prime, which is the one show of his that I actually watched a couple of episodes of on my own to see what happened. Also, three words: Phineas and Ferb.
Yeah, we had to suffer through Little Einsteins and Power Rangers, but overall, it’s been a good ride.
I grew up not only before cable but before UHF. As mentioned, pretty much everything was suitable for kids. The “adult” westerns were on late and not all that adult. Since I lived in New York, there were lots of stations with kid friend after school programming, like Soupy Sales and Abbot and Costello.
When my kids were little Nick was just beginning, with lots of good British shows like Danger Mouse, the Star Trek cartoons, and interesting European cartoons. I only watched with them when they were sick, and it wasn’t that much of a hardship. (I could read while the TV was on.)
My kids are grown up now, but when they come home they watch stuff like House Hunters which might be boring for kids but hardly inappropriate. But yeah, ge them to read instead of filling the time with crap.
My almost-4 YO granddaughter loves NickJr and BabyFirst channels. Nothing remotely inappropriate and even somewhat educational. Her favorite is Paw Patrol, about a child and a team of dogs who “save the day” from one semi-disaster after another by cooperating and fixing things.
Thanks for the recommendation. I remember seeing a couple episodes of that when it originally aired. I have a gift certificate to spend so I’ll look for the DVD.
I first noticed the situation Elmwood discusses maybe 20 years ago. While visiting a friend, his kids were watching Nick while we played games. I remember thinking my dad would have had baseball on.
I have young children now, and they do tend to dominate the TV. If we have company, an easy way to keep the kids entertained is to put on a movie. In daily life, they usually watch an hour or two if I’m responsible for them. If I feel like watching a show-- which isn’t often-- they’ll gripe and ask for a cartoon. They’ll watch a documentary with me, provided it has monkeys.
I disagree with the idea of kids having a TV or computer in their room. We try to get our eldest to use his laptop at the kitchen table but if we allow it, he’ll disappear into his room and only come out-- reluctantly-- for dinner. I know teens need privacy, but we’d like to see him once in a while.
So they don’t make boots, hats, coats, gloves, scarves anymore? Cold and/or snowy was never a reason to not go out and play when I was a kid in the midwest. Hell, it was probably the best time because of all the stuff you could build in the snow.
The peaks are a lot higher, undoubtedly, but the number of somewhat offensive kids programs seem to have increased. The kind where they talk to the viewer and try to teach them counting and all other sorts of nonsense I can’t imagine actually does much good. Or at least has enough diminishing returns that having half the programs do it is just redundant. I don’t blanket hate these shows, Dora is okay (or was, at least). But it sometimes feels like that all programming for younger kids has devolved into this vapid edutainment nonsense rather than allowing them to have interesting stories with implied morals.
I’d say older kids (9 and up or so) have exceptionally great programming between Adventure Time, Avatar and whatelse, but the content for really little kids has gotten somewhat dodgy. I’d prefer The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh to the newer My Friends Tigger and Pooh (or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Bubble Guppies and so on).
Granted Sesame Street and Barney and such have been there for a long time, but my point is more that it feels like there’s no content aimed at really young kids not in that vein, rather than complaining that they exist at all.
This is totally not true. I remember watching a lot of stuff on TV in the early to late 60’s that were not child appropriate. Including: On The Waterfront, The Glass Managerie, The L Shaped Room, The Bad Seed, and Marty. Not to mention The Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits.
Here’s the thing: cartoons have undergone a renaissance, and it started back in the 90s. Quality, both of writing and animation, improved dramatically overall, and cartoons began to be written to appeal on multiple levels. Kids who grew up with solid doses of Gargoyles, Batman: TAS, and Animaniacs are adults now, with kids of their own. The cartoons-are-kiddy-crap stigma is much weaker with this cohort. They’re willing to be entertained by animated shows, and aren’t embarrassed to sit and watch cartoons with their kids (or even without them).
Most “kids television” today is either inane, or directly or indirectly aimed at adults. While I don’t have any young children, I DO watch Cartoon Network and Boomerang every so often. I can stand the older cartoons from my youth and before and even some that son used to watch in 1990s when he was a child.
However, the new cartoons and live action programs are terrible. They either talk down to the children (and thus boring most of them as even small children today are somewhat sophisticated). Or they are clearly directed at adults watching with children, as the double entendres and the “in-jokes” are well above the understanding of anyone except an older teen or an adult.
If there is any trend that I find “disturbing” it is that with cable and satellite television, movies which are NOT “child appropriate” are available to to them 24 hours a day. While films like Pulp Fiction, Fight Club and Event Horizon are tame by today’s standards, they still aren’t fare for children,IMHO. Yet they can be seen as early 10am on many cable channels, uncut or not.
Also,thanks to torrents, Youtube and Netflix there are few things that children can’t see anymore. If people have the time and energy to try and using blocking software, they often find that the kid’s level of computer sophistication allows them to easily slip around it.I won’t go into even the “treasure trove” that Tumblr and WordPress can supply them with if they know where to search.
Frankly, I think that parents today don’t want to fight their kids so instead they let watch what they want. While this may be an easy solution when they are young, how do they plan on regulating things when the kids get older?
Magnum PI was the shit when I was a boy, and as a small boy, I really liked Dukes of Hazzard. My parents tolerated the Dukes, but Dad and I made a point to watch Magnum though.
IIRC, family sitcoms usually inhabited the 7 and 7:30 time slots, and adult-ish dramas the 9-10 slots, and 8-9 was more the family drama slot. Kids went to bed earlier back then, I think.
Plus, UHF stations usually had cartoons in the morning from 7-9 IIRC, and in the afternoon starting about 2 and running until about 4-5 and had syndicated sitcoms or family friendly dramas running from about 9-2. Stuff like Gunsmoke, Hogan’s Heroes, Petticoat Junction, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Andy Griffith Show/Mayberry RFD, Leave it to Beaver, etc… So we weren’t lacking for more or less appropriate stuff for kids. Plus there was PBS, but most of their stuff was aimed at younger children when I got into watching TV.
That said, I don’t think the kids these days necessarily control the TV, unless their parents let them. My son (2 1/2) likes a few shows (Tickety Toc, Thomas & Friends, Sesame Street and Peppa Pig), but they don’t come on anywhere near the same time or on the same channels, and we have a DVR, so the TV’s not on non-stop with kid stuff. I imagine as he gets older, we’ll do what my parents did- he can watch what we’re watching, or he can save up his cash and buy his own damn TV and watch what he wants (within reason) on it.
