Mister Rogers Online & An Animated Neighborhood?30 Oct
As many of you who’ve been following this campaign for a while will know, PBS has said that their plans include bringing Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood episodes online — it was a key point in their press release announcing the show’s weekday demise. So, not surprisingly, a question we’ve been getting a lot is… “Well, where are they!?”
Unfortunately, it would seem that there are no plans for the immediate future. It’s a real shame, especially for children in the areas where the Neighborhood program is no longer being aired each weekday. We hope you’ll continue to contact PBS and let them know how important it is to keep the Neighborhood available to today’s children and the people who care for them.
One point of concession, there are 12 episodes that can be streamed from PBSKidsPlay.org, PBS’ subscription online service. Not exactly the entire library, but it’s worth checking out using the available free trial.
One special thing to note… The site features an animated Neighborhood of Make-Believe environment that would be A LOT better if they had bothered to try to get the character voices even remotely close to the way they originally sounded. (C’mon! I can do a better X the Owl than the person they’re using.)
While navigating around the site, I began to wonder… Would the Neighborhood of Make-Believe work as an animated program? It would be tricky to create an animated program that was true to the nurturing spirit of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, but if it were done with the excellence and care that Fred Rogers employed on his show, I think it could be a special, unique thing.
What do you think? Sound off in the comments…
Some time ago Family Communications Inc. mentioned that they were looking to develop a new show that would follow Fred Rogers ideals, and the first thing I thought of was doing an animated program. I have to believe that an animated series with “marketable” characters is more appealing to PBS than the Classic Neighborhood has become. A lot could really be done to preserve what we all love about the Neighborhood- I even figured they could just reuse the audio from the real neighborhood segments and thus the character voices are preserved, but most likely they’d choose to rerecord that sort of thing. All of Fred’s songs could still be used and old storylines could be recycled too. I don’t know if thier prime intention would be to preserve as much of the Classic Neighborhood as I’m suggesting here, but it would be interesting to see it done that way. I shudder to think of the more likely outcome: the Neighborhoods wholesome, honest inhabitants being changed into more hip, edgy characters just for the sake of getting it on the air.
Hi Eric,
I wonder if that is what is in the offing. It could certainly be wonderful — but it could also be a complete travesty.
As a supporter of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, I would hate to see the Neighborhood characters made into products. However, I wouldn’t be as opposed to merchandising if the new program maintained the original’s “deep and simple” values.
I imagine what they would create would be something along the lines of Arthur or Caillou in terms of the vibe. It simply cannot be anything too flashy, and it must be properly paced.
I’m sure that if such a thing is in development that the people working on it must know how high the bar has been set… It would really have to be done with excellence.
The voices have *got* to be done right. No poor imitations.
If I were the one creating the program, I’d have Chuck Aber come in and do some of the voices — he can mimic Fred’s characters quite well. I’d have him serve as narrator, too — he has the right peaceful spirit for it. It would be great to feature David Newell in some way as well.
Love to hear more of your thoughts.
Yeah Chuck Aber, and all of the live actor’s involvement would make it instantly more appealing to me. But Chuck specifically seemed to be in tune with Fred’s vibe, as you say. There was an episode (during the “Mistakes” week I think) where Chuck “minded the house” while Fred ran to a quick meeting. It made me think that if FCI decided to continue the Neighborhood without Fred, Chuck would be a good choice. Don’t know how much of what was on the screen was Chuck’s honest inner self, or just his being an excellent actor. Many people probably share Fred’s views, but wouldn’t necessarily have his ability to drive a program and keep it on his track.
The voices would have to be better than the ones on that website, at least to satisfy us who remember the original, but I can’t help but remind myself that the show would be aimed at really young kids, many of whom may not have seen the original (isn’t the whole point of the world today to gain whichever audience you don’t have yet, and to heck with your loyal followers?), but I guess if the message was right, the accuracy of the voices really is a trivial matter.
In short, if FCI were to do it the way that would make me happy, I don’t see PBS or anyone else being interested in putting it on the air. They’ve made it clear that Fred’s deep and simple way is out of fashion and they are more interested in flashy but ultimately insubstantial.