To Put Away Childish Things
Maybe animation should start seeking adults instead of kids.
In Business Week's May 11 issue, an article by Ronald Grover points out changes in Hollywood that will affect the animation world. ³Crowded in Toon Town² discusses the many new cable channels devoted to kids TV. This summer, Toon Disney, Nickelodeon/CTW's NOGGIN, and UPN's revival of The Disney Afternoon will all hit the air. The Fox Family Channel will air an average of eleven hours of children's shows per day.
All this competition for a fixed market of children is taking its toll. About 60 percent of all advertising in kid shows is purchased in an ³up-front² market. Those advertising sales have gone much slower than normal, only completed last week. This year, advertisers are spending the same as last year, $995 million. However, they're spending it in all the new places kids are watching, including the new cable channels. That meand less money for individual shows.
Imagine you're producing a new cartoon show. You have to convince the networks, and the advertising agencies that pay for the shows, that your project can beat the rest of the crowd already taking up their ad money and air time. I fear a lot of firms and people dedicated to children's programming will be looking for work soon.
Maybe doing animation for kids is a dead end. Maybe it's time for animation companies to start producing programs for an audience of adults and teens. The Simpsons and King of the Hill are among the biggest shows on Fox. Beavis and Butt-head and Daria have attracted attention to MTV. But there's no concerted push to bring animated series to TV. Dreamworks's Invasion America was not exactly demanded by The WB Network; producer Steven Spielberg wanted to make a dramatic animated series, and sold The WB on the idea. The WB bought the name of Spielberg, not the series idea.
But this is the best historical moment to make such a purchase. The last season's live-action series have been disappointing. Aside from ABC's Dharma and Greg, no new sitcoms attracted much of an audience. Seinfeld is gone (thank God; I could never tell if it was comedy or a half-hour of picking navel lint). Ellen got the most notice for being TV's first leading lesbian, but viewers abandoned her when they found out that's all she was. (In becoming a public lesbian, she forgot how to be funny, how to cooperate with other entertainers, how to be anything but the symbol for a cause.) Serious drama is well-served, but the action-adventure series are all tired. Does anyone care about Paramount's Trek franchise? Although the networks didn't buy Hercules or Xena, they don't have anything better to please action fans.
I have problems with animated series doing things that live-action could do just as well. That's part of my dislike of King of the Hill, and why I never warmed to "animated sitcoms" like The Flintstones. However, I've come to the realization that these shows can't be done live in today's environment. Hollywood has given up on filming sitcoms on back lots; they are all taped on soundstages before live audiences. It would be too expensive to build Hank Hill's house, follow him to work, show the local mall and the like on a soundstage.
The prejudice about animation as "kid stuff" still exists, but it's received some shattering blows in recent years. We all know how Disney's animation has become date material for young adults. HBO's Spawn became the company's most popular videotape release, and is often found in the "Japanese Animation" section of video stores - sections which have grown larger as American anime fans have become consistent purchasers of videotape and videodisks.
Invasion America may be the show to establish dramatic animation in America. But it might not, for reasons no one can guess; show business is never predictable. This trend is too important to animation to risk it on one single show. That means that other companies should start producing serious animated shows - now.
In fact, some of those shows already exist. The Sci-Fi Channel has run regular anime movies, but those are strictly science fiction. Japan has many more animated series in the can. Rumiko Takahashi's popular Ranma 1/2 could run on Fox or UPN, covering the minor nudity in the show with obvious "censored" signs. ("Censored" signs floating over the "girl-type" Ranma's breasts might intrigue people about what they can't see on TV, like those Jerry Springer tapes. That would sell more ³uncensored² tapes, and eventually put more yen into Ms. Takahashi's hands, a very good thing.) For family audiences, Disney already owns all the Secret of Blue Water episodes (a few have been released on videotape as Nadia) - properly dubbed and promoted, it would make a great lead-in for ABC's Friday night comedy block.
Once the public sees these appetizers, American animation companies could unveil series that reflect American dreams and desires. Anime is all well and good, but we need American shows. This may sound jingoistic, but American entertainment has always been popular worldwide; it's one of the few things we do better than any other nation. Our animation companies must commit to producing those series and pitching them to the networks. It may be scary and a difficult sell, but I think it would be scarier to sell a derivative show like Ultraforce or Sky Surfers in today's kid's market.
A word of warning; when animation enters the outside world, the outside world will also rush in. Some animation fans believe they own this territory, and amuse themselves by sniping at each other on the Internet. (Take a look at the latest skirmishes in the "subs vs. dubs" war on the anime newsgroups.) If animation becomes a major part of TV programming, the big powers of live-action entertainment will take part. People who tried to hide from the world through involvement in animation fandom got upset when Steven Spielberg, a successful live-action filmmaker, produced successful animated shows. They will hate it when Stephen Bochco produces the animated equivalent of his NYPD Blue. But if fans truly care about animation - if they want America to have the pride Japan has in its animated shows - they must learn to accept the world as it is.
I don't make these suggestions simply because I'm an animation fan. I'm also a television fan, and I'm tired of seeing my favorite medium (the one in which I make my living) becoming tedious. Television brought me new horizons and new possibilities in my youth, possibilities I don't see in today's shows. I don't want to live in the past of Nick at Night's TV Land. Those possibilites can only come from the introduction of new ideas, concepts and people. And right now, animation can bring those dreams alive again.
Thomas E. Reed is a television engineer in Orlando, Florida. He really is not heavily prejudiced against Evil Empire Number Three's greatest product, Windows 95. However, having spent a sleepless night helping his friend Jeff make his Windows screen visible again - after Jeff accidentally made a control panel setting his ³Plug and Play² monitor couldn't accept - he is thinking about sending a contribution to the Justice Department to help them barbecue Bill Gates's butt. Send Bill's Butt Bongo Barbecue recipes to tomreed@sundial.net.
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