The Muppet Show...Continued?

[Walter]

Okay, so as we all know, THE MUPPETS is coming to theatres and is billed as being the Muppets "Big Comeback"... So.. How do you think Disney will follow it up? Do you think it's possible that another "Muppet Show" will come to creation??? Maybe on Disney XD, Disney Channel, or maybe even ABC??

 

[muppetlover123]

exactly i would love to see a new muppet show like The Muppets: TV or something like that
and keep the old charters and if the show got good ratings maybe considiring a sequel to the muppets

 

[bazooka_beak]

Who knows? Although it would never replace the original show in my heart

 

[Oscarfan]

It's been well established that finding a home for a new Muppet show would be hard, 'cause today's TV landscape is much different than it was in the 70's. Variety shows aren't as common. I forget who proposed it, but someone here had the idea for variety specials. THOSE could work.

 

[D'Snowth]

Okay, so as we all know, THE MUPPETS is coming to theatres and is billed as being the Muppets "Big Comeback"... So.. How do you think Disney will follow it up? Do you think it's possible that another "Muppet Show" will come to creation??? Maybe on Disney XD, Disney Channel, or maybe even ABC??

We were supposed to get a new Muppet show several years ago (apparently a take-off of The Office, like that would be any good), but Disney shelved it. Disney's shelved a lot of Muppet projects, we're lucky enough we're getting this movie. We may get some kind of subsequent project, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[RedPiggy]

I'd like it to be something more improv-y (LOL). I don't know if they can sustain a certain theme/concept. I'd like to see each episode just make it up as they go along. Variety still made some sense when you could still half-remember vaudeville. What I'd like to see is a show where the characters are just themselves, but with kinda random "sketches" thrown in. Some could take place in the Theater, some could return to MC (like that will happen), some could just be random YT parodies ... there could be a soap parody where some evil sister that no one knew about magically appears.

 

[dwmckim]

We kind of hit this ground in the where do the Muppets go from here thread, but as much as i would certainly hope the movie leads to other big major projects (tv series or no), my biggest concern is that Disney's going to pull the same routine that has beleaguered the Muppets for the last dozen years throughout all the various parent companies/regimes...whenever they do a Big Project, everyone sits around and waits to see how well it performs BEFORE making any big plans what the follow up will be (as opposed to having some great plans already laid out that they can get right to work on or be starting work on in the interim) This results in a HUGE wait before the next big project is even ready to go and by that time, the Muppets basically are at the point where they have to be "making another comeback" because the time between was too long.

I really want to believe that things are different but i seem to remember reading in a recent article that Disney does look to be taking the Wait-and-See approach before moving forward at all.

 

[Drtooth]

It's been well established that finding a home for a new Muppet show would be hard, 'cause today's TV landscape is much different than it was in the 70's. Variety shows aren't as common. I forget who proposed it, but someone here had the idea for variety specials. THOSE could work.

Ideally, I think that if the Muppets were to have a show, they should take a cue from Looney Tunes and do something more sitcom-y. Somehow, I feel they'd do it better justice than the Looney Tunes (even though i like that show). And they also should take a cue from later episodes of Muppets Tonight. Instead of centering around one guest star, smaller celebrity cameos that pop up a little more naturally like they do in the movies. I do NOT see anything remotely like the classic Muppet show working on television today.

Of course, I find it hard to picture ANY Muppet show in today's climate, and I've said this very often. The networks wouldn't touch it, Disney's cable channels are too set in their demographics to try anything new (Phineas and Ferb was a gamble that paid off, sure... but they managed to keep some of the tween-ness into the show)... and of course, syndication, which was a boon for the original Muppet Show (the networks didn't want it then either), is long since dead... or at least consists solely of terrible daytime programming. The era of the low budget, live action Saturday Afternoon program ended with the Clinton administration. The Muppet could have benefited greatly from a movement like that.

 

[Whatnot1988]

I'm not sure, but I think one way the Mouse House can hype audiences' intrest in a "new" Muppet Show is to re-run the original for a few months (if not a full year) and see how the ratings of the reruns perform.

However, I see one complication: It is a common practice among networks nowadays to cut out the original closing credits of a show and re-create them in fine print on a sidebar on one half of the screen while a commercial plays on the other half of the screen.

In terms of TMS, it would mean the action upon which the original closing credits were superimposed would be deleted, as would Statler and Waldorf's witty closing remarks. Imagine what would happen to the episode-specific credit sequences like the ones for Kaye Ballard, Lorreta Lynn and Dudley Moore!

 

[Drtooth]

But then they'd need a place to put the reruns, and that's the same problem. I'd say the Hub could very well be a nice place for TMS reruns. Then again, the Hub isn't exactly a channel you get in the basic package, is it? Unless Disney's doing some idiotic catch 22 crap, and won't rerun it because it will hurt DVD sales, but they can't get the rights to get it on DVD. They kinda pulled that with Spider-Man back a few years ago, refusing to put that or X-men on DVD because it would hurt Toon Disney airings.

The old series NEEDS to be relived somewhere before the movie if they really want to hype it up.