You Ever Notice...and What's the Deal...

[D'Snowth]

It was always like that. Always.

Not necessarily. Again, network execs had trust enough to let Sid & Marty Krofft do their thing back in the day (PINK LADY & JEFF, one of the worst shows in history, was a big exception - Sid had an idea of what he wanted the show to be, but the network told them to make it a clone of DONNY & MARIE).

 

[charlietheowl]

Not necessarily. Again, network execs had trust enough to let Sid & Marty Krofft do their thing back in the day (PINK LADY & JEFF, one of the worst shows in history, was a big exception - Sid had an idea of what he wanted the show to be, but the network told them to make it a clone of DONNY & MARIE).

Pink Lady and Jeff came on NBC at the same time they aired Hello Larry and Supertrain, so NBC might have been desperate as well as confident in the Krofft brothers. I think they almost went bankrupt after the Olympic debacle in 1980. It's funny how Fred Silverman seemed to have the golden touch at ABC and could barely put a schedule together at NBC.

 

[D'Snowth]

That show was a disaster to begin with... apparently, Silverman saw Pink Lady perform on the tail-end of a newsprogram, and decided right then and there to give them their own show, and turned to the Kroffts to produce it.

Seriously, that's how it happened.

They were bigger in Japan than the Beatles were anywhere, but virtually unheard of here in the U.S., yet Silverman felt they had potential to be given their own American show.

Like I said in another thread, I just recently discovered Canadian jazz singer Emilie-Claire Barlow, so that'd be like me giving her her own show down here (well, okay, apparently Americans know her as a voice actress, but whatever).

Silverman even told Sid and Marty they spoke English, but when they held a meeting with them to talk about the show, guess what? They didn't understand a word of English!

 

[charlietheowl]

That show was a disaster to begin with... apparently, Silverman saw Pink Lady perform on the tail-end of a newsprogram, and decided right then and there to give them their own show, and turned to the Kroffts to produce it.

Seriously, that's how it happened.

Wow, that's a terrible way to decide to make a show, lol. Plus I can't imagine it was trendy to make a variety show in 1980-1981, most of them had died out as the seventies came to an end. Even Carol Burnett had ran out of steam by that point.

 

[D'Snowth]

And, if you ask me, the Kroffts were really in a Dork Age when they did variety shows... DONNIE & MARIE? THE BRADY BUNCH HOUR? PINK LADY & JEFF? BARBARA MANDRELL & THE MANDRELL SISTERS? With the exception of the first (debatable), those shows tanked.

 

[Drtooth]

Not necessarily. Again, network execs had trust enough to let Sid & Marty Krofft do their thing back in the day (PINK LADY & JEFF, one of the worst shows in history, was a big exception - Sid had an idea of what he wanted the show to be, but the network told them to make it a clone of DONNY & MARIE).

Depends on how much sway you hold. If you make enough money, and you're proven to be a big enough brand, the networks will eventually leave you alone.

That show was a disaster to begin with... apparently, Silverman saw Pink Lady perform on the tail-end of a newsprogram, and decided right then and there to give them their own show, and turned to the Kroffts to produce it.

Snickers... the strange thing is, that's almost the exact same story with Cartoon Network and Puffy Ami Yumi. The head of the network at the time was obsessed with them, hired them for the Teen Titans theme song, and then gave them their own cartoon. But, aye, CN did it smart. They had them only in framing devices, subtitled them, and made the cartoon character versions of them barely resemble them with English voice actresses giving them Californian accents (in otherwords not Japanese at freaking all). It was a modest success for a brief period. Clearly this guy knew the mistakes Fred Silverman made.

 

[D'Snowth]

Okay, so apparently, there's this thing going on with wikis and forums: whenever you try to link/embed an image from a wiki in a forum post, for some reason, the images are automatically scaled down to 200px in width, which begs the question... why?

It's not just MC, BTW, it's almost every forum out there... why do wikis feel the need to scale down images when they're posted on a forum? Or, is it the forums that scale down the wiki images? Probably not the latter, because if that was the case, then any image from any site would be scaled down if needed, it most be something with wiki technology that feels the need to scale down images when shared.

 

[Drtooth]

As a fan of the show, this kinda got to me.

Okay, if Amazing World of Gumball is so popular that they air it that many times a day, where the heck is the merchandise? There are (impossible to find) kid's books, a zipper up backpack plush that's like in one out of every 10 Party City Stores, and a comic book series... but you'd think a show the network loved so much would at least have something.

 

[D'Snowth]

Ever notice in the Pizzeria Dos insert, the two chefs give Mr. Johnson two grape drinks in paper cups, yet after he and his clone faint, they clink the cups together as if they're glass (and they even make a clinking sound effect as well).

 

[D'Snowth]

Okay, I'm definitely about to shift into Seinfeld-mode, and really do a riff here.

Okay, so, a lot of M*A*S*Hers are really excited right now, because the first five seasons of the show are available on Netflix now. HUH-ray. It astounds me that all these years of all eleven seasons being available on DVD, either individually, or in a non-practical complete series set, that people have been holding out all this time just to watch the show on Netflix. I mean, wouldn't you rather just make the one-time purchase of the DVDs to watch whenever you wanted to on a nice TV screen, without having to register a membership and rent them to watch them on a computer monitor? Of course then again, I know some people who actually do have the DVDs, but are still stoked about the show being on Netflix, because apparently, they see this as a better alternative than watching DVDs because it's less of a hassle. Now, come on . . . doesn't that just sound like the epitomy of a first world problem? Having to open the case, pop a disc into a DVD player, navigate through DVD menus, then when you want to watch something else, eject the current disc, get another one, etc. etc. etc. Wow, I'm exhausted just thinking about it.