Your thoughtss on Disney owning The Muppets

[JJandJanice]

Yeah i see. (wellcome JJandJanice to the Count von Count and Colbynfriends talk show) But if the movie is not good they are going to make up for it. Just kidding Colbynfriends!

I'm not totally sure what you mean by that talk show thing, but happy to be here I guess, .

 

[Colbynfriends]

I'm happy everyones here (even though technacly not everones here, but still)
Count von Count, i don't get the joke. is it not a talk show? That would be kind of cool if it was.

also, you have a point JJandJanice about Disney making things better than they are, they see Cars as the best pixar movie ever, right after Finding Nemo (which they both are great, but in my own opinion, its Toy Story) and because of it, alot of merchendise was produced and sold. I just hope that if and when they hype up the new muppet movie, it will deliver what it promises.

 

[Count von Count]

Oh it's just me and him talking and we are playing the same game on Muppet unscramble. we just been talking for a long time and no one come in to talk. You get it now?

 

[David French]

It's simple - the Muppets just aren't as popular as they were in the 1970's. Yes, they have a very large fanbase and people have nostalgic memories of TMS etc BUT at the end of the day that's about as far as it goes.

The real problem is that television networks rarely schedule shows like TMS in a good time slot. The last time it aired on free-to-air TV in NZ was back in 1997/98 when it aired at 7am on Weekday mornings.

The other problem is that some of the TV specials are very obscure; few have aired outside of North America and Canada and most of them have dated quite badly.

Until network schedulers take a punt and actually air the films/TV shows in proper prime time slots (and promote them to get the viewers) then I'm sorry to say that things are unlikely to improve any time soon.

 

[Count von Count]

What do you think about the Disney Muppet web-site?

 

[Colbynfriends]

I've seen the Muppet site, and I personally liked it. They have a lot of funny videos and a few games (although it kind of annoys me that you have to be a member to play a few of them). One thing I wish they would do, is do bios for the different characters, like they had on there last one. I also want them to update it so all of the other rooms are opened (last time I was there, which was about a month or so ago the only ones that were opened was Kermit's and Piggy's). But all in all, its a good start.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

I think it's a god match!

 

[Drtooth]

Simply put, I keep moving from "I hate it" to "I'm on the fence" to "Let the good times roll!"

I've said everything on every scale a million different times. And it all comes down to OZ. While the project wasn't something projected by Disney, they did have a hand in it. And that hand caused them to rush the project out for the Stock holders, and mainstream audiences. And as a result, it didn't click with audiences or fans. And the schedualling for it couldn't have been worse. Opposite the daytime Emmy's on the night when Star Wars episode III was released? Are you serious?

And as a result, they have been very, very, very cautious about how to bring them back after that disaster. We're down 2 unfinished TV pilots, and we have a movie, that's still just in script stage- yet to be produced let alone filmed.

What we DO have is the new web video site. Now, THEY had the right idea there. A lot of Muppet fans are computer geeks. Plus, if you can't get them on TV (due to the politics of television which I'll get into later), the Web's the next best thing.

But consider this. We just came out of the 2002, 2 DTV movie projects, an action figure line, and more merchandise than you can handle Muppet Blitz. And do you know how long that last period was? Sure, not quite this long, but we had years after MFS where nothing happened.

I am unhappy for the following reasons:

Muppet Babies hasn't had a decent relaunch, and we're at peak time where the fans of the show grew up and have kids of their own to watch it with. I understand that various rights keep Muppet babies DVD box sets in limbo, but why no merchandise? We have Baby Pooh (which makes no sense at all), Baby mickey, and even Baby Princesses. Why not the original, even just on Baby Bottles and Bibs?

We haven't any really exciting mainstream merchandise. Sure, a few stacatto T-shirts and Christmas orniments. But the only big things on the horizon are Muppet Master Replicas, which frankly are the most luxurious of a luxury buy, and a Muppet Star Wars figure set you have to go to Disney World to get. No notible plush lines, PVC's, or anything as grand as we just saw. I can understand that. But at least a Kermit Plush at the Disney Store.

But as for this:

The real problem is that television networks rarely schedule shows like TMS in a good time slot. The last time it aired on free-to-air TV in NZ was back in 1997/98 when it aired at 7am on Weekday mornings.

The other problem is that some of the TV specials are very obscure; few have aired outside of North America and Canada and most of them have dated quite badly.

You know, I have no doubt in my mind that the Muppets aren't as relevant as they ever where. Tune in Family Guy. Every other week Peter syas, "This is worse than wrong sounding Muppets!" We had people on SNL dress as the Mayhem, The Chef, and Rolwf. Kermit and Piggy were on the Simpsons a couple weeks back. They're clearly in everyone's mind, but not quite on TV in full force anymore. It's been lord knows how long Kermit, Piggy, or anyone else popped up on a morning talk show. We haven't seen any commercials with them hocking products (how is that necesarily a bad thing? Was it terrible when Jay Leno ate all he wanted while Lays made more doritos?). If we could get them to regularly pop up somewhere, we'd get some handle.

Personally, I'm disappointed that The Muppet Show, in all these TV rerun centric cable networks, doesn't have a place. Not even ABC family. The box sets are selling gangbusters, sure... but not everyone can get box sets. It's all the politics of television, and how the programming heads just want the highest ratings possible, and don't care about quality. Fringe networks (and I've been talking about this for a while) feel they have to compete with mainstream channels. Cartoon Network doesn't wanna run cartoons anymore, TV Land doesn't want to air classic TV reruns... they either look for original programming that's an inferior clone of something out there that no one wants to watch. Or reruns of current shows at least. There's no variety on TV anymore, since these network guys want the same audience watching everything else to watch them. But the problem is, they are quite happy watching what they were watching before.

So, I'm not surprised it's taking them forever to make a mainstream Muppet TV show, and all the while not rerunning Muppets Tonight, specials, or the original series.

 

[frogboy4]

It's simple - the Muppets just aren't as popular as they were in the 1970's. Yes, they have a very large fanbase and people have nostalgic memories of TMS etc BUT at the end of the day that's about as far as it goes.

The real problem is that television networks rarely schedule shows like TMS in a good time slot. The last time it aired on free-to-air TV in NZ was back in 1997/98 when it aired at 7am on Weekday mornings.

The other problem is that some of the TV specials are very obscure; few have aired outside of North America and Canada and most of them have dated quite badly.

Until network schedulers take a punt and actually air the films/TV shows in proper prime time slots (and promote them to get the viewers) then I'm sorry to say that things are unlikely to improve any time soon.

That's somewhat true in part, but as a whole the Muppets are in the minds of people here in the US. Heck, Virgin Megastore plays the Muppet Show DVDs on all of the big screens the last two season launches (and one of these came out opposite a Simpson's season set).

The issue is that there really is no significant tack to the Muppets' exposure and merchandise post product launches, but that's the way it is here with most fare these days. Everything marketed today is disposable tomorrow in this culture and I don't like it.

A new Muppet television program would be great, or even reruns of Muppets Tonight, select TMS episodes (as they are trying to sell the DVDs) and non-dated Muppet specials on the Disney Channel would be a good way for Disney to capitalize on their investment and open up a more consistent marketing strategy for the Muppet brand.

 

[Count von Count]

Ok cool