When did kids sketch shows go down hill?

[willywonka666]

I think the networks caught on that to make the most money you play to the lowest common denominator. It's all f***ing greed, and there's not much money in quality sadly enough.

[MolotovMocktail]

It also has to do with kids' TV having to be completely sanitized for our (as children) protection. There's no way You Can't Do That on Television would fly on today's squeaky-clean Nickelodeon.

[The QC Loser]

Jan 3, 2011 2:08:27 GMT -5 Ronny Rayguns Is All Elite said:

Jan 3, 2011 1:54:19 GMT -5 Milkman Norm said:

I can barely remember the sketch show that featured Steven Cobert, Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris (to the point I can't remember the name, it was named after some road) but now that Colbert is big it would be huge. The same goes for kids shows.

Exit 57?

There is nothing worse than bad sketch comedy. As someone who is a fan of the genre it tears me up inside.

On a semi related note, I bought the complete third season of SNL and good gravy is it a hard watch. Maybe just cause I don't grasp all of the topical references

I was trying to watch my way through all the seasons of SNL on Netflix and my god it gets painful during the early 80's Ended up having to skip forward to about season 11 or so before it was watchable.

[ICBM]

The 90's had some good ones in the early part of the decade. But as with most good things oversaturation became prevelant and the decline started.

I recall Nickelodeon's "Welcome Freshmen" being well recieved at first but suffering and ceing canceled. I think you could make a case that around this period they just started churning them out and not caring how good they were

[Baixo Astral]

When I became an adult

[HMARK Center]

A big part of the equation is growing up: kid's humor simply won't appeal to a person nearly as much after awhile, at least not most kid's humor. It's why a lot of the enduring shows are those that have different things to laugh at; kids laugh at one thing, an older audience can laugh at something else (without compromising that it's a kid's show at heart).

That said, mass production is a bigger factor today; there's less room, it seems, for experimentation and risk taking in childrens' entertainment, as the money involved in making cable shows has skyrocketed since the 80's and even the late 90's. It's safer to follow the money making formula (the same way a lot of animation studios did when making toy-commercial-centric cartoons in the 80's) than it is to experiment on a show like Pete and Pete, or You Can't Do That..., or whatever else.

That's not to slam all current kid's shows, as you can tell by my current picture here and in my sig, but as it was pointed out before, animation and live action are two different realms in kids' programming.

[Red Impact]

I do find it funny how anyone could criticize gross out humor in kid's shows today... when that was pretty much Ren and Stimpy's appeal (and, to a lesser extent, Rocko's Modern Life). That was also a huge part of "You can't do that on television" given that the Barth's Burgers sketch was in every episode at least once, IIRC.

It wasn't like it was all "The Adventures of Pete and Pete."

[Jobes]

When I became a teenager...

[N E O G E O B O Y S]

It's also the time frame when those series were released

Like a friend said, pete and pete was the ultimate expression of grunge in that era

You can take the example of the WWF attitude era, everybody says how awesome it was, but if you put that kind of show today, it will receive a lot of backlash, from being trashy amongst other things

[BK From WV]

Jan 3, 2011 10:59:30 GMT -5 @beau99 said:

Jan 3, 2011 1:54:19 GMT -5 Milkman Norm said:

I can barely remember the sketch show that featured Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris (to the point I can't remember the name, it was named after some road) but now that Colbert is big it would be huge. The same goes for kids shows.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangers_with_Candy

Strangers With Candy actually came after Exit 57.

[Cavs for Mavs Mafia]

Most of these shows aren't sketch shows.

[Gerard Gerard]

They imported the likes of All That and The Amanda Show onto our Nickelodeon years and years ago, back in my kiddy days. It amazes me this dreckuousness can even be passed to air. It plays like an active attempt to dumbify kids as to keep the local supermarkets stocked up with staff. Dan Schneider should be ashamed of the tosh he's unleashed upon the world.