PBS: You Lost My Support.
What insanity and rank stupidity is this?! How in the world can PBS even think of relegating Mister Rogers' Neighborhood to what amounts to television Siberia? It's hard, if not impossible, to top Cait Dee's posting here, but I feel like I have to say something about this utterly asinine decision. Mr Roger's Neighborhood fills a need in children's programming which will now be utterly lacking. It's slow. It's deliberate. It respects children. It's thoughtful. It's careful. What do we get in replacement? More noisy, "short attention span theater" programs for children which are used more for marketing and selling garbage in WalMart than for real learning. Even Sesame Street has been dumbed down in recent years (hard to believe, but it has). Furthermore, how can you possibly move this to one or two weekend showings?! The very structure of the show dictates that it is meant to be shown five days a week! Visits to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe will lose all context with a week's gap between episode plot lines.
PBS may be attempting to make themselves feel better about this by saying, "Hey! It's still on! Early in the morning on a Saturday! Now shut the heck up and be happy you're getting that!" But, no, this attempt at a warm and fuzzy resolution to this falls completely flat. PBS is just going to bury it until its ratings COMPLETELY flatline, at which time they can point to said ratings as reason for final cancellation. PBS is, in fact, killing Mr Rogers. Thanks. Me, I'm killing any future contributions to PBS. It seems somehow fitting.
