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NETWORK TV Fall 2024
It's that time of year again! The networks are releasing their fall line ups
The Paul McCartney song, "The Other Me" is oh sorry, wrong blog. We dip back into a Disney Channel Original movie ,again from the year 2000, to bring you the September installment of that year, "The Other Me". The movie stars Andy Lawrence in his second of three Disney Channel original movies.
The movie starts at school where some kids make fun Andy Lawrence's character, Will Browning, for having a yo-yo (why?, like I know) Will isn't the best student in school he likes to be lazy and slide by, how do I know this? Because he said it. There's a girl who makes me scared for Will, like she might like him or might want to kill him. (That would make this movie more exciting.) Her name is Heather and she wants to ask Will to the dance, but he Will-not (get it?) The actress playing Heather was in a couple other Disney Channel movies: Phantom of the Megaplex and Cadet Kelly.
Will has a science project due in 3 weeks, because if he doesn't do well he Will (stop it) have to repeat the class. There's also bully character, named Scottie DeSota , who is important for this movie. (Find at 5,6,9, and 10) To be fair, Will got him suspended, but I'm not sure of the full details. Now at home, we see Will's family. The mother seems to be a hippy and the dad is played by Mark L Taylor, a guy that always seems to be cast as a Dad in a TV show or movie.
And he has a sister named Allana, she exists. Since it's report card day, the parents like the sister's report card and don't like Will's. The parents say that if he doesn't get his grades up, he would end up at a boys summer boot camp. (Because, that'll fix things) I would be bad to not mention that one of those cool see through land line phones is in this movie. His mother tells him they don't care about A grades; they want him to try harder. He finds a magazine and decides to use it as a science project idea.
Meanwhile, at a placed Ocean Pups these two guys are trying to do some cloning, called hyper-cloning. They want to be rich. The company is actually a front operation to do what they do. Their names are Victor and Conrad. (They will be our villains, this movie) So mouse escapes causing a cat to chase it and knock over some cloning stuff and some of it seeps through the floor to the products they are selling where it drips on one box that will end up guess where? Oh yeah main character's house.
These ocean pup things seem to be like those "sea monkey" things. Will starts to work on his project and uses his comb to mix the stuff , thus causing him to create a naked clone, that is is his same age and stuff. Also the clone is played by Andy Lawrence, so he's doing a Disney's Parent trap here. (Fun how this works for both versions) He calls Ocean Pups, and tells them it does some weird stuff , which helps our plot later. ( I did this out of order but it flows better here) After a moment of time of constant staring and bemusement we get the movie going again.
The other me would be the glad one/ Copyright Disney
I noticed a fun little shooting error but I won't mention what it was. Anyway, Will decides that the best thing to do with a clone is to pass him of as a science project. (Yep, that's normal) The lady he called tells our villains that some strange things happened and they put together that some of their cloning stuff made it out.
The music for the background in this movie is done by Mark Mothersbaugh , so that's why it sounds like "Rugrats" somewhat. The clone seems to be able to read books quickly and absorbing information in a quick fashion. Parts of this movie will be antics of Will trying to hide the clone, that's much of this film.
The CW has announced it's summer premiere dates, with some series that had be pushed down; mixed in will be some CW summer staples as well. New seasons of " DC's Stargirl , Masters of Illusion, and Roswell. The sixth and final season of Supergirl launches in August.
Also returning : "Dead Pixels" , "Coroner", "Burden of Truth" and new episodes of "Riverdale" and "DC's Legends of Tomorrow"
The CW has announced a change in premiere dates for season 3 of "In the Dark" which was supposed to premiere on June 9.
The premiere of Sky horror-comedy, "Wellington Paranormal" will premiere with back to back episodes on July 11th, then it will be premiered with other British comedy, "Dead Pixels".
Nexstar Media is launching a new digital network that will complement Antenna TV called Rewind TV. Rewind TV will be airing classic TV shows from the 1980's and 90's. This gives Antenna TV which has been airing shows from the 50's to 90's some breathing room in their line up.
Rewind will be airing some series that have been airing on Antenna TV such as, Murphy Brown, Growing Pains, Wings, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Who's the Boss, and Family Ties, and new addition The Drew Carey Show. Antenna TV will still air shows from 50's through 70's and the weeknight re run of Johnny Carson.
The station will launch May 1st on Nexstar stations on newly added or replacements of existing digital channels. (Court TV airs on many of the former Tribune Nexstar stations maybe leaving due to it moving to Ion sub channels)
Editor's note: This post was made back in 2016, but it never made it to post and just lingered as a draft all this time. Part of a plan that didn't come together as well as previously thought, so we are here to post it now. This post hasn't been changed from it's original premise in 2016, minus this note being added on top. Some things have changed since this post, thanks to streaming, especially. Thankyou for reading.
As part of our 10th anniversary , we take this time to take a look at TV stories or things in TV that happened in the past 10 years or maybe something that happened before but effects TV to this day. We take a look at topics in television or media that have an interesting or important element to what television brings us.
Have you ever gotten mad at the History Channel for airing non-history factual programming? Did you know that Bravo used to be an arts channel , hence the name Bravo?
Honestly , Yes Names should mean something! (Don't look us like that) The phrase of what to call a channel that has gone off their launch mission is called Channel Drift. It can also be called network decay. Let's say Joshuoanline had tons of money and we launched a TV channel called Car-Repair TV (no relation to any real Car Repair TV's that might be out there) that aired how to shows on how to repair cars. Our target audience people with cars maybe ages 18-49 ,which is basic for advertisers. We do pretty well ,viewers love finding out how to fix their cars and we even start adding programs for people who want to modify their cars. Our concept goes so well that other companies launch their own versions , some fizzle away be cause nobody can beat Car Repair TV. A few years later we start adding programs that have nothing car repair but may fit with those watching, Our channel's biggest audience is Men ages 30-50 in fact we beat ESPN in the audience so we find programming that we think they would like besides car repair , let's say we pick up rights to NASCAR races. It has cars so it fits and we might get some viewers who weren't watching who might stay after the race to watch Stick Shifts with Buck. Have we drifted ? Yes ..but in a small percentage. Reality Shows are hot , so we add a reality show that fits with our channel though , called Can you Fix it ? Where our contestants are compete to on who can be the best mechanic. We rename the channel to an acronym of CRTV (Car Repair TV) and we continue. Well there's in wrench in life later as people have found other ways to have car repair info , they can go on the internet for it ,and now there's a video site that you can look it up, and in fact we start doing the same. Our TV channel needs to survive so we do the unthinkable we decide to cut back on our Car Repair TV programming and refocus our name as CRTV and decide to keep Nascar , make some reality shows about cars , we pick up other car racing groups . Our older programming is shoved to mornings and our website. Our channel drifted, slowly, but times caught up to us and our management felt we had to change.
The Biggest name brought up in a channel drift is MTV , formerly MTV : Music Television. MTV was part of the early days of cable , which was an inventive time and possibly at it's best. (hang on) There were many single program style program channels, Want Sports and Sports news 24/7 : ESPN (1979) , want News all day live ? CNN (1980) , are you a kid tired of not being able to watch children's shows at 5pm on a Saturday ? Nickelodeon (1979). Music videos did air on TV but there was not an outlet of MTV's scale and they changed out music videos were done. But then in the mid 2000's they cut back on music videos and few other music programs like TRL , to focus on other things in the demo they were attracted. Today they air dramas, sitcoms, and reality shows this is a definitely a drift. Is this a bad drift ,good drift ? Maybe a survival drift. MTV to stay on the air felt they ad to adapt to the changing market place like our fake CRTV had to do. This makes people ,who grew up with MTV doing Music and music videos (as of this writing they are going to do some music programs starting soon) , though if MTV was to put back music videos, there's a chance that you might not watch. They are not going to air the same music videos that you remember because MTV Always did current music videos. MTV Hits , which was an extra channel on cable airs music videos all day of current songs not songs from the 80's and 90's also with the internet you can find tons of music videos from the past right there and watch anytime you want, or watch MTV Classic which airs older music videos all day.
The another drift offender, the most outrageous one is TLC. If you were to tell someone that didn't grow up in the 90's or before that TLC's letters used to mean The Learning Channel , they would be shocked or not , what do we know? Not to make this a history lesson so we are going to make this short. TLC was launched in 1972 by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and NASA as the Appalachian Community Service Network. It was a way to provide educational and instructional programming using television. In the 80's the name was changed to The Learning Channel and it did what the name was on the tin and it was privatized when it was renamed. A competitor launched called Discovery Channel ,think about that channels competing for viewers over programming about nature, science, history ,and other educational programs. In the 90's Discovery bought TLC , that's who owns them today. Discovery must have felt that having two learning channels would be a bit redundant. In the late 90's they went for a new focus the slogan I remember the most "Life Unscripted" was started, this brought in programming like inetior design shows , guess to compete with the HGTV market. Shows like Baby Story and crime shows and etc. So in this period was the decay? I would say no , was it drift , yes? Though I guess you are learning about how crimes are solved or how to do some D.I.Y is some type of learning. They did started focusing on the name TLC and less on The Learning Channel , like when our fake channel focused on CRTV , it lets the channel have more flexibility. TLC then started finding success in reality shows but their focus instead of competition shows like the networks , or whatever the heck Bravo is doing , they went for "real people" well many call this lowest common denominator programming.
But why did they do it ? Well ratings , were high yep and that equaled that they felt you wanted more. People watching Jon and Kate Plus 8 .. well hey here are some other big families with maybe some drama added in. Do you like Cake Boss... well let's make more. TLC is now having to find some other direction they will be adding some scripted programming soon though. So our question was this good drift or bad drift. Well it was good for Discovery who had lots of viewers watching TLC more than watching the learning programming or even the D.I.Y/ home programs (which apparently were a fad), it was bad for everyone else , unless you were the new viewers watching. This one is subjective in answer isn't it?
more after the jump or come drift was us / wait that was awful
FOX has released their summer schedule. They have added new reality series, a new remake of "Fantasy Island" A new baking competition series called "Crime Scene Kitchen". New seasons of "Hells' Kitchen: Young Guns" , Lego Masters", "Masterchef : Legends" and "Beat Shazam". There also will be a Monday animation block with the new season "Ducanville" and new series "Housebroken".
ABC has announced their summer programming premiere dates. As with networks in summer, it's a mixture of reality shows and game shows. They have added three new series to the line up: "The Celebrity Dating Game" , "The Ultimate Surfer" , "When Nature Calls"
Previously on the blog, we looked at ABC's 1996-1997 Saturday Morning programming. You can read that here.
The idea here is to do a snap shot of a period of time in Saturday morning television history, by doing an overview of programming while mostly talking about them in a larger context. The time being the 1996-1997 season. The reason why I picked 1996 for this post (and the ABC post) is that 1996 was a transitional time for this network's morning programming. This would be the last year of their traditional programming block before adding news programming and focusing on E/I children's programming. NBC had started the ball rolling with "Saturday Today" and CBS was going to join in later.
There's another similar story to ABC: acquisition. I'm going to keep it simple for this post because there's a larger context, but that's not really here for this post. Westinghouse announced in 1995, they were wanting to purchase CBS. This was announced about a day after Disney announced they were buying ABC, and Westinghouse got their network purchaused approved first. Now, CBS had new owners, though Westinghouse wasn't really a company that was like Disney, it owned local stations and was an electric products company, so they didn't have anything to bring to Saturday Morning kids TV they way Disney would.
Let's get a look at this line up now. In 1996, this would be the last year of a traditional block for CBS before mostly going to a) E/I programming and b) later letting someone else program the time for them.
First, the second and final season of "The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat" This is a series that's a modern take on the character Felix the cat, (duh) this series has Phil Roman working on, you would know him from "Garfield" specials and some "Peanuts" specials as well. This season only had 8 episodes, and of course was the last for the series. In "Felix" history this was the first series since the 50's series that ended in 1962. So far, the next series was the last one with "Baby Felix" which came out in 2001. (but that didn't air on CBS)
Next on CBS, was the 2nd season of "Timon & Pumbaa" yes, Disney's. The Disney Afternoon by the mid 1990's was mostly faltering as a block , especially as local stations were changing around the country. Disney decided to work with CBS on a few things, before well, buying ABC. Just because they bought ABC, doesn't mean contracts would change that easily. This though, was the final season of this show on CBS; it had one more season in 1999, airing on Toon Disney. CBS didn't even finish airing the 2nd season, five episodes premiered in just syndication. This series takes Timon and Pumbaa from "The Lion King" and sets them on their own adventures.
1996. You might be wondering why we are looking at a random year (though in 2021, 1996 is 25 years ago, eek) of programming on a random broadcast network, when we could be doing anything else. (Whatever that is) Well, 1996, wasn't just some random year, in theory, for Saturday morning kids block there was some change.
In 1995 (Nooo you can't do that... what are you doing, this is about 1996!), one new block joined the big 3 Saturday morning kids blocks and it joined the big 1 weekday race. Joining ABC, CBS, and FOX was the WB's Kids WB (on the WB) . UPN also launched a block, but they said, woah Saturday is crowded, we'll die so Sunday and Weekdays for them. (I'm sure they didn't say that line like that , but it's implied) Anyway, we're talking about ABC. We have to go back to 1993. (Oh come on!)
In 1993, the wise FCC decided, nah it's good for syndication and production companies to be owned with networks. Now, FOX and a few others had found ways around the rule, anyway, but this meant something. This is also how UPN and the WB were able to exist. On July 31st, 1995 it happened, The Walt Disney Company announced it's intentions to buy Capital Cities/ ABC, this was approved by shareholders (duh money) and later by the FCC (because sure why not, allow bad decisions to happen?) ABC was now no longer a company it was now part of a larger company, it had been demoted from crown jewel to a piece of future in the house that exists next your fancy stuff. (what?)
Sticking to the theme of this blog post, 1996-1997 season on Saturday morning would be a transition year. February 1997, Peter Hastings joined Disney and decided that they needed to something different with this real estate on Saturday morning on ABC. (Meanwhile at CBS, we see them burning their Saturday morning down , and seeding to FOX , Kids WB, and the FCC) That block would be called Disney's One Saturday Morning, ( Disney buy Saturday Mornings in the future probably) (source: https://variety.com/1997/digital/news/abc-hopes-for-virtual-success-1116677612/)
1996-1997 would be the last year of what essentially was an unnamed block. It wasn't tradition to call these things names until like FOX Kids started. So we look at this block, a moment in time, a snap shot, a time , a piece. Let's get on with it.
First in the line up : Disney's Jungle Cubs. This was the first year of Disney ownership of ABC, but before this Disney relied on syndication (Disney Afternoon) and selling programs to networks, like ABC and CBS. A model that had been the standard for decades like with Hanna and Barbera. Disney didn't make their programs exclusive to ABC(yet,) Disney Afternoon was dying at this point, but that's a different story. On CBS this season there were still some Disney animated shows running there. But this series was the first one to premiere on ABC with Disney ownership.
"Jungle Cubs" takes the making shows with characters but younger route. It's based off their "The Jungle Book" movie, but with the animals as "kids" and no human child. Now because this is more a snap shot look, I won't be going too deep into every show's plot, but mostly giving a look at this time period.
In a weird twist, a Nickelodeon show. Alright, Disney had purchased "Doug" one of Nickelodeon's first Nicktoons. This has only happened once and Viacom will probably fight to the death than allow this to happen again. Disney had acquired the studio that made "Doug" (Disney's rampage goes long) and it had already ended on Nickelodeon, and Disney thought to make their investment have a purpose, since they didn't own the original Nick episodes, they needed to make more Doug. (It's like Disney with Star Wars) In September of 1996, here on the ABC line up, the "Brand New Sparking Doug" (what?) premiered. It would last through the One Saturday Morning block as well. Confusing kids as to how Doug can run on two different channels at once. (Jokes on Disney, Nick had their cash cow of Rugrats in their back pocket)
