The Ugly Side of Kids TV

When you were growing up, what was your favorite kids tv show? Maybe it was Pokemon or the Magic School Bus, Drake and Josh, Dexter's Lab, Adventures of Pete and Pete, really your favorite kid show could have been anything! But for me? It was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. You know the story: five teenagers given color coordinated super suits defending the Earth against evil. Premiering in 1993 the show was an instant hit with kids and it's easy to understand why. It had superheroes, martial arts, sword fights, dinosaurs, lasers, giant robot battles, all wrapped up in a single 30 minute package and Iloved it i watched it every day after school as soon as i got home and my favorite character was the blue ranger Billy. Yeah Billy was the worst fighter, hell he starts the series as a karate white belt, but he made up for it with his brains over brawn approach to conflict and his clever inventions. Teleporters, mind switching machines, flying cars! Billy made being nerdy cool back when being nerdy wasn't cool. For me, he was Power Rangers....until one day he just sort of vanished. Out of nowhere the show threw together this really bizarre story of him just going off to live on an alien planet with a goodbye video obviously voiced by a different actor. "Guys i've made a really important decision. I'll miss you all but i'm going to stay here on this planet." Yeah, after nearly 200 episodes on the series Billy literally got Poochie'd. As a kid I was so annoyed that I stopped watching the show entirely. Why the actor who played Billy, David Yost, left so suddenly remained a mystery for years until 2010 when he finally revealed that things behind the scenes weren't so... morphenomenal. Yost quit because the producers and crew had been ruthlessly bullying him for...being gay. Yost got so depressed that he started having thoughts about...you know... not being alive anymore, so he quit the show, enrolled in gay conversion therapy (which obviously made things worse)and he suffered a complete mental breakdown. But problems like this behind the scenes in kids tv certainly aren't rare. Hi. I'm Paper Will. i make deep dive content about unusual media and today we're looking into the less...pleasant side behind children's television shows. Think, abusive production, censorship, weird lawsuits, the lives of tv animals, controversies and more Welcome...to the Ugly Side of Kids TV........Hit It! (Music Number Starts) It's the ugly side of kids TV! Everything that we knew was wrong. It's the Ugly Side of Kids TV! Things were troublesome all along... The Ugly Side of Kids TV...with Paper Will! Airing in the 1980s, Joy Junction was a christian themed television game show with each episode based around teaching a lesson from the bible. The audience was divided into teams, and members from each team participated in various physical challenges like: paper throwing, balloon popping, ice cream scooping, and blind pepsi can pouring which... I don't...think they're allowed to do that but they did it. (Footage: "Find your opener quick open another bottlle!") At the end of each show the team with the most points would win all the prizes, like these these sweet watches. What were the watches for? (Footage: "To remind them that it is always time to put God first!") While Joy Junction lacked high budget values, it's clear that the cast and crew put a significant amount of time and effort into the production. They'd go all out in creating these elaborate costumes and set pieces, some of which would only get used for a few seconds. (Puppet Will: "That's impressive!") In between the physical challenges, the show featured painters, comedians, cooks, some of the most uncomfortable-looking children you have ever seen, as well as really big song and dance numbers like like this one about having patience before snack time. Look, I know it's easy to poke fun at stuff like this, but honestly, for a bunch of 12 year olds? That's not a terrible music performance and it's certainly not the worst thing on the show. Let's talk about the puppeteer, Ronald Brown. Brown's christian ventriloquist work had developed a strong following at his local churches, making him a perfect fit for joy junction. He even hosted weekly pizza parties at his house for many of the kids and it just it seemed like everybody in the community really liked this guy. And all of that would just be wholesome and neat and great if not for the fact that Brown really wanted...to eat some children. Hey I told you things are going to get, you know,...ugly. Doesn't get much uglier than predator cannibal puppeteers hosting a christian game show for children. The first signs that brown might not be such a great guy would be in the early 1990s when, during a routine traffic stop, police noticed something unusual in the backseat of his car....children's undergarments. Brown, thinking quickly, told the cops that the undergarments were for his puppet Marty, which was somehow accepted by the police as a not insane thing for a human to say and they just let the man go. In 2013 the truth finally came out as ronald brown was arrested for participating in an online community of predators surrounding the practice of...well a lot of horrible things but mainly the "eating kids" stuff. According to the chat logs released during the trial, Brown would even refer to his targets that he had met on the show as his, and I'm quoting here, "Little piglets who would make for a fine Easter feast." (Shudder)Oh that's creepy...fortunately Brown was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his involvement in that community and considering his old age that's probably going to be a life sentence...hopefully. Real quick announcement, here, um, smoking is...bad for you. Any objections? Everybody okay with that? All right then we're all on the same page. But for television network executives in the mid 20th century the fact that tobacco was already widely known to be dangerous? Well that wasn't really a big enough deterrent for Hanna Barbera cartoons to reject that smooth, succulent tobacco ad money (Footage: "Okay how's about taking a break? I've got a better idea. Let's take a Winston break!") And while it's kind of fun to laugh at how absurd these ads are, there's also a sad twist here that the entire main cast of the Flintstones would all eventually pass away due to smoking-related illnesses. Still in 1967 the FCC started enforcing what's called the fairness doctrine on tobacco ads for every three cigarette ads on television stations one anti-smoking commercial would have to be aired, and paid for, by the tobacco industry. The compromise worked decently well and the anti-tobacco ads led to a sudden and dramatic drop in smoking rate to the US, somewhere between five to ten percent. Eventually, smoking ads on tv were banned entirely...but also not really, since cigarette companies could still pay for advertisements on billboards and signs and sporting events that were being televised like Nascar and especially baseball. For decades you could find a tobacco company's logo and name out there in the bleachers, really visible during home runs, you know the moment people are paying the most attention to? Even when sporting agencies started cracking down on logos, sponsors got really clever in hiding their ads anyway. But i'm getting off track, this video is supposed to be about kids tv stuff...like how in 2015 JUUL labs (the electronic cigarettes maker) bought advertisements to display on various children's tv websites like cartoonnetwork.com and nickelodeon.com. In their defense JUUL claimed that they weren't intentionally marketing to underage users and hey I'm sure there's some adults on...cartoonnetwork.com, but how about the other sites they advertised on? Like coolmathgames.com, basicmathematics.com, and oh oh this one's great socialstudies4kids.com holy **** JUUL! In 2020 the Massachusetts attorney general's office filed a lawsuit over these ads which is currently ongoing, but not not looking great for JUUL. And in 2015 there was also building pressure on Puffbar for targeting teens with flavors like pina colada, watermelon, and a flavor literally called OMG. Okay just for a second we're gonna pretend that omg is a flavor because obviously it's not a real flavor what the hell would that be that's still not a flavor that you market to adults. Uhhhhh, you know what? You know what, uh, maybe smoking ads for children and that creepy eyed, now interned, puppet tiny people here were a little too heavy for our first couple of topics. Let's, um let's do something fun next. Just kidding this one's gonna suck too here's a list of beloved animal stars that aren't alive anymore keiko the orca from free willy uh the dog from air bud uh mr ed the horse spuds mckenzie uh the dog from the little rascals okay that was like 100 years ago of course he's dead um most dogs who have played lassie sad but again not unexpected uh all 48 of the pigs who've played babe the pig all of them all of them all how long do pigs live um and finally that little sneezing baby panda chichi who yes had their own movie and yes is also dead so what does any of that have to do with flipper or children's television truthfully not that much none of those animals desk for the fault of hollywood or tv they lived full healthy happy lives before dying well not the not the little rascals dog yeah he got straight up poisoned by somebody on set which is messed up oh or caico uh she got dumped into the ocean and then never really assimilated with other orca and then died alone of pneumonia but but the other animals full lives full happy lives still it's at least fair that we delve into humanity's rocky history when it comes to animals being used or abused for entertainment here's a neat ancient roman history fact you already knew that lions were commonly used in the coliseum arena games but did you know that when the romans first dropped lions into the pit to fight people lions they just they just kind of wouldn't it's true in the early games these terrified frigging lions got tossed into an enclosed face with a hundred thousand people screaming at them and did what what anybody would do what i would do they just went and hid in the corners the audience was mighty disappointed by that all you have to imagine that the people in the arena were probably pretty thrilled to make sure that lions would be more aggressive the roman animal trainers started breeding them inside the halls of the coliseum and conditioning them to attack people all for our entertainment things have improved for animal entertainment in the modern era but there are still unpleasant stories from behind the scenes let's talk about flipper inspired by the 1950s tv show lassie which was about a dog that went around and helped people out of dangerous situations flipper was about a dolphin that went around and helped people out of dangerous situations you may be thinking hey how many situations can a dolphin actually help people in and the answer is not that many so the writers had to keep coming up with increasingly elaborate and implausible scenarios that could somehow only be resolved by a wicked smart dolphin there were boat-based hostage situations oil rig counterfeit operation bust there's one where flipper is put on a plane they put a dolphin on a plane to take him to a laboratory that wants to teach him how to speak english there's a communist spy plot there were multiple really multiple episodes where flipper eats something valuable like like a bracelet or whatever and everyone's like will flipper thanks for always saving our dumbass kids but this rich woman really wants that diamond necklace you ate and we're just gonna have to cut you open to get it yep this happened like three times in a show with 60 episodes flipper was a weird weird show the role of flipper was mostly played by a dolphin named kathy who had been caught in the wild and trained for performances and by all accounts kathy seemed to enjoy working on the series and there's no evidence of mistreatment by her trainers or the staff during production but after the show ended things took a downward turn for kathy's well-being she was sent to live in a small chamber in the miami's aquarium which after years of frequent outings for show filmings and constant human interaction she had a lot of trouble adjusting to according to the staff there kathy wouldn't eat wouldn't swim and eventually started intentionally hurting herself against the walls of the chamber i think dolphins apparently do the staff called in ritual barry uh kathy's former trainer from the show who said that when he found kathy she swam into his arms held her breath and passed out in the water dying soon after o'barry believes her death was intentional you know self-determination if i can if i can get up on a soapbox for a second here something tv studios and hollywood in general are usually really good at is protecting animal performers during show productions at least they are now but there's no additional regulations on how animal stores are cared for offset after a show ends in the late 1960s television producer joanne gantz cooney and early educational specialist lloyd morrissette were developing plans for a new kind of children's television program focusing on educating children instead of just entertaining them but they needed a way to keep kids attention for the entire length of the show's run time and the answer was puppets enter jim henson henson had made a name for himself in television puppeteering with both his short-lived but popular 1950s series salmon friends as well as a few well-received talk show performances cooney and morissette asked hinson and his team to design craft and perform as the show's puppets or muppets as henson called them henson agreed to help and in 1969 sesame street hit the air parents loved the learning-centric element of the show and everybody loved hinson's creations like big bird oscar the grouch and cookie monster now hinton was proud of his work on sesame street but he also wanted to produce a show of his own so in 1973 hinson pitched a new series idea using a mock-up pilot video which which was just fantastic a show that will be loved and adored by every nielsen home in the country freaky long-haired dirty cynical hippies who love our freaky long-haired dirty cynical muppets and we'll all get temperamental and hard to work with but you won't care because we'll all make a lot of money and in a really weird twist of fate one of the executives he pitched to at abc with this show was none other than a young michael eisner a man who would later become an infamous ceo of disney that'll be important later but eisner loved the muppets so much that he greenlit the project not just for one but for two more pilot episodes including the muppet show sex and violence which is not which is not what it sounds like but you kind of wish it was right while abc ultimately passed on the muppets british channel atv swooped in and ordered a full season of the project giving us the muppet show the series debuted to incredible success running for five seasons getting 21 emmy nominations and launching movies merch and puppet cartoons thanks to hinson as well as the hard working crew on both shows sesame street in the muppets became cultural super icons for both kids and the world and before we get into all the ugly stuff let me just say without the slightest bit of shame i adore both of these shows seriously when's the last time you sat down and watched either series i think because we grew up with these shows we lose some appreciation for how incredibly talented and innovative the people working on them really are like look at this shot from the muppets take manhattan that's not green screen that's not editing that's over 150 people helping to puppet these classic characters and then there's sesame street which has released over 5 000 episodes of high quality educational television if you tried to binge every episode of sesame street it would take you over 140 days over four months of uninterrupted binging to catch up and there were multiple studies showing that kids who watched sesame street as young children had improved educational outcomes in elementary school and higher learning sesame street is awesome plus i think i've watched the outtakes of john oliver and the cookie monster at least a dozen times what kind of milk you're wearing still even these great series have their ugly sides after henson's tragically early passing in 1990 it would fall to henson's children to choose who would replace him as the main performer of kermit the frog they'd eventually choose steve wittmeyer who seemed like a great choice as he had worked closely with hinson in nearly every muppet production since the 1970s until michael eisner stepped in yeah he's not done see the former abc executive was now the ceo of disney eisner had remained a huge fan of the series over the decades and in 2004 he purchased the muppet series for disney unfortunately whitmire and the big cheese instantly developed an antagonistic relationship whitmire blamed disney for the fighting claiming that his aggressive pushback against them was always done to protect hinson's vision for the series while disney argued that whitmire had been making outrageous demands harassing writers and directors and refusing to have a kermit understudy so he could never be replaced it's tempting to take whitmer aside after all he was part of hinton's core team and had been integral part of the muppets franchise for years but disney wasn't the only party unhappy with him hinton's own family claimed that whitmire had been trying to take the series hostage especially by refusing to have an understudy understand it takes years to learn how to master one of these puppets well enough to seamlessly transition between puppeteers for example matt vogel who took over performing big bird in 2015 had been studying the role under carol spinney since 1997. the muppets ain't no joke this feuding between whitmire disney went on behind the scenes for nearly 10 years and whether whitmire was defending hinson's integrity or being a primadonna is up for you to decide but personally i suspect it was a little column a column b either way things came to a head and whitmire's firing by disney was leaked on the largest muppets fan site touchpig.com but which is that's a really gross name by the way i don't know why they were named but the muppet show wasn't the only hints in series to run into trouble with their main mascot let's talk about elmo it might surprise you to hear that elmo's a relative newcomer to the sesame street franchise only becoming a main cast muppet in 1985 with puppeteer kevin clash clash would continue working as elmo's puppeteer for almost 25 years until 2012 when he was accused of inappropriate physical relations with a teenager now we're not going to go into all the specifics because it's kind of an unusual case there's a lot of twists and turns internal investigations allegations being made then retracted then remade but ultimately the lawsuits were dismissed by the trial judge within the sesame street fan community there is a intense split over whether kevin clash was guilty or innocent but whatever the truth was kevin ended up leaving the project in 2013 and i think that was probably for the best not all problems and controversies with children's shows start behind the scenes though sometimes it's the content itself like that episode of total dramarama where the kids want to get sick and stay home from school so they go around licking things in like like surfaces and floors trying to spread germs which got aired right around the time of the kova 19 pandemic which is getting started wait what uh or that danish show john dillerman which was about a man in his giant prehinsile um tool that he used to do stuff like decorate christmas trees or helicopter around or even save children with can i show this am i do i need a mosaic this i no that's worse that's worse no yeah that's fine and there are hundreds thousands of examples of problems caused by kids television that have garnered outrage for any number of things way too many things for us to cover in one video so instead how about i just talk about a few examples of what i think are particularly interesting outrages and controversies starting with tiny toon adventures set in the looney tuniverse which is a thing i guess uh tiny toons followed a new cast of cartoons studying at akmil university who one day want to become big cartoon stars themselves it was created as a collaboration between warner brothers and amblin television steven spielberg's tv production studio which was also notable for bringing us classics like animaniacs freakazoid pinky in the brain and the harry and the henderson's tv sitcom which was a real thing that happened and there's nothing any of us can do to change that but since tiny toons was an animated show in the early 1990s it occasionally dipped into the very special lesson episodes you know stories and otherwise usually funny shows that try to ham-fistedly teach kids about the dangers of eating disorders and drugs and stds and underage drinking like that time tunes episode one beer in one beer buster plucky and hampton decide to have a brewski and get drunk leading to alienating classmates and getting into a bunch of bad decisions and even ending with them driving off a cliff in a stolen police car the things you do when you drink of course it's then revealed that the whole episode was a psa by the characters to show the dangers of drunk driving i think but still the episode one beer caught the attention of a lot of parental groups who felt the whole episode was a little too dark a little too much for uh for kids and successfully pushed to get the whole episode banned and hey it's great to educate minors about mature topics but truthfully the episode one beer just isn't very good in fact the episode is so unpopular that there's a theory that the show's writers intentionally made it bad in protest of the networks pressuring them to to add more morality to episodes like this which makes sense considering the little dig at the end of the episode episode tomorrow i hope so but tiny toons wasn't the only 90s cartoon that had its share of controversy in the first season of the pokemon animated series there was a huge scandal over episode 38 elected gory or porygon in fact a lot of you probably think you already know this tale right old episode of pokemon only aired in japan once had a bunch of flashing lights during a battle caused thousands of children to get sick or suffer epileptic seizures and then the episode was banned but there's more to the story than you might know let's back up in the episode ash and his friends use a dimensional transporter to chase after team rocket who have stolen a new type of prototype pokemon porygon at the end there's this intense and flashy scene with a series of bright quick shifting red and blue lights the same kind of quick shift lights that can sometimes induce seizures for those with photosensitive epilepsy in the immediate period after the episode aired in japan there was a mass occurrence of young viewers experiencing nausea sickness vision impairment and headaches with over 600 viewers taken to hospitals all kids news channels were quick to cover the unfolding emergency warning parents to check to see if their told them were okay and also to erase any vhs recordings they might have made you know because of because of this uh although a shiny 100 in coin to the geniuses at one news channel's coverage who apparently reared the dangerous footage over and over and over again while talking about it which caused more kids to get sick before somebody realized hey let's let's stop doing that good going good going there team in the weekly episode aired there was over 12 000 kids reported feeling ill over electric warrior porygon nintendo announced an official apology and they even stopped airing new episodes of the show for a while many anime especially the ones for children began airing short messages before broadcast warning kids not to watch the show in a dark room a practice that persists even today and while pokemon would return to television a few months later it's pretty crazy to think 12 000 children were hurt by nintendo's irresponsible animation or were they what if i told you that this porygon episode story was completely made up well no that would make me a liar all that stuff actually happened but but there is some debate over whether or not the episode was as dangerous as people first thought let's talk about that 12 000 number yes the original 600 kids taken to hospitals immediately after watching the episode absolutely suffered a negative side effect on the show but of those 600 kids only about 150 were hospitalized for seizures or severe symptoms although 150 kids in a hospital still pretty bad but the other 11 and a half thousand children who reported symptoms only started feeling sick in the days after the episode aired weird right like why would kids start getting sick in the days after seeing the episode well several studies have suggested that while the episode was absolutely dangerous to children prone to photosensitive epileptic seizures the majority of kids likely develop side effects due to mass hysteria which makes sense the kids watch the episode feel fine but then they go to school and the next day everybody's talking about how that episode makes you feel sick and then they go home and their parents are talking about that episode that is supposed to make you feel sick and it's all over the news with endless footage of children and ambulances and hospital beds young children aren't stupid but they're impressionable and being surrounded by that kind of news for days is probably what led to the majority of kids reporting illnesses and if that sounds a little far-fetched well it's happened before there was this portuguese teen drama called morongo's kum akugar which had an episode about a flu going around getting everybody sick the next day in real life there were hundreds of reported cases of flu-like symptoms tracked over 14 schools around the country some that even had to get shut down while the faculty were trying to figure out what the hell was happening however it turned out to be less a magical virus that infects people through television waves and more just lots of teens watching a popular teen drama rumors started and everything snowballed with continuous media coverage of the problem but getting back to pokemon um while they're not nearly as famous as the porygon caesar incident pokemon's had some other controversies as well like the problems over one pokemon for its negative depiction of nope uh nope nope actually not not that pokemon uh not jinx yeah i know some have suggested that jinx's design is kind of really racist but the design is probably just a reference to japanese ganguro fashion combined with female opera singer imagery no the negative depiction that i'm talking about is actually no not ludicolo the sombrero pokemon who dances to vaguely latin american music although that's not like that's not great but but it's whatever no the pokemon that's caused nintendo the most trouble over a negative depiction is cadabra have you ever noticed that the spoon wielding psychic type pokemon cadabra has been missing from the main pokemon anime for a very very long time no really the last time the pokemon appeared was nearly 20 years ago in the 2005 episode fear factory phony so what gives why has cadaver been out of the series for so long well it's all because of this man uri geller ue geller seen here sitting on a throne made out of spoons like one does is a former magician turned television psychic who gathered fame in the 1970s for bending spoons with the power of his mind i mean in actuality he would just bend the spoons a lot beforehand to loosen them and then use various slides of hand to distract the audience while he bent the spoons with his fingers and people fell for this all over the world including japan especially japan he was really popular there which brings us back to kadabra you've probably made the connection between geller cadabra and the spoon i mean sure geller didn't invent spoon binding but it was sort of his whole stick and the guy was very well known in japan even had a music album even worse the original japanese name of kadabra is actually young editor which is a combination of the characters from yuri and geller his first and last name so it's not just some weird spoon incidents geller was so upset about all of this that in 2000 he attempted to sue nintendo for 60 million dollars claiming that kadabra unlawfully used his image and that nintendo had turned him into a quote evil occult pokemon character which you know true but whatever personally i never saw what the big deal was in the first place he got his very own pokemon i would love to have my own pokemon with the what the hell platypirus what what the hell is that a pirate get away get away platypirus help help help help help help kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it platypirus is it going is it is it going jesus those eyes um okay where are we now what channel is this oh good gay gay panic it's current year and there are still groups out there that'll fight tooth and nail against lgbt characters and kids tv legend of korra andy mack shira 12 forever play school arthur clarence steven universe sesame street the loud house the owl house my little pony adventure time and a bazillion other shows have all seen their share of outrage just for having gay or trans characters but as important as those shows representations have been many of them are released in a time where acceptance of lgbt has thankfully grown quite a bit but in 2003 it was still pretty risky to make pro lgbt content for kids yet that's exactly what pbs's postcards for buster did for anyone outside the us pbs is an american television channel that airs a variety of educational and informative content all available for free thanks to public funding and donations it airs sesame street curious george arthur and yeah postcards from buster the show about an animated rabbit named buster who travels around the us with his weirdly human looking father meeting kids in different cities and learning about different ethnicities and cultures in episode 33 buster visits some children in the state of vermont who just happen to have two mothers neither the show nor buster make a big deal of it they just introduced them as another happy vermonte and family cool right sadly before the episode made it to air well it looks like some lunatic heard about it they contacted pbs and they demanded that the show either pull the episode or never ever receive public funds again if they were going to continue to promote the gay agenda what oh i'm sorry a small correction it wasn't a lunatic it was the education secretary of the united states margaret spellings who literally on her first day on the top decided to threaten pbs with being defunded if they aired the episode because god forbid kids see this is one of my favorite pictures how come because it has my mom and gilly and the people i love a lot and they mean a lot to me i i try not to be cynical on this channel but come on come on really pps had no choice but to concede the spelling's threat i mean they they need those funds to stay on the air but you still gotta respect them for trying to do what they did especially since almost four years prior to that pbs had gotten some flack for having a gay character in a show that didn't even have a gay character teletubbies was a hit bbc children's show that aired on pbs in america between 1997 and 2001. it followed the four teletubbies and their weirdly psychedelic shire as they walked around and made noises and fell over and stuff look i don't really understand the teletubbies but that's the basic gist unlike most weekday morning shows that targeted kids ages three to five teletubbies was made to appeal to infants and very young toddlers which meant less dialogue and more short bursts of colorful engaging content it was poe lala dipsy and of course tinky winky but in 1999 out of seemingly nowhere famous televangelist rev jerry falwell best known for blaming terrorist attacks on the acceptance of gay couples charming publicly announced to the world that in his god-given expert opinion tinky-winky was gay and needed to be taken off the air now you might be wondering what evidence did falwell have that tinky winky was gay well ladies and gentlemen of the off-screen jury i'm lawyer paper will doing a terrible southern accent despite the fact that i was born in georgia here to present jerry falwell's irrefutable evidence that tinky winky was nothing but gay and kinky number one tinky's purple gay people love purple that's just a fact number two tinky winky's head symbol is an upside down purple triangle which if you flip right side up and you change the color to be pink that's a gig that's a gay pride symbol right there number three tinky winky has a big red purse men don't have purses and tinky winky is a man wait is stinky winky is tinky winky a man i i we think whatever you know what if all that proof wasn't enough to come into then i think you need to see the video evidence hit the tape i rest my case somehow falwell managed to gather a following with his claims about tinky which would force an executive producer from the teletubbies to hold i'm not kidding an emergency press conference an emergency press conference to address tinky winky's sexuality in which he announces that quote the fact that tinky winky carries a magic bag doesn't make him gay no you could argue that falwell was just a you know a jerk who let his bigotry color his perception of an innocent kids show leading him to making a big spectacle but can i get a little conspiratorial with you because between you and me i don't think for a second faw will ever believe that tinky wink was gay no i think falwell was looking to create a distraction i noticed that exactly four days before fall will had his whole tinky winky gate that's a gate with a diy because i'm not funny he just so happened to have delivered a speech about the antichrist and in this speech he said that the antichrist would be jewish so that's that's that's pretty bad it's not a great speech falwell started getting slammed for being anti-semitic because he was being anti-semitic when all of a sudden he decided that right then and there was the time to wage a huge publicized pr campaign about how tinky winky was gay oh oh yeah don't don't look at the stuff over here i said about jewish people being the antichrist no now look over here look don't look at this look at this this is the real story isn't isn't this thing i said crazy triangles red purses i hide your kids i'm not anti-semitic falwell presented the most flashy headline-snagging wtf-ing news cycle dominating thing he could think of and he waved it in front of the country's collective news faces to direct attention away from what he had said about jewish people and it worked people forgot about the whole jewish people will birth the antichrist thing and focus on a very silly man in a very silly teletubba theory however for all of falwell's controversy he's got nothing on our next figure but before we talk about that let's talk about today's sponsor nordvpn fans of the channel know i've been really hesitant to accept sponsor offers for a while because i didn't want to endorse something that i don't you know personally use or have tested but nordvpn i've actually been using for years so it's pretty cool to have them as a sponsor especially since i rely on nordvpn for a lot of the stuff i make on this very channel see i could tell you about nordvpn's fast internet speeds zero click protection anti-malware tools i could tell you that hackers and scammers and fishers are getting more and more sophisticated and how they try to get to your digital information yeah i could tell you about all that stuff so you know i did i guess i just told you about that stuff but i also mentioned that you know i use nordvpn to make my videos what did i mean well as an american guy living in japan you would be amazed at how much stuff from the us and other countries is region locked you can't access it from here with nordvpn i can choose my ip location and view stuff i use for this channel even if you're not living abroad well this is still a super useful feature down in the pin comment you'll find the link to some of my favorite and really weird japanese bands whose content is region lock outside japan go to nordvpn.com paperwheel get a two-year plan one month free 30-day money-back guarantee just use coupon code paper will and then listen to some of that region lock music because it's so good now let's get back to the show between the 1990s and the late 2010s there was nobody bigger in the children's television market than dan schneider working for nickelodeon he created wrote or produced all that the amanda show keenan and kell drake and josh icarly zoe 101 victorious sam and cat henry danger game shakers and more plenty of grown-ups found schneider shows to be a little cheesy and fair enough but there's no denying that his stuff resonated with kids this unstoppable schneider nick relationship continued happily until 2018 when after decades of working together it was suddenly announced that snyder was leaving to focus on his family and maybe some personal projects at least that's the official story see before snyder left the network nickelodeon's parent company had in fact ordered an internal investigation about some of snyder's less pg behavior with accusations of verbal abuse throwing tantrums on set mean emails and more some think that this investigation was the actual cause of snyder's exit from nickelodeon and this whole thing was far less mutual than it had been presented as keep in mind this was all happening the same year that hollywood producer and human garbage pile harvey weinstein was ousted from power over sexual abuse and assault so it's certainly possible nick was hoping to avoid some sort of parallels being drawn through him to snyder truthfully we don't really know why he left but we do know that even if nick was done with snyder the internet wasn't beginning in the early to mid 2010s several internet forums were slowly developing a theory that mr snyder had a foot fetish which by itself is not a big deal but they think that he specifically had a fetish for the feet of children which is a big deal and that he'd use his position as a nick producer to create content to satiate that fetish which is a very big deal and and hold on let's be clear that is a huge accusation to just throw around so watch their evidence no we we already did that bit let's just let's just talk about the evidence first up according to them snyder shows have a lot of child foot humor more than most content on tv for kids and if you search for snyder foot related content there's an endless number of compilations showing pretty weird things with feet and performers from his shows and on the twitter account for one of the shows there was even a tweet asking kids to write the name of the show on their feet and send a picture of it for a retweet although we don't know if schneider was involved with that tweet or not it may have just been you know some intern on the pr team trying to do something funny but we do know schneider used his own account to ask people to name the toes on jeanette mccarty who played sam on icarly another reddit commenter in a now deleted post claimed that snyder once paid her a hundred dollars to let him try and tickle or massage her feet which if true is a little weird all right so what's snyder's response well in 2021 he denied the accusations saying they were ridiculous and he argued that he wouldn't have been able to pursue his career for so long if there had ever been any proof of something like this and here's the thing i know it is a super popular internet theory that snyder is some sort of foot predator and by taking a position where you doubt that theory it makes you look like you're you know enabling a predator but the deeper i went into this topic and the more research i did the less convinced i became as far as i can tell most of this snyder stuff formed on these celebrity gossip conspiracy forms you know less oh who is that actor dating and more like these are the people controlling the world you know those kinds of sites and it eventually bled out into this internet's public consciousness not as a theory anymore but as a fact don't get me wrong there's plenty of confirmed employee accounts of snyder being a pretty crappy guy to work with and that's really not the kind of person you want in charge of children who are trying to navigate the already messed up world of hollywood but you know like if we're talking about exploiting kids how about some of the youtube videos about this guy there are people who put a picture of snyder shows performers and stuff like like in a thumbnail next to a big quote like he touched me and then you watch the video and the performer literally never said the quote you want to make videos about kids getting exploited by hollywood go for it that's great but don't use children's faces all over your thumbnails with fake quotes to get clicks and views because that to me that's exploitation again snyder leaving nickelodeon that's a good thing but i'd argue that compared to snyder there was a much more pressing issue with someone else from nickelodeon let me introduce you to brian peck the name might not ring a bell but if you like old zombie movies well you probably still won't know his name although you might remember his brief scene from the return of the living dead after a short acting stint in the 1980s peck would go on to work on several nick shows including all that and the amanda show usually it was behind the scenes stuff although he did appear in a couple of things such as the guy who really likes his pickle pickle boy likes to hurt and tease pickles that that did not age well huh peck was also involved with snyder's nickelodeon camps up until 2004 when he was charged with a series of crimes against a minor most of which i can't say on youtube but you can probably guess at least what some of those were after a 16 month stint in prison which seems really short peck was released and went right back to working in children's television awesome awesome awesome awesome awesome great again after his release from jail over sex crimes with people who aren't adults peck performed roles on the suite life with zach and cody that landon tipton movie and jack and the beanstalk in 2009 credit to nickelodeon they never hired peck back to work on the shows after his conviction but it seems nobody on the mid-2000s disney channel recruitment team knew how to ask jeeves a job applicant's criminal history hey jeeves is this guy a [ __ ] pedophile yeah oh great thanks jeeves bye let's just let's just move on uh four kids four kids entertainment was an anime licensing company uh you know a company that would pay to license anime from japanese studios redub the dialogue in english and then sell the english versions to networks for broadcast for kids string of mega successes in the 1990s and early 2000s like yu-gi-oh kirby right back at ya one piece sonic x and pokemon papyrus oh it's back four kids was a big part in taking anime from a subculture in the west to a mainstream audience but they also developed a negative reputation for the polarizing quality of their voice dubs hey stay down or we're busted your attitude's the pits cherry peach or apricot i want you to have a look at this pokemon huh what is this thing and also what you might call over-enthusiastic censorship and obstructive cultural edits like erasing pistols from bad guys but leaving their finger guns or removing japanese texts but not adding any english on top of the text turning cigarettes into lollipops or their most famous example getting characters to point to rice balls and call them jelly donuts over and over and over again have a doughnut that always cheers me up these donuts are great jelly filled are my favorite nothing beats a jelly jelly-filled doughnut but none of that is why four kids is included in this video because i i kind of get what they were doing many of their edits were relatively minor cultural changes to help ease the transition of anime into that western audience for kids like many licensing companies in the 90s needed to make sure their content was accessible as possible to appeal to people who might not be familiar with anime and some of their more bizarre changes make sense in the context of when they got aired like take the yu-gi-oh finger gun example yes it looks ridiculous don't get me wrong but yuki was only being aired a couple of years after the u.s columbine incident where guns were a hot button issue in kids entertainment these things were tense in america in a way they just weren't in japan so it's understandable why four kids wanted to make some changes and honestly most kids probably didn't think about it very much at least i didn't i'd even argue that in 4kids earlier stuff there was a lot of passion in what they did especially from the voice performers and translators no 4kids isn't in this video because of their off-putting localization choices they're in the video because they broke the law uh it turns out for kids wasn't doing so great in the late 2000s most likely due to their quantity over quality approach to anime releases as well as losing some big names like pokem is he here he's here he's going all right uh like pokemon and yugioh four kids started making deals with american broadcasting companies over licenses four kids technically uh didn't own or pay for or have or have the right to do that with and even with the license they didn't own there were cases of the misreporting royalty deductions submitting false tax withholdings and and sometimes just straight up lying about their revenue which is a um crime once japanese companies found out and of course they found out four kids lost some of their biggest names mainly the yu-gi-oh series and in 2011 they filed for bankruptcy and sure legal issues with anime licensing have always been messy funimation's anti-piracy policies have been borderline psychotic odex has sent legal threats to children for torrenting content advision gaynex sre crunchyroll crunchyroll has been sued over [ __ ] stickers nearly every major company in the licensing world has sued or been sued over something it's a ridiculous legal minefield but for me the 4k story is the saddest example because their content was such a big part of my childhood despite the hit or miss voice work and the weird cleavage stuff and and that whatever's whatever's going on there for kids help turn anime mainstream it's sad to see that group go down in flames over something they could have avoided by just staying focused and delivering good work and keeping up with the standards of western anime fans of course not all the problems with anime are due to licensing there's tons of stuff going on behind the scenes in animation in japan that we need to talk about i know i know not all anime is made for kids but children were the main demographic when anime was first televised in japan and it all really started with one man manga artist and animator osamu tezuka and his 1964 show astro boy set in the distant future of 2004 the series was about a young android named astroboy who protected the city and the world from out-of-control robots it's a great show that sometimes gets a negative reputation due to some of the unfortunate english dubs it's not right for a robot to behave as that one is astro boy is my name and this show was the foundation in which the modern anime industry was built for better or for worse see it hadn't been easy for tesla to get astro boy on the air at the time broadcasting executives in japan were concerned that the cost of a weekly animated show would just be too high yeah a couple of series like 10 to 10 28 and wolf by kin had aired to moderate success but networks were still unconvinced jessica though he was sure that if he could just get astro boy on the air it would blast off and prove that serialized animated shows were a viable market not just a fad so tessica and his animation team made a very risky offer to the broadcasters jessica's company would make astro boy on severely reduced pay with the condition that they'd keep a larger percentage of any merchandising profit essentially if astro boy was a hit tezuka's team would make a killing on merchandise but if it failed well they'd probably be out of business the networks loved this deal because it was basically costing them nothing so they went ahead with it luckily for tesla and his team the contract gamble paid off and astrovoid was a nationwide success with merge sales that easily offset any initial losses in tessica's mind this was the perfect outcome not just because his team had made some money not just because they made a high quality program but because now tv broadcasters would pay a fair income to all future anime studios after all they'd seen how successful it could be so surely they're gonna pay fairly now right predictably the networks thought about it and decided ah they really preferred not paying more money and instead they use astroboy's contract as a precedent for how all anime would be funded from then on a a precedent that still stands today modern animation studios are still getting paid pennies on the dollar or uh smaller yens on the bigger yen's they're not getting paid enough with the majority of revenue going to networks and production committees who often hold the ip licenses shingo adachi a head animator for the popular series sword art online says that there's simply no dream animation job where you make a good salary and have good working conditions it just doesn't exist animation veteran jun arai has also added that with the pokemon series platinum uh um whatever you're actually actually kind of cute in a in a whole you know god's little mistake kind of way there's a little abomination who's a little abomination it's you yes it's you but yeah uh generalia said that the pokemon anime which makes a hundred million dollars a year just on the anime not including any of the other stuff that show pays its animators less per dollar than what you'd make working at the next door 7-eleven that's rough and it's not just salaries working hours are long and brutal in the animation studios there are countless reports of workers in the industry being hospitalized due to overwork at rates even higher than the national average in japan the country famous for overworking yoshifumikondo a senior animation director in ghibli studios died of an overwork-related aneurysm in 1998 which caused miyazaki so much grief that he ended up retiring for several years and because the only people who are willing to put up with all of this do so because they're passionate about their craft well that means not many people are pushing for change this is the unseen problem behind most anime you liked as a kid and probably most shows you like now unless it's from one of the very very few paying studios with good working conditions like kilter animation your favorite stuff is probably being made by a studio full of underpaid artists and it's a deadly situation and it's not improving staying on the topic of animation but moving back state side this right here is john quick feluci creator of the 90's animated series the rain and stimpy show alongside doug and rugrats the wren and simpy show was one of nickelodeon's earliest nicktoon series and it helped put the channel on the map for original programming but unlike doug and rugrats and most shows for kids quick falusi wanted ren and stimpy to be hyper violent risque constantly pushing boundaries and frankly kids loved it for that nickelodeon however didn't while the show was a major hit for nick quick for lucy and his team would constantly miss deadlines and go tens of thousands of dollars over budget putting nick into a tricky position on the one hand they were thrilled to have a success in their hands on their very small network but on the other nick wasn't able to capitalize on that success due to those delays and when i say delays i'm not talking like a week or a month one episode stimpy's invention took over a year to produce still by most accounts i could find nick wasn't happy over the delays but they'd probably have accepted them had the show been more on brand in 1991 nickelodeon was still early in its original programming period and they wanted to paint themselves as clean and parent-friendly neither term you could use to describe brynn stimpy with but quickflucy to put it lightly didn't respond well to nick's pressure according to some of his and nick's staff quick for lucy had let some of the success go to his head believing that as the creator and the voice actor for rin there was no way nick would ever get rid of him no matter what he did so when nickelodeon pushed down on him to deliver episodes on time he responded with episodes will cost what they cost and take as long as they take and he was going to keep putting in risky humor that he wanted because nick could do it themselves if they disagree so they did nick terminated his contract gave him the boot and continued making the show on their own and while it's sad to see a talented artist losing control over their work the more i read about the situation the more and more sympathetic i become to nickelodeon quick for lucy was undeniably a brilliant creator but he was also kind of a jerk sometimes various workers from the show have said that working with quick falusi was a nightmare the man had tempers he'd he would rip up drawings he screamed he demanded perfection and he refused to hire anybody who didn't meet his impossibly high standards so the studio was always understaffed when that caused more delays and after being fired quick for lucy has been accused of creating a smear campaign against any of the artists that chose to continue with ren and stimpy instead of resigning in support with him david koninsburg a technical director on the show says qrikvalusi literally shoved him down a flight of stairs about this but it would also be unfair of me to imply that quickfalusi's team universally hated him they didn't in fact there were many on his staff who were fiercely loyal to the guy because although he was challenging to work with john k got results that episode i mentioned earlier that took a whole year to produce that episode is considered a modern classic of animation it's genius it's the happy happy joy joy song plus who the hell am i to criticize somebody for being bad at deadlines this video was supposed to be out like three months ago and in between animation seasons quick fallusi has been known to pay some of his artists out of pocket to make sure they had enough money when not working but all the things we've talked about so far that's just the bad stuff we're here to talk about the ugly stuff let's rewind a little bit back before quick for lucy got fired rain and stimpy is a gigantic success and it's coming on its second season and kids all over the world are falling in love with the show including the 13 year old aspiring artist robin bird uh-oh bird loved the show so much she even sent a fan letter to quickfalusi talking about her dreams of working in animation and how his show had inspired her and to her delight she got a letter back from him she got several letters back from him then she started getting care packages from him with things like art supplies and animation tools uh oh and after bird turned 16 quickflucy flew her out to work as an intern at his animation studio and also to secretly live with him as they dated uh oh yup john k had hired his underage teenage girlfriend as an intern to work on the content he was releasing uh after bird into the relationship once she became an adult quick felicity had already begun corresponding with another girl the 14 year old katie rice john k even attended her 15th birthday hey this is katie rice she is one of the young artists i was telling you about katie showed me one time she drew i was at her 15th birthday party we'll tell you that backstory a little bit later allegedly much of this was an open secret on john's animation team but it only became truly public in the 2010s when a buzzfeed article detailing the issue was released with quotes from bird and rice crick felicity didn't deny much of the article's allegations making a public apology post on facebook to burden rice soon after although he did strongly imply that some of the article was embellished for sensationalism and hey it's a buzzfeed article so i'd suggest taking anything that's not a quote from the victims themselves with a grain of salt but those quotes as well as quick for lucy's own admissions are mountains more than enough evidence to show that he was a predator to young fans no shocker here but sometimes bad things happen maybe there's a major natural disaster an act of terrorism a worldwide pandemic and in the immediate days weeks and months after those events it's kind of seen as insensitive by tv networks to make or air content to reminiscent of it so a lot of things get temporary pulled from television obviously this kind of tragedy redolent content doesn't only affect kids tv it happens to everything like like this trailer for the original spider-man movie with tobey maguire which was replaced due to a very unnice thing happening in new york soon after there's also really really poorly timed advertisements like this 1989 kentucky fried chicken ad talking about how everybody's so excited to come out and support the new kfc in tiananmen square but now there's a recipe that has even the chinese crossing the road which aired as this happened comics video games newspaper strips even trading card games have to be careful about this stuff in early 2020 magic the gathering had these limited time special prints of godzilla related cards and one of the cards was space godzilla looks cool as hell but unfortunately his full name was space godzilla death corona god god that's bad timing it's not magic the gathering's fault and they fixed it quickly of course but you can still find it online for 11 on amazon but tragedy radiant content is especially tricky to navigate in kids entertainment the earliest example in history at least the earliest one that i could find was in 1940s a wild hair bugs bunny's debut cartoon bugs comes up behind elmer and plays guess who with elmer guessing barbara stanwick uh unless you saw the cartoon before 1942 when the original guest was carol lombard unfortunately lombard passed away in a plane crashed around the cartoon's debut and the lion was changed and there are tons of examples throughout media um several episodes of freakazoid with visual cameos by princess diana got pulled after her fatal accident the 1997 episode of rugrats called vacation had two vegas magicians uh siegfried and roy being attacked by a tiger as a joke but it got pulled after that actually happened in 2003. there was a gi joe rerun pulled in 2011 since the episode showed cobra trying to destroy a japanese city with earthquakes which then immediately happened in march 2011 an episode of lion guard titled never roar again which prominently featured crocodiles trying to eat the kid characters that got pulled after the 2016 alligator attack near disney world uh chip and dale talespin 101 dalmatians freaking sonic the hedgehog they have all run into this problem buzz lightyear of star command had not won but two episodes pulled those episodes by the way were inside job and conspiracy and got pulled due to their name or the story line where buzz is accused of trying to kill the president the longer you spend in that weird rabbit hole the more and more you start seeing a certain idea a certain conspiracy theory predictive programming in kids television believers in this theory think there's a secret group of powerful people who control the world and that this group plans and orchestrates all tragedies all disasters and all terrorist attacks but to make sure that people accept those happenings as normal that group also plants little clues and hints all over fiction and media a beverly hills cynthia lunch box a pony and a 911 emergency surgical kit with working stethoscope and look even as a big skeptic i love learning about things like the paranormal about ufos and yeah about conspiracy theories and even cults i have a whole video about movies and music made by actual cults so as someone who can appreciate a fun conspiracy theory trust me when i say the examples i've seen of predictive programming in kids television are weak like sticking with that unnice 2001 new york thing let's go through some of the most popular examples of quote proof that some secret society organized a decade in advance and put hints all over media about it let's see a 1978 episode of super friends with the legion of doom making a tower bend a little a 1985 episode of gi joe where a plane hits two tau oh it doesn't it doesn't even hit him it just it parks an episode of spider-man unlimited where two pillars get knocked down an episode of gargoyles where there's a blast on the top of the world trade center in a show based in new york wow what a surprise i used the tallest building there's a scene in duck tales where a plane knocks over some statues and one of my favorites a background movie poster in johnny bravo with a building on fire look at it look at the proof secret cartoon secret agents must have snuck in one night and drawn that burning building on a poster just so kids would remember that in seven or eight years and then be like oh i saw that in johnny bravo so that's normal it's just absurd like there's a 1994 episode of iron man that had a terrorist plan to fly some hijacked planes into the pentagon and the world tour oh but the truth is nobody is brainwashing kids with predictive programming they do it with advertisements between 1946 and 1980 kid targeting advertisements in the us were somewhat limited by broadcasting rules but in 1981 the fcc began dismantling regulations on ads for kids which paved the way for what is now sometimes referred to as the era of 30-minute commercials companies could make a toy then make a tv show about the toy then air commercials for the toy during the tv show about the toy and they could line up two three four hours of programming like this back to back to back in the first half of the 1980s cartoons featuring merchandise characters increased over 300 and i'm not just talking about action figures although i'm definitely also talking about action figures snacks posters stickers clothes lunchboxes mcdonald's toys everything even talking teddy bears like teddy ruxpin and his creepy ass live action show around which you could even advertise the toy eventually the children's television act was set up to limit commercials to kids during prime time so luckily that's not a problem anymore but the reason i'm talking about toys well i'm not suggesting that all merch-driven shows were inherently bad they weren't lots of them were engaging memorable and well written like i said earlier i loved power rangers and that was basically one big toy commercial the problem is that a show's success even today often relies on how much tie and merchandise it can push good shows great shows got cut because they couldn't push toys and maybe we should expect better from the kind of entertainment oh son of a i'm on the soapbox again child stars yeah you probably knew this topic was coming eventually let's go back back before disney channel stars and 90s sitcoms before television to the 1920s um 1921 specifically and it's the big premiere of charlie chaplin's classic film the kid but it's also the diving board for a new star's career the six-year-old jackie coogan after starring in the film akukan would go on to a prolific child career making around 50 million dollars before his 18th birthday but upon reaching adulthood coogan to his horror found that most of his money was just gone his mother and stepfather a a man who was also his financial advisor had blown through all of it on booze luxury items and cars in the 1930s you had shirley temple who referred to some of her earliest time in the industry as quote a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence on one set if she acted up she was put into a windowless soundproof box affectionately titled the punishment box like an actual physical punishment box throughout her teen career at temple was groped harassed sometimes straight up attacked by various scumbags once by a producer who during a meeting with her engaged his remote control door lock a thing no hollywood producer should be allowed to have by the way and literally chased her around the room it's so over the top and evil that it's almost funny but it's not funny because it actually happened oh and just like jackie coogan temple would have most of her money squandered by her parents before her 18th birthday and don't even get me started on judy garland in the 1940s almost everybody's aware how she was mistreated while working on the wizard of oz her parents the the studio the director everybody treated her like crap and because some people on the production were worried that the 16 year old garland didn't look young or thin enough this girl again this girl they pumped her full of amphetamines and cigarettes to keep her looking thinner garland never quite managed to shake her childhood treatment or the substance abuse going broke and passing away from an overdose in her late 40s in the 1950s there was bobby driscoll whose young performances so impressed walt disney himself that driscoll was put under the company's very first acting contract even if you've never heard of driscoll you've probably heard his voice as the titular character in peter pan but once driscoll hit puberty type gasting led to work in the industry just drying up in fact he only learned that his disney contract had ended when he drove up to the studio gate and was refused entrance unable to find steady work again he fell into substance abuse lost all of his money and passed away at the age of 31 from an overdose by the 1970s the entertainment industry had noticed that a lot of their child stars were ending up not alive so they enacted a series of regulations on childhood working conditions um think reduced working hours financial protections mandatory supervision all all great things but even with these positive changes in the industry there are still plenty of awful conditions and practices that child performers are subjected to plenty of kids still grow up to find that a lot of their money is just gone the most famous example probably being gary coleman that poor guy people people were stealing money from that dude his whole life from childhood to old age did you know that this is true they had to postpone his funeral because people were too busy fighting over the estate he left behind and it wasn't even that much money and it's not just finances some child stars have been subjected to outright physical abuse on set by parents with studios looking the other way to avoid trouble with cps plus having a professional relationship with your own children can complicate your actual relationship in a 1998 paper published in the journal of personality assessment children performers were shown to feel far less connected to their parents who manage their careers than those of normal kids that disconnect that inability to open up to their own parents among other factors is making it so much easier for kids to become the targets of countless child predators in the industry and sometimes predators come in ways you wouldn't expect for example in the 2014 documentary in open secret parents of child performers talk about how they often find their kids headshots and model pictures pictures they'd only sent to casting directors being sold on online auctions sometimes for hundreds of dollars kids that aren't even famous and even if a kid manages to get famous have some good roles have parents that are supportive but not overbearing avoids predators and eventually decides that they want to leave the industry well even that's tricky in a 2013 article written by maura wilson who you may recognize from matilda mrs doubtfire and more recently the faceless woman who secretly lives in your house from welcome to night vale wilson points out that many child stars literally grow up surrounded by the industry with everyone they know being connected to it plus they're often discouraged from prioritizing their own educations over acting gigs so how do you escape that well a lot of them can't instead they stick around believing that they're trapped and turned to substance abuse and alcoholism and poor life choices and sometimes choosing to end their lives i'm not going to name off every former child actor that's done this by the way because i think that would be really poor taste but it also feels in poor taste not to talk about it and there's a lot of them that have done this and if we're being honest with ourselves we're all just kind of numb to it aren't we at this point most of us are more surprised when a former child performer comes out of the industry normal than we are when one takes their own life how messed up is the industry how messed up are we that this is our status quo you know after everything we've looked at today not just the child star stuff but everything it would be understandable if you came away feeling a little depressed about kids television at least that's how i was feeling when i was making this for months all i did was spend my time diving into all the horrible dark rabbit holes the stories of abusers and victims and cover-ups and bullying and controversies and lawsuits and a lot of stuff that didn't even make it into this video because it was just too damn dark or depressing while working on this video's research and script i started wondering why was i even making this am i creating something just to depress people just to make them feel bad about the shows they loved his kids what's the value of content like this it got so bad that i even started thinking about trashing the whole project and doing something less miserable until one night when i ran across a video this is a video recording of a 1969 senate hearing a hearing that was put together with one single goal to decide whether or not the u.s government should dramatically cut its 20 million dollar public funding for pbs you remember pbs right we've mentioned them a few times in this video but they air free public educational programming for kids and like i mentioned earlier they desperately rely on public funds to make that happen and if the senate hearing went badly those funds were about to get slashed leading the hearing was senator john o pastor a notoriously tough man with an equally notorious reputation for eliminating any government spending he thought was wasteful and during the senate hearing it was becoming very clear he wanted pbs on the chopping block over several days pasteur had listened to the testimony from various officials executives childhood educational advocates and other people begging pleading with him to keep pbs funded you have to understand pbs was the only free educational programming available to a lot of kids at the time especially for kids in low-income families where something like sesame street might be the only educational content they had until entering first grade but senator pastor wasn't having any of it in preparation for the hearing he actually hadn't watched very much of pbs's lineup and with each passing speaker he only seemed to get more and more aggressive with his questions he would interrupt speeches criticize and challenge every opposing viewpoint after all in his mind children's tv was all cartoons and violence and mindlessness you know children weren't learning from that garbage so why should the government be paying for it things look pretty bleak for pbs until the final day of the hearing when somebody from pbs and perhaps the most hopeless hail mary in television history asks one of their newest show hosts to speak up to to do something anything to help convince senator pastor not to cut their budget and the man they asked to talk it's a beautiful day in this neighborhood a beautiful day for a neighbor would you be mine could you be mine was a young fred rogers for those of you who don't know him fred rogers was the host of the children's television show mr rogers neighborhood airing alongside sesame street and other pbs content mr rogers neighborhood focused on teaching very young kids you know two three four year olds about simple stuff in life like like what firemen do what a hula hoop is that sort of thing but even with how young his audience was mr rogers believed kids would have questions about more complicated topics so sometimes he would discuss things like divorce or racial relations or disabilities even sometimes accepting death but he managed to talk about those things in a way that helped kids feel informed but safe which is incredible rogers hosted his show for nearly 40 years and by many americans this man is practically deified as a beacon of kindness humility and respect but in 1969 mr rogers was not the established beloved figure he would later become most people including the gruff senator pastor had never even heard of roger's new show yet here he was with the weight of educational programming in the u.s all on his shoulders and he accepts the mic rogers takes out his prepared statement letter but decides instead not to read it out loud dozens of people had read their statements to pastor already to no avail so instead mr rogers just talks to him he talks to him about trust about how important it is how important it is to impart to children to give to children and how it's something that he wants to teach kids about on his show mr rogers says that he trusts senator pastor will read that statement later on in his own time pasteur still irritated from the last few days of the hearing quickly snaps at roger with will it make you happy if you read it but mr rogers quietly and politely says no no he he just wants to have a conversation so that's exactly what they did rogers tells pasteur about the simple life lessons they try to teach on his show things like haircuts and family and everything throughout this talk pastor seems a little taken aback he doesn't interrupt rogers like he had with previous speakers he doesn't challenge rogers on how every dollar is being spent every single moment he just listens rogers talks about how this show tries to impart to children how they have value purely on the virtue of being themselves roger talks about the drive he has of giving children that gift in life that gift of being told that you're wanted a gift that they might not be receiving from anybody else in their lives i'm proud of you you know that i hope you do and then do you know what he does mr rogers this this little nobody in the big senate hearing this pennsylvania bumpkin david out of local access television in front of the goliath senator in front of the hearing in front of the country he reads the lyrics of a song he wrote for kids could i tell you the words of one of the songs which i feel is very important yes what do you do with the math that you feel when you feel so mad you could bite when the whole wide world seems oh so wrong and nothing you do seems very right what do you do do you punch a bag do you pound some clay or some dough do you round up friends for a game of tag or see how fast you go it's great to be able to stop when you've planned a thing that's wrong and be able to do something else instead and think this song i can stop when i want to can stop when i wish can stop stop stop anytime and what a good feeling to feel like this and know that the feeling is really mine know that there's something deep inside that helps us become what we can as rogers finishes there's a very brief moment of quiet then senator john o pastor the hardened washington bureaucrat looks at mr rogers and he smiles and he says looks like you just earned the 20 million dollars you could argue that what rogers talked about and sang about on that date the words themselves they didn't matter those weren't what convinced pasteur no it was seeing an individual with a genuine passion for the real inner needs of kids past steward knew that the money for pbs well it was never going to make financial returns but it could be going to someone sincerely devoted to helping young children learn and to teach them that they have value every single day and 20 million dollars is a small price to pay for that there's only one in this wonderful world you are special the story of that hearing well it reminded me yeah there's an ugly side of kids television there's controversies dangerous ads horrible industry practices but the majority of people who work in kids tv are the ones we didn't talk about today the fiercely dedicated creators writers animators crew performers directors and more that do their best to create something special that speaks to kids to create media to help kids understand how to process their feelings to learn about something new to be told they have value to see that they aren't alone in their growing experiences to be told it's okay to be who you are whoever you are to joke about the impenetrable world of grown-ups and all their silliness to enjoy the weird and the quirky and maybe even for a young kid who always felt like he didn't fit in to come home every day after school and have something that made him feel less lonely as for david yast well you'll be happy to know he's in a much better place now he was in time able to embrace his own sexuality and would return to the industry as both an actor and as a producer and not only that but he's gone on to use his power ranger status to raise money for the children's hospital aids center and to promote the no hate campaign which advocates for uh lgbt plus acceptance inequality he was able to turn a terrible part of his life into a platform to help others who were going through what he himself went through and maybe most exciting for me while i was making this video it was announced that jost is coming back to power rangers that's right yost as billy is coming back for the 30th anniversary season premiering next year i think and i cannot tell you how hyped i am about this and i i know not everything in kids tv is pretty but after all the crap david yost dealt with all those years ago then using that suffering as a way to help people who suffered like he did and then to make a return to the show in this new healthier place well there's nothing ugly about that goodnight everybody thanks for watching platypirus hi there do you enjoy paperwork content but don't want to wait eight friggin months between videos oh my god it really has been eight months it's almost been nine uh check out my second channel paperwhale's garbage can where bloopers outtakes cut content and other stuff not not really good enough for this channel goes it's called a garbage can for a reason but first let's do some credits starting with the kickstarter supporters who donated specifically for this video last year when i was a completely unknown youtuber i'm like now we're i'm just mostly i'm not a youtuber uh cruisy brian d bun bun phil rock war bethany the prince of salt pisces go way deep entertainment sergey k chris estrada uh brett g e ng joel a iam jacob another big supporter uh levi b and vishal rk and thanks as well to paul r for his second dimension next up patreon supporters thank you thank you thank you all of you all of you thank you so much um my videos take a very very very very very long time to make and not all of them are eligible for monetization probably not this one to be honest so it means the world and me to have people supporting me you know like you do and if you'd like to join my patreon there's a link down in the description where you can find some extra behind-the-scenes stuff um and production updates you actually don't need to be a patreon supporter to see all that stuff it's all set to public so check it out and if you like me give me money if you don't like me you can donate to someone who will beat me up i guess if you want to but you know it's probably easier not to i should really stop i should really stop this and retake it but i'm not going to because it's three o'clock in the morning and you know what this is live television let's just treat it as live television and we'll go from there um uh is anybody still listening okay as well as the shout outs from brad tasted music and windagoon oh my god i'm a big fan of both of their stuff so it was so cool to have them even know who i was and you know even recommend my stuff to me windagoon thank you again that's amazing you i think you literally took my channel from 2k subscribers to i think it's like 65k now oh my god um this video's animated opening was made by gad studio music by adam blotner the platypirus monster slash best pokemon ever was made by jay hoendelf i think and named by bin [ __ ] yeah [ __ ] [ __ ] we actually we actually talked about how to pronounce his name correctly and i said it wrong um i am my i made a memo right here [ __ ] ben [ __ ] thank you uh audio engineering by austin steele and background art by polyplanet additional research by ace dog 11 and also uh thanks to genkasa from the reddit of book not pokemon uh the power rangers reddit who helped me track down a reality not a reality a really important clip from power rangers um it really brought the whole video together i think and you can try to guess what it was anyway i'm sorry for this credits um see you all next video it should be out sometime in the next 20 years bye you

Channel: Paper Will

Views: 2,035,715

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Id: cCyiEWtee_c

Length: 78min 0sec (4680 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 02 2022