Friday, April 3, 2009

Letter To Old School Electric Company DVD People

Dear People who put the old school Electric Company dvd together,
(catching breath)

I am one of those weird people who enjoy watching T.V. shows that I watched when I was little, with my kids. We are now huge fans of the Muppet Show and one should really watch those shows again as an adult, because I think it's even more enjoyable now.
The Electric company was also one of those shows that I watched when I was really little like 3-4-5. I believe to this day that E.C. and Sesame Street taught me to read. On the first day of kindergarten, I can remember getting my workbook, flipping to the back and reading the short little sentences for beginning reading. I will go. You will go. We will go. Oh yes it's still clear as day

Sadly this letter is not to boast about how awesome E. C. is..that's already a given.
Yesterday Bossyboy(4) turned on E.C. as I hadn't sat down to watch each show begining to end. Before the menu came on, the previews for other T.V. shows on DVD came on. None of the shows that were advertised were suitable for small children. Most of them were geared toward the Pre-teen and teen crowd, for example Freaks and Geeks. I would have been totally OK with this except for one little point, they talked about S - E - X . In fact out right said it.

Normally I would take this kind of thing with a grain of salt on any other DVD that is geared toward adults-teens. This however is a children's program geared toward young children learning to read. I'll even go so far to say, it also is for elementary aged up to 4th or 5th grade as there are lots of other things learned than sounding out words. Still does not give you the right to advertise teen/adult programming on a DVD that appeared on a public television station where solicitation of things more mature in nature does not appear during children's programming.

I'm going to guess that the people who put the DVD together had never even seen the show and "assumed" that E.C. was more geared for teens. I also realize that I could have easily skipped through the previews and headed toward the menu. This really isn't the point, as I shouldn't have even had to think about what kind of previews would be on this DVD.
Luckily my 4yr old was completely un phased and I was able to grab the remote and skip onto the menu.
I just thought I should bring this to your attention and that it may be advisable to be more familiar with what kind of show is going to be viewed and what genre of audience will watching, when planning what previews to add.
I'm also tempted to let my library know this; as they may want to move the DVD to the teen section instead of the children's section.

Just thought I'd bring this to your attention.

A concerned parent,

Jean

4 comments:

Jen said...

I loved the Electric Co. when I was little too. Oh and 3-2-1 Contact.

You should definitely send this post to the company that put out the dvd. That is so annoying about the previews!

The Mom said...

Sad. Just sad.

Laurie said...

Seriously? Wow. If you didn't already, you should really send them a letter. I mean dang.

Jen E @ mommablogsalot said...

That is so true and I'm really surprised they'd have that kind of preview on there! Especially where Electric Co. is on PBS which is so.... PG always. Weird!

Stats

Blog Archive