The golden age of children’s television
June 7, 2005
I just have a few moments but I wanted to write a little bit about television. When I was growing up I feel like I experienced the golden age of children’s television. Back then, we had Sesame Street, Mister Rogers, Letter People Land, and a few more that I kind of remeber, one example is Electric Company which had some strange skits. Anyway I feel those shows were the product of the times before child pop psychology and the rise of political correctedness. My days we enjoyed folk songs, grainy animations, burlap and mop like puppets. It felt down to earth. In St. Louis, it’s channel 9 PBS that I grew up watching. These days you have shows made in 3D which appear to me to be overly cheesy. But then again I may be wrong.
I also remember whenever I’d go to my Aunt Judy’s house she would always have Bob Ross on television. Bob Ross was a painter with a soothing cool voice and a curly fro. The guy you’d want to have in your family. His show, The Joy of Painting, was one of the best learning demonstrations of painting. Some would argue that his treatments of landscapes that he always seemed to do weren’t really art. To that I’d respond with a bat to their foreheads.
His show was lighthearted, focused and original in the sense that I’m not sure if I’ve seen since any production house with that amount of coverage of a single topic, especially in the United States. In other countries you do see shows of that quality on language learning or piano practice. Hopefully the internet will change this in the next 3-7 years. Hopefully in the next 10 years we can call up a long video series of scratching on turntables or how to take care of reptiles.
Watching Bob Ross I always loved the sound of the palette knives scrapping against the palette and the paint canvas. All the sounds really meant something. It was all the more real. I don’t remember any sample sound bed or anything. Also just the creation of the landscape painting in front of you and watching the techniques.
Here’s to Bob Ross who passed away in 1995 of lymphoma. Thanks so much for the memories. Even though I never learned to paint, I definitely learned from you.
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