Re: second season kats....

From: Andy Hill <chance_at_unix.infoserve.net>
Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 06:38:41 -0700 (PDT)

On Tue, 9 May 1995, Ian Lynn wrote:

> I'm posting this with the assumption that this particular episode is a
> second season...but if not, I still don't favor the 15 min. format.
>
> I'm just now starting to catch the second season, and I have a problem.
> Why did they decide to drop to two 15 min. episodes, instead of one 30??
> I much prefered a little build-up, to the alternative of kats show up, kats
> destroy end of picture. Instance--"Volcanus Erupts"- The guys show up, see
> a crack in his body plates, sink a bomb in it, and boooom!!!! end of episode.
> IMO-BORING!!!I just can't see 15 (probably actually 12) min. being enough
> time to develope any kinda story line.

     This was done because there is a kind of slow drift in the industry
back towards a kind of "short" format, i.e. they think the viewership has
short attention spans and feel that two (or more) episodes within the :22
time slot would do better. H-B started this with the later seasons of
Scooby and Scrappy, dumping most of the other cast, and writing just for
Scooby, Scrappy and Shaggy in a bunch of 6-minuters. You'll notice that
the storylines for the short 'KATS episodes are the most juvenile of the
entire run (with the exception of Falk's "Turmoil"), which reflects the
belief at the time that the audience wasn't complex enough to follow the
plots all the way to their conclusion in the traditional set-up,
conflict, resolution format of :22 ac/adv. It's called "lowest common
denominator" programming, and shows that Ted and crew had really no idea
of the true demographic cross-section watching the show. It was
considered "an experiment" to do the 9/11 minute split, and all accounts
from H-B and elsewhere consider the "experiment" to be a failure.

     The worst example is actually the "Cry Turmoil" / "SwatKats
Unplugged" one, I think. "Turmoil" was originally slotted as a :22
minute ep, but was "kiddified" and cut down for the 11 minute format.
"Unplugged" didn't have any time at all for story setup, yet chose the
occasion to introduce yet another villian rather than concentrating on
the story with Hard Drive. The explanation lies in the writer's credit -
"Glenn Leopold", who Lance pointed out tended to "write for five-year olds".

Andy


Received on Tue May 09 1995 - 09:55:22 PDT