Happy Birthday, Scooby Doo

It was 40 years ago, believe it or not, that a certain Great Dane ran scaredy cat straight into the hearts of millions. Scooby Doo, Where Are You? (the full official title of the original show) debuted in its Saturday morning time slot on CBS on September 13th, 1969. Because local stations tended to tape the Saturday morning cartoons pre-feed in the wee hours of Saturday and shuffle the running order, I can't cite a specific time slot. You may remember it as a 9:00 show, while others recall it being on at a different time. Doesn't matter. Whenever it aired, it was the big hit of the '69 cartoon schedule.

And a good thing it was. Hannah Barbera Productions, then recently acquired by Taft Broadcasting of Cincinnati, needed a hit. The parents groups, most notably the national PTA, were out to demonize animation right out of existance. While the campy prime time Batman series may have spawned a superhero glut in Saturday morning, HB and others soon found themselves under fire for bringing too much violence to the screen. Arguably, it was mostly cartoon violence - ray guns blasting space ships or Space Ghost freezing a swarm of space locust, although the animated Lone Ranger was known to carry a pistol - but the perception took over all reality. And, watching some of those shows today on Boomerang, I can see they kind of had a point. The moral of many of these shows is basically he who has the biggest ray gun wins. On the other hand, I just caught an episode of The Space Cadets, a show I adored at the age of 3, where the villains showed great restraint after kidnapping the youngest cadet, saying, "Aw. He's just a little kid." The space pirate then takes out his frustration by bopping his pint-size assistant.

Justified or not, Saturday morning needed to clean up its act. And the producers of these shows such as Joe Barbera and Bill Hannah, veterans of theatrical animated shorts who had never been held accountable by any social group let alone the PTA, whose nearly 20 year run of Tom and Jerry featured painful sight gags and outright malicious behavior, not to mention at least one racial joke per cartoon, found themselves caught in a tangle only network television could create. Make them funny, but not too funny. Come up with a mega-hit, but keep it low-key.

And so, the networks called for more live action shows. The formula was simple: animated cartoon=bad, live action=good. If the hundreds of craftspeople dedicated to the art of animation wanted to keep their happy homes, somebody needed to disprove the theory.

(There's a great example of how the networks started calling the shots within the pages of "Tex Avery: King of Cartoons" by Joe Adamson, De Capo Press. During the interview with Michael Maltese we get some incidental insight into the painful pre-production process of the 1967 Moby Dick cartoon series.)

During the 1960's, Hannah and Barbera hammered out a new series where a group of teens solved mysteries. Sort of like Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, but with Maynard G. Krebs from Dobie Gillis. No ray guns. No super science. And villains wanted in six states, but with enough restraint to only cook up a haunted house ruse to scare people away, as opposed to shooting them. The Krebs character would have a beatnik sister with the up-to-date glasses and sweater look, and a far-out necklace. The other teens would be "normal" with good manners and a wardrobe right off of a Beach Boys album cover. They pitched the show to the networks. CBS showed interest, but it needed work. Some meddling kid executive at CBS suggested the show needed a dog. That executive's name was Fred Silverman.

Bill and Joe went back to the drawing board, put some white out over the glasses girl's necklace and made her the dateless brainy one and christened her with a name sure to get the point across: Velma. The ink and paint department was told to never color in Shaggy's soul patch. (By the time the show hit the air, Shaggy would've fit right in at most high schools' honor society.) And some dogs were auditioned.

The first was a sheepdog named Wayout, but he soon grew tiresome. Eventually, they found magic: a Great Dane big enough to do human things like fly a plane or sit at a table, but dog enough to be the gang's pet. But most important, he was the link to the audience, showing fear when entering a haunted house, and needing a pep talk or a Scooby Snack to boost his courage when the going got tough. This was no superdog. He was one of us. Scared when he ought to be, but courageous in spite of it. In other words, he was an antihero with a heart of gold.

Scooby Doo became the breakaway hit of the 1969 Saturday morning season. Today, Scooby is still one of the most recognizable and profitable properties in television, spinning off several new series and movies, along with DVD collections and endless reruns.

It ain't art. The animation was often hack work. The ink and paint quality declined unbearably as the series trudged on through the '70's, even the voice tracks sometimes seemed to be a recording of the first run-through. And we kids did notice at times. But the central idea overshadowed the show's shortcomings. And that oft quoted line that appeared at the end of a few of the original episodes brought it home. "Those meddling kids."

Let me tell you. In 1969, that "kids" line hit like a kick to the stomach. It was a different time, when the adults were "old" and stuck in their old ways, bringing war and pollution, and sweeping aside anything good just for another dollar or because they hated change. They made rules, and we were supposed to obey them just because they were adults and we were just "kids." Their job was to keep us in our place and protect us from new ideas and thinking for ourselves. Just follow along, kids, and do what you're told. These "kids" today are nothing but a bunch of trouble making hippies. Send the boy to Viet Nam. That'll learn him a thing or two.

Each week when Shaggy, Scooby, and Velma politely explained the villain's plot to the police, I got an electric thrill out of watching the wrong-minded adult brought down by those meddling "kids." Yeah, go ahead, mister. Get in your cheap shot at us "kids" before you go to jail. But we "kids" are the future. And you're just an old man.

Maybe I'm making too much of this, but I was six when the original Scooby Doo premiered. Maybe Scooby lives on because of that sense of rebellion. Young people watch it today, and for a time Shaggy and Velma were fashion statements - a just reward for the Velma's everywhere. Maybe those hokey pop tunes inserted in the chase sequences of the second season sound pretty good compared with the pop of today. I don't know.

But every once in a while, when somebody at work is pulling politics, or some mook tries to get under my skin, I still get a kick out of being that meddling kid.

Shouted Out With "Glee!"

I'm not sure what to make of this, but here's the latest word on the new season.

Fox's Glee clobbered the competition. According to Fox, the one-two punch of So You Think You Can Dance and Glee won the night with teens, and younger adults - the audience more likely to go out and buy things.

The competition? President Obama speaking to congress about health care reform on the Big 3 and the cable news outlets. Make of that what you will.

The big premier for Glee is great news not only for Fox, but for Lima, Ohio where the show supposedly takes place. Only scant evidence has turned up on the air to confirm the Lima link, like a porta potty sign in the pilot episode listing Bluffton (spelled wrong) Ada, and Uniopolis. Trust me on this; the only way Uniopolis gets mentioned on network TV is if one of the writers grew up there. We're wondering if Lima will get more of a starring role as the show progresses. Keep watching.

And Now For Something Completely Different

News from the Cincinnati Zoo.

“Sarah,” the Cincinnati Zoo’s eight-year-old female cheetah, is now the world’s fastest of all land mammals. Today, Sarah earned her spot in the record book when she crossed the finish line in the 100-meter sprint with a time of 6.16 seconds in her very first attempt, breaking the previous mark of 6.19.

This is great news, but what you may not know is that this record was set in Clermont County, Ohio. Now I grew up in those parts, so I just can't resist throwing in some jokes about this. And so, ladies and germs, here are a few you won't like.


Hey, folks, did ya hear? An eight-year-old cheetah set a new speed record in Clermont County. Yeah. Of course, if your eight-years-old in Clermont County and still a virgin, you learn to run fast.

They must've timed her while she was running away from her daddy.

But seriously, folks, in case you were wondering how they got her to run that fast, they used a lure tied to a string... a welfare check.

She got a citation from Guiness... and the Milford Police.

Sadly, five minutes later Sarah was arrested for doing donuts in a front yard in Amelia.

The last time anybody moved that fast in Clermont County, she was being chased by the klan.

Last week.

Thank you! Tip your waitress.

Not Necessarily The News

Ever channel surfed or glanced up from your beer at the sports bar to see something you thought was a news bulletin? Only it wasn't. After a few seconds, you figured out it's a commercial. Ever wonder how many other viewers are watching and not able to make the distinction? I do.

There's a flight of spots for something called the Tax Relief Hotline that I've seen lately, mostly on the CW - every frickin' break - that just kill me. They use a double layer of crawls on the lower third of the screen just like certain news channels, and chroma key an actress playing a reporter in front of the White House or the IRS. And then they cut to pool footage of President Obama saying tax relief is on the way, blah, blah, blah. I love the small print, unreadable on a small TV, stating that this is not a newscast and that the government is not endorsing this service. Legally, their butts are covered. Ethically, they are going straight to Hell.

I've got a real bug up my ass about advertisers making spots that look like newscasts. It's dishonest, deceptive, and just plain annoying. And what's worse, the people who should be raising the biggest stink about them because it can do the most damage to their profession - the journalists - don't seem to care. Why doesn't the News Department, the entire department, walk into the the sales office and demand, "Knock it off. How would you like it if I went around telling people I sell for this station and I can get them a better rate?" Yeah, I know... Money talks. But that doesn't excuse using images and words of the President to sell your crap.

And I know the President has more important things to worry about, but you'd think somebody connected with The White House could put a stop to the misuse of the President's image. Hell, if they can put the hammer down on dolls of the First Daughters, they can surely tell these hucksters, "If we catch you using the president to sell your crap again, say hello to a Secret Service detail."

Don't we have enough people making flying fools of themselves and stunning congressional representatives at town hall meetings shouting outrageous lies and repeating Internet fables and junk political truthiness created by pseudo-journalistic talk show hosts to boost their ratings and ego? Do we really need another source of misinformation disguised as "news" in the form of shoddy advertising practice? Will ad agencies and the clients they represent figure this out on their own, or will it take an FTC or FCC crackdown to wake them up?

Or is it really worth the trouble? Are most viewers doing what I do? Laughing at it and tuning it out.