Patrick McNamara wrote:
>
> Some of the best shows HB made have not been re-aired since the 70s. They
> produced just about the best animation of the time. These Are The Days could
> have held it's own against anything coming out of Japan.
Remember when "ABC Afterschool Special" *didn't* mean "teen
drunk-driving", but could mean "Jose' Ferrer voicing an animated Cyrano"?
(And if that makes me a million years old, so be it--At least I keep the
history books.)
...If you don't, let's just say "Charlotte's Web", and move on.
> Japanese animation
> for TV at the time was mainly limited to the few shows from the 60s that
> came over. Anime didn't make it big until the 80s when it replaced alot of
> the HB shows.
As noted earlier, it was the "strip" days of 80's weekday syndication
that helped other studios discover the ease of Japanese outsourcing, for
GI Joe, Transformers, Thundercats, etc.--
While syndicating several years' worth of actual proto-anime, with
Robotech and Star Blazers showed where those overseas-animated shows GOT
their dynamic visual pacing.
Filmation stuck with what they'd been doing stateside since the 70's,
looked dated to the point of downright bizarre by the time of
"Ghostbusters" and "Bravestarr", and never survived the 80's.
As for H-B, they never ventured out of Saturday morning (at least before
Ted the Conqueror), and this was the time they were already blurring the
line with Ruby-Spears for most of the major SatAM franchises.
> The biggest flaw with the shows was the use of a laugh-track which was
> standard for prime time comedy of the time but without HB there would have
> been almost no SatAM.
Back in the 70's, it was the SatAM Triumvirate:
H-B and Scooby-Doo owned ABC, Filmation and live-action Shazam/Isis
owned CBS, and DePatie/Freleng and Pink Panther owned NBC. (And Sid &
Marty Krofft fit themselves in where they could.)
And only one of these studios became cultural survivors... :)
Derek Janssen
ejanss1@
verizon.net
