I can't believe that neither Corndog nor MysteryMommy have posted this yet, but if you and your toddler watch PBS Sprout and night and you've been wondering what happened to Melanie, here's the answer.
Apparently late last week, Melanie Martinez, the host of "The Good Night Show" on Sprout, was fired due to a video she had done about seven years ago. (Note #1: SHE brought the video to PBS's attention. I'm not sure why she waited till the second year of her contract, but kudos to her for voluntarily making them aware of it.) You can
read the article on MSN and also read PBS's official statement. Then you can watch the video here (probably not the kind of thing you want to watch at work, however).
Now at first glance I guess I can see where PBS is coming from. The material certainly isn't appropriate for children... but kids shouldn't be watching this sort of video in the first place! (And if they are, their parents need to be more vigilant about their children's web surfing!) Then my wife forwarded me an email talking about other kids TV stars with risque shows/films in their bio, and one name that jumped out at me was George Carlin. Wait a second! Isn't George Carlin the narrator in some of the Thomas the Tank Engine episodes, a show that plays a VERY prominent role in Sprout's "Good Night Show" programming? Is PBS now going to pull all Thomas episodes where Carlin is the narrator? And if they do, I'd argue that all of Alec Baldwin's episodes need to be pulled too, as he has certainly played roles more risque than Melanie's 30-second PSA spoof.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
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3 comments:
I abso-smurfly agree! One other thing is that she was HONEST about the video. Why on Earth would PBS punish honesty?? Is that a message they want to send to kids too?
The Conductor position on TtFTE has always been filled by persons of um... questionable moral fiber, at least early in life. Whazzamatta, doesn't anybody remember that Ringo Starr did it first?
Since I never watched Sprout, I didn't make the connection. It's terrible that they fired her over that. It's a frickin' funny spot.
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