Authenticity vs. Variety

[aurora77]

Hello fellow cartoon lovers!

I'm coming to you with a question.  So far, we've kept the Saturday Morning re-creations "authentic", meaning that we've tried our best to include only content which could have actually aired on a Saturday morning on one of the Big Three networks.  We eventually want to expand beyond the Big Three and maybe even to cartoons which *gasp* might not have aired on Saturday mornings.  There's lots of great cartoons out there which were syndicated (and your non-ABC/CBS/NBC local networks decided when to air them) and ones which were aired on weekday mornings or weekdays after school, or on Sunday mornings.

For the sake of variety (and availability, since we can't get good copies of everything we'd like to use), how would you feel about eventually including some of the non-Saturday morning Big Three shows?  For example, this could include Rainbow Brite, He-Man, Bravestarr, and so many others that would otherwise be out of the question for an authentic Big Three Saturday Morning.

Discuss!

Comments

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Early Monday morning, my thought is that we try to stick with authenticity, with the option to swap in syndicated programming (year appropriate) when The Real Thing can't be obtained or is in terrible quality.

Also had a thought, not a make-or-break thing, BUT: If we could keep the entire watch-along centered on one season/year (86/87, for example), I could prepare a "In The News" post for the Thursday or Friday night before the watch-along with some background information to lend detail to the event. "It's 1988! Margaret Thatcher has just been re-appointed for an unheard of third term as Prime Minister of England! The Iran Contra Hearings and Colonel Oliver North are on every channel denying that anybody knew we were selling weapons! Commercials for the movie "Moonstruck" (starring Cher) flood the airwaves, and the TV show "Thirtysomething" comes along to invent and define the new television category of "Hour Long Dramedy".

It would be longer than that, but you get the idea ;)

[aurora77]

Good call! How about one for one of our existing watch-alongs? We had 1984 and 1986 already, so if you do one for one of those, it will be new content to get people excited about even if they've seen that watch-along. The new one we'll talk more about elsewhere. :D

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Sounds great! You want to try swapping in some syndicated shows in to the existing 1986 watch-along as well, or shall we do this one step at a time?

[aurora77]

Oooh, I hadn't thought of that.

I may have to swap out a bit that was flagged. Let me look at how things are going with my other projects (we're going to Nerd Prom as Ambassador Delenn and Captain Sheridan, so it's going to be a major time drain to get those costumes completed by mid-July) and I'll be trying to complete the September watchalong. The first will keep me busy until a week before the second event. I'll work on the watchalong in my "downtime" when I'm not doing costuming.