ANOTHER Speedy article to check out!

[Jon Cooke]

From HoustonChronicle.com: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1321856

It mentions Matthew's petition. And there are some more great Laurie Goldberg quotes in there...


-Jon

[J Lee]

The article comes from the Cox News Service, which is based in Atlanta and is owned by the same people who own the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, so I would guess this story is also getting play in Cartoon Network's hometown paper.

It also comes off as pretty sympathetic to the complaints of people on this board, and makes the Ms. Goldberg's and CN's position look ridiculously PC -- though it does make the point that so long as that attitude remains, the odds are Speedy's not coming back on anytime soon, unless the pressure/spotlight of ridicule is kept on AOL Time Warner.

[Jon Cooke]

The thing that I don't understand is why Goldberg keeps acting like Speedy is some sort of separate "show". I don't think she's even acknowledged that Speedy is a part of the Looney Tunes stable of characters. All we want to see is those cartoons shown alongside the other WB cartoons again.


-Jon

[Matthew Hunter]

And I don't get the "excessive drinking and smoking" thing either. I don't think any of the Speedy characters smoke at all, and there are probably about three in the whole series in which a character even touches alcohol, I can think of "Tabasco Road" and "Swing Ding Amigo"...can you think of any others? there were roughly 35-40 Speedy cartoons. I have an idea...let's ban the whole series of them because of two cartoons!
-Matthew

[Joe Tully]

Yeah, they're blatantly lying at this point. They complain that Speedy isn't popular and isn't good for ratings, but as I pointed out in another thread, there's tons of Speedy merchandise. Seriously, can you say that any of the major LT characters isn't popular? Maybe that would be true of Cool Cat or Buddy, but Speedy? No way.

[Pilmedium]

"we pick what will drive the best ratings", or something like that.

I've got news for you. If you bring back Speedy and/or other now-rare cartoons, your so-called ratings won't go down.

Just because you own so many cartoons doesn't mean you can dictate to everyone what they are allowed to see. :mad:

I will end the post now before it turns into a rant. :o

[J Lee]

Basically, Ms. Goldberg is "stonewalling" the issue, presumably on orders of higher-ups, under the notion that this will all blow over after a couple of days and become a dead issue in the media. It's a pretty standard practce -- you give no ground on your own position while deriding the position of your opponents, in this case by saying "The bottom-line argument is that it's not a show that does well and it offends some people."

Yeah, I'll bet all that "Ed, Edd and Eddy," "Grim and Evil" and "Time Squad" merchadise is just making a mint for AOL Time Warner in licensing fees compaired with the money Speedy brings in. What she really means is "Speedy is more popular than two-thirds of the stuff we air, but he isn't popular enough in marketing sales to offset having to stand up to pressure groups and show some integrity by keeping his cartoons on the air -- or at least selectively removing a few cartoons that might be considered offensive."

And as far as offensive goes, you can go back 30 years and see complaints by Action for Children's Television against all of the violence in Warner Brothers, and other Hollywood cartoons, because it offended them. Based on that, let's yank 'em all off the network and discontinue licensing of any of their images by AOL Time Warner -- oohps, can't do that, because now we're talking about real money.

You can be sure if some group came to AOL T/W demanding their biggest money makers -- Bugs Daffy, Tweety or even Taz -- be removed from TV because they were offensive, the company would fight it much harder because the loss of money from bowing to the PC crowd would be far greater.

[Nelson]

Miss Goldberg doesn't have a clue on what she's talking about from that article and I'm simply amazed that she has a job at CN.What she has said does not make sense nor is true on the "Speedy" cartoons when viewing them.Then she say it's a show? hey Miss Goldberg, this is a theatrical cartoon one reelers and NOT a show so get your facts straight.

[kiddiesunshine]

OMG! THEY AREN'T GOOD FOR RATINGS?! HOW WOULD THEY KNOW? CN NEVER GAVE SPEEDY A CHANCE! IF RATINGS ARE THE NEW EXCUSE, WHY ARE THE SMURFS BACK? SPEEDY'S FANBASE IS TOO LARGE TO NOT BOOST RATINGS. JESUS!!!

[Jack]

Originally posted by kiddiesunshine
OMG! THEY AREN'T GOOD FOR RATINGS?! HOW WOULD THEY KNOW? CN NEVER GAVE SPEEDY A CHANCE! IF RATINGS ARE THE NEW EXCUSE, WHY ARE THE SMURFS BACK? SPEEDY'S FANBASE IS TOO LARGE TO NOT BOOST RATINGS. JESUS!!!
How would they even know what ratings specific cartoons get?

Jack :D

[kiddiesunshine]

an equally good question.