It’s good the people at Christian network TBN occasionally mix up their Saturday morning kiddie programming, but last time I watched, they removed a few of the shows I liked, such as one of the cartoons about animated bugs – either “Hermie” or “Carlos the Caterpillar,” they removed “God Rocks!”, and they removed a few other of my favorites.
Yes, I’m an adult over the age of 40 who admits to watching Saturday morning Christian kiddie shows. Ironically, I find TBN’s kids shows better, more biblically correct and encouraging, than most of the material aimed at adults on TBN. Their kid shows seems largely free of the prosperity gospel nonsense that permeates their adult programming, for one thing. I am not, however, a fan TBN’s shows such as “iShine KNECT” (aimed at tweens), and I wish they’d remove that show.
When I began watching TBN kid programming several years ago, they had a bad, bad tendency to keep airing the same set of shows over and over to the point I saw each episode a million times each. I’m talking specifically about “Bible Man,” and “McGee and Me.” Those two shows dragged on and on for about six or seven years until they pulled them and replaced them with other shows. To make matters worse, “McGee and Me” was filmed in the 1980s and clearly looked it – and the music, the pop rock soundtrack, sounded very 1980s too.
This past Saturday or so, TBN began airing old black and white episodes of the show “Lassie,” which I think originally were filmed in the 1950s. I like dogs, and have nothing against Lassie, but I find the show a little boring and can’t figure out why a Christian network is airing it.
I guess not every show has to contain an explicit Bible lesson in it, or quotes from the Bible, but I’m not seeing what a show about a dog who saves people has to do with Christianity?
I never get tired of “Davey and Goliath.” I at first did not like “The LADs TV” show, but it grew on me after a few months but was recently pulled from the TBN Saturday morning line up. About the only new addition they made that I enjoy is some kind of art show, where an artist shows kids how to make drawings and crafts.
The “Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible” cartoon show (or whatever it’s called – it is hosted by actor Charlton Heston) is okay, but I find the song numbers a tad annoying. The introductions, which are hosted by Heston, are way, way too long and dull.
I’m an adult and after the first couple of minutes of Heston giving the upcoming cartoon’s back-story bores me to the point I lose focus on what he’s saying. I can only imagine how a kid must feel having to sit through five to ten minutes of tedious exposition by a then- 75 year old (or whatever) white haired Heston, before getting to the cartoon show.
The “Auto B Good” show. The Vallery Girl accent of the pink car, while cute at first, grows annoying after awhile. One irritating aspect of this cartoon is that it’s clearly a rip off of Disney’s “CARS” movie (I’m assuming it came after CARS).
Christians in entertainment – cartoons, movies, rock music – have this stupid, irritating tendency to copy and mimic something that has become popular in secular culture. It makes us Christians look even more pathetic to the secular culture, as though we are trying too hard to look cool and relevant, like Mark Driscoll fixating on sex, cage fighting, and wearing skinny jeans in his sermons (pastor Ed Young is also guilty of all that): it makes him and Christianity by association look LAME, not cutting edge or cool.
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