A New Goal for my Zoom Petition!

 

            “As many of you know, in 2004, due to rating drops, the revival of the famous 70’s show Zoom was cancelled with its final season premiering in 2005”

Only view this webpage if you need more information.  If you wish just to sign it, all the information that you need and the place to sign it is right here:

www.petitiononline.com/zoomgo90/petition.html

Thank you for your support!!

 

Please Note: There is a video that will start automatically part-way down

 I couldn’t configure it otherwise in the making of this webpage.

 

            My Zoom petition is yet to have signatures.  Besides, how am I going to send 7 million signatures that are 1-2 minute videos to the producers of Zoom?  Besides, one of the reasons that I wanted to make this petition was so that I could be on the show.  I wanted to be on the show since I was little.  I just don’t see this being a reasonable goal.  I have another goal and dream that I think could be accomplished.


 

Why Change the Goal of My Zoom Petition?

 

            There are several reasons that I think the Zoom Petition should be changed.  For one reason, I really wanted to be on Zoom.  With the way that my Zoom Petition video is going, I don’t think that it would get enough signatures before I would reasonably be too old.  Besides, Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman just changed their age group for this year’s auditions from 10-14 to 9-13.  Even if Zoom came back, it just wouldn’t pay to bring it back into production in my point of view.  For those who would want to send ideas into Zoom, the Zoom website is still alive at www.pbskids.org/zoom and you can still send in ideas that would otherwise fit in on the Activities from the Show section in the Z-Mail area in the New from You section, and your ideas can be posted on the site with a reply as well.

            Secondly, I’m not sure about the idea for it airing on Qubo and Qubo on NBC.  A commercial station would be fine, but on Qubo?  I did change my mind on that too.

Don’t Understand the Above Section yet?

 

            If that describes you, chances are you saw “The Zoom Petition! Part 2 of 4” only.  This is/was an actual petition.  For those who need to see it, here it is (unabridged):

 

Well, If Your Goal Is Changing, What Is the New Goal?

 

            Short answer: Instead of trying to bring Zoom back in production, let’s try to not only bring Zoom back, but also bring back other shows that used to air on PBS Kids that were scheduled to be on the never-going-to-launch 24/7 PBS Kids Go! Channel.

            Long answer: My, oh my!  What a long answer it is.

 

The PBS Kids Go! Channel Plans

 

            In about early 2006, when I was still working hard to bring Zoom back by myself, PBS and a lot of other news sources began to talk about the 24/7 PBS Kids Go! channel.  This was majorly based on the already existing PBS Kids Go! program block already airing on a handful of PBS stations across the country.  It would contain the existing programs Postcards from Buster, Arthur, Maya and Miguel, Cyberchase, Zoom, and DragonflyTV.  It would also contain former shows Wishbone and Kratt’s Creatures as well as the future shows Kids Sports World and Animilia*.  Unfortunately, it did not go any further than the planning stages due to financial issues.

* Going to be launched in 2007

Here is a link that is full of the plans for it:

 

·         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_Kids_GO!#Digital_channel

·         http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/news/20060404_pbskidsgochannel.html

·         http://www.current.org/ch/ch0613kidsgo.shtml

·         (The video player that replaced its plans) www.pbskids.org/go/video

 

What does this have to do with Zoom?

A lot in my new goal.  If you happened to click on the third link, you would have seen that many stations had picked up the plans to rerun Wishbone anyway.  My idea is to have a new series and program block called Go! Classics.  This block will contain Wishbone, Zoom, Kratt’s Creatures, and another show not planned for rerun on the 24-hour channel: Ghostwriter!  It would be a one-hour block with Wishbone and Zoom on Monday through Thursday and Kratt’s Creatures and Ghostwriter on Friday, and in between the shows, a serial, weakly, storyline will be shown.  Let’s take a look at some of the other shows in details.  Then, maybe some of the names on the tip of your tongue will ring a bell.

 

Go! Classics in Details

 

            The main storyline for in between shows is not yet determined.  YOU will help me come up with a storyline.  You must somehow involve regular, modern-day, kids together with the nostalgic, 90’s, P-heads.

Don’t know what I mean by P-heads?  Well, then this PBS Kids blast from the past might refresh your memory!

Other than that, as long as it makes sense, it will be considered as the official storyline.

            Now, with that out of the way, let’s attack these shows in order:

 

Wishbone

 

(From Wikipedia) Wishbone is a Daytime Emmy Award winning television show which aired from 1995 to 1998 in the United States featuring a Jack Russell Terrier of the same name. Re-runs currently air weekly on select PBS stations. The main character, the talking dog Wishbone, lives with his owner Joe Talbot in the fictional modern town of Oakdale, Texas. As he tends to daydream about being the lead character of stories from classic literature, drawing parallels between the stories and events in the lives of Joe and his friends, he was known as "the little dog with a big imagination". The show follows his daydreams, as Wishbone acts out a famous story from literature or folklore. Only the viewers and the characters in his daydreams can hear Wishbone speak (and furthermore, the characters from his daydreams see Wishbone as whatever famous character he is currently portraying and not as a dog[citation needed]). The show has won four Daytime Emmies, a Peabody Award, and honors from the Television Critics Association. Wishbone's exterior shots were filmed on the backlot of Lyrick Studios in Allen, Texas, and its interior shots were filmed on a sound stage in a 50,000 square foot (4,600 square metres) warehouse in Plano, Texas.

The show garnered particular praise for refusing to sugarcoat many of the sadder or more unpleasant aspects of the source works, which usually enjoyed a fairly faithful retelling in the fantasy sequences.

The television series also inspired several book series. Altogether, there are more than fifty books featuring Wishbone, which were published even after the TV series ended production, up to 2001. It continues to air by some PBS affiliates.

            Wishbone, as you read, is still airing in some areas, mostly because that the PBS Kids Go! Channel launch was canceled.  It was a great show, and it should be merged with my new Go! Classics block because it might help get kids interested in reading.

 

Zoom

 

            Well, do we really have to talk about that?  I could copy Zoom’s article from Wikipeida as well, but most likely you first landed on this web page from my Zoom Petition on YouTube!  However, here are other Zoom videos:

 

 

 

Kratt’s Creatures

 

(From Wikipedia) Kratts' Creatures is a children's television program on PBS. The show was hosted by the Kratt Brothers, Chris and Martin. It also featured Shannon Duff as Alison Baldwin and Ron Rubin as the voice of an animated anthropomorphic dinosaur Ttark (Kratt spelled backwards). The show introduced its viewers to the world of animals. 50 episodes were produced in total. The show was first broadcast on PBS in 1994, as PBS stations carried the show until as late as 2005. Due to its popularity the show inspired an unofficial spinoff, Zoboomafoo, another show created by the Kratts, which premiered in early 1999.

            Kratt’s Creatures give a much different spin on science than Zoom or Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman does.  Teaching kids animal science in a neat way, they definitely deserve a spot on Go! Classics.

(I can’t embed the video of the Kratt’s Creatures theme song, so here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UtS1cUQl4A)

 

Ghostwriter

 

 

(From Wikipedia) Ghostwriter is a television series co-produced by the Children's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop) and the BBC, originally aired on PBS in the United States from October 1992 to February 1995. The series features a group of New York City teenagers who solve mysteries with the help of an invisible ghost, who can communicate with the kids only by manipulating whatever text and letters he can find and using them to form words and sentences. The series was shot in Brooklyn.

It goes on further to say:

The titular character of the series is an enigmatic figure. The mystery of Ghostwriter's true identity is never fully answered, although several clues are given during the course of the series in several of the mystery arcs (The following facts are from "Ghost Story", the Pilot episode, unless otherwise stated) :

It says in a New York Times article from 1991 that the producer's intent was to have Ghostwriter be a famous 15-16th Century Writer, but not Shakespeare[citation needed].

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Ghostwriter promoted literacy and writing.  In fact, unlike Zoom, it was canceled due to lack of funding and not lack of ratings/popularity.  There was even a Spanish version of the show: Fantasma Escritor.  The English Ghostwriter reran on Noggin/The N until Sesame Workshop gave up their share of the network.  For all these reasons, it should rerun on Go! Classics.

 

The Go! Classics Serial Storyline

 

            As you have read above, my Zoom Petition is going to be replaced with a new campaign goal for Go! Classics.  Therefore, we need to make it in a way that won’t cause the same thing with Zoom to happen again.  The way we’re going to do this is by making it in a serial format where a storyline is in between the shows.  A serial format is the format that Ghostwriter used.  You just couldn’t watch one episode of Ghostwriter, for example, and get the whole story.  4-5 episodes put together in order will make up one story arc.  When I say, “in between the shows”, I mean like the format Sesame Street is in (at least in the earlier seasons).  The main storyline is in between educational content (i.e. the letter of the day).  In an analogous manner, the shows Wishbone, Zoom, Kratt’s Creatures, and Ghostwriter will be like the educational content in-between the serial storyline.  I don’t have an idea for the serial format, otherwise I would have told you.  So, YOUR ideas for it might be the one used.  Here is how it will work: On any of my YouTube Zoom Petition videos (parts 1-4), you can comment (not a video response like previously the method for signing the petition) and then in it, tell me the following:

-          First name

-          State

-          Your idea for the storyline

-          What you think about my new goal

Now, as with any contest-like thing, there are certain rules.  First, if you post your idea more than once on one video, you are disqualified.  You are limited to one idea per video per account.

            Also, your idea needs to be about the classic P-heads as well as real live-action kids.  Your idea needs to be clean as well as following the rules for producing a PBS Kids show, as seen in the following link (Adobe Acrobat reader required for PDF, free download): http://www.pbs.org/producers/pbskidssubmissionguidelines.pdf

            This will be judged on uniqueness and creativity.  Your name will not be used for any purposes other than identifying your idea to PBS and when the official idea is announced.  After that, your name will be discarded.

            As far as signing my petition, you don’t have to add an idea to sign my petition.  Neither does signing my petition obligate you to send in an idea.

Signing the new petition

 

            Do NOT upload a video response.  It is now located here: http://www.petitiononline.com/zoomgo90/petition.html

Just click sign this petition, and you will be given the form to fill out the signature.  I hope you liked this webpage.  See you later!