Something I’ve been thinking about lately, and one of the things I miss most about cartoons and kid programming in the ‘90s, is the hosts that presented them. Whether it was a show with multiple segments, or a several hour marathon of some kind, something about characters talking to you and telling you what was coming up next made your viewing experience feel like an event, something special, something that you, yourself, were involved in and participating in, and not just passively consuming.
This is something that’s been missing for a long time, and something that’s much, much harder to do in the streaming era. Sure, we can still watch Tiny Toons on DVD, and “binge watch”, as we call it these days, an entire season of our favorite shows. But there’s less of sense of interaction, however artificial it may have been, and less of a sense of the shows being specifically selected for the audience in that particular moment in time. There were also programs like Nick in the Afternoon (with its U-Pick gimmick) and JBVO, where you could actually directly influence what you watched. You do, of course, have the freedom to watch whatever you want if you subscribe to the right streaming services, but to me, it was the characters that made all the difference.
It sorta gave the illusion that these characters were alive, at least on some other plane of existence. It also has a similar appeal as old school variety shows like Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson, or even Vaudeville and circuses.
In general, I miss the days when kid programming felt more like they were catering to us, instead of just telling us what we should like.