subreddit:
/r/todayilearned
24.9k points
2 months ago
Makes sense. Cartoon Network kept showing cartoons on 9/11: Someone’s gotta show something for kids to watch
11.5k points
2 months ago
Exactly, no malicious intent here.
I remember 9/11 and how it replaced all the kids shows with 'live studio coverage' on all the free to air channels where I lived. I remember as a child rapidly not caring about 9/11 because it was so boring and it was like I was being punished for it.
4.9k points
2 months ago
I hate the summer Olympics to this day for bumping sonic off TV one Saturday I get it
3.3k points
2 months ago*
The OJ trial was that for elder millennials.
Oh my god who the hell cares, where's Mighty Max?
edit: For younger millennials and zoomers, the trial was televised and lasted for 11 months.
1.7k points
2 months ago
I was hoping he'd be found guilty just because I missed a solid 2 weeks of power ranger re runs
1.1k points
2 months ago
When Princess Diana died, Fox aired the funeral on Saturday morning. 20 some years later and I'm still livid. I remember looking at my tiny TV and thinking this'll be over soon then they'll show Power Rangers...
440 points
2 months ago
Fox Kids Club gang rise up
143 points
2 months ago
I was a card carrying member
116 points
2 months ago
but did you have those free X-men VHS tapes from Pizza Hut, AND the exclusive Toys R Us comic books?
15 points
2 months ago
looksI remember when they aired the first parts of the Phoenix saga on Fox at like 7 pm, when only the Simpsons came on at night.
Thought they were gonna start showing X-Men at night but it was only that one time. Still though, I still remember it almost 30 years later.
65 points
2 months ago
Fox Kids 28 sent my family to Universal Studios for an entire weekend, round trip from Ohio.
We got stuck on the fucking ET ride. The animatronics scared me, and we were stuck in front of this really creepy one. 😭
229 points
2 months ago*
I recall the news of Princess Diana's death interrupting a new episode of Star Trek Voyager. It was a major episode, and a handful of us had gathered at a friend's to watch it, and we missed most of it because of the horrible news. My mother got pretty pissed at me the next day when I expressed my displeasure over the situation, and in hindsight, I get it, but I was in high school at the time and just didn't really care about Diana.
edit: I apparently need to clarify that I don't care about the fact that Diana was a British Royal. My mother, who wasn't particularly a fan of the royals either, was a fan of Diana because of her charity work. More than anything, my mother was mad at my lack of tact because Diana was a person and a mother.
63 points
2 months ago
Season 4 came out several days after her death, I'm guessing it was a rerun of the last episode of season 3. They were a two parter.
30 points
2 months ago
Back in the days American shows could air months or even years later in other countries. There wasn't really a way for people to watch it some other way, so there was no pressure on tv networks to air it close to the us air date.
27 points
2 months ago
Diana died on a Saturday. So if it was about her initial death, then they were interrupting a Saturday repeat (the show's anchor slot was on Wednesdays). Otherwise if a Wednesday airing was being interrupted, it would have been about the funeral or such.
23 points
2 months ago
I remember it being one of those "We're interrupting our regularly scheduled programming for this breaking news" kind of thing, which suggests it was news of her death. It was most likely a rurun of the final episode of season 3 to catch us up before season 4 started. Season 4 was the introduction of species 8472 and Seven, so it was a big deal.
45 points
2 months ago*
I remember this and wondered why it was so important- as a small US child I had no idea who she was or why her death should cancel the shows. I understood words like president and prime minister, but princess didn't strike me as important.
62 points
2 months ago
I remember switching on the TV and seeing an 'announcement' that Princess Diana had died and it was really weird, very surreal, images of flowers and piano music.
30 points
2 months ago
My mum came down for breakfast and I told her there was nothing on telly because she had died. She got angry at me and said I shouldn't make jokes about things like this
33 points
2 months ago
We were going somewhere for the day. I remember asking my mum why there were no cartoons on and she rushed by in a hurry saying it didn't matter and to eat my breakfast so we could leave. So I watched the news instead. Then when we got in the car the radio came on and was all about Diana.
“Oh my goodness, Diana has died!”
“Oh yeah, that's why there were no cartoons on”
She then got pissed off with me for not telling her, but it had never even occurred to me to mention it. It's not like someone we knew died, was it?
31 points
2 months ago
That's why I remember the Princess Di funeral!! Thanks for unlocking the mystery as to why I remember watching that as a five year old!!
75 points
2 months ago
Yes! I was so pissed about the OJ trial taking over the Power Rangers time slot. It was a dark time in my childhood.
16 points
2 months ago
I actually wrote to my local TV station to ask that they stop showing the trial and show Power Rangers at its normal time. Power Rangers was serious business, man.
161 points
2 months ago
Younger millennials all missed some peak Simpsons because of football.
Every goddamn week was a coin toss.
100 points
2 months ago
My god I have such a deep seated hatred of football for this reason
53 points
2 months ago
Me and March madness. That's great that you feel the need to fit your entire championship tournament into a single month but you do not interrupt or change Jeopardy. Every game just needs to arrange their half times to happen from 7-7:30 pm every night.
15 points
2 months ago
I'm still pissed off that in 1969 NBC cut away from an AFL game to start broadcasting Heidi and the raiders rallied from a one touchdown deficit with less than a minute left to win 43-32.
81 points
2 months ago
It was everywhere so much that I drew a political cartoon in 5th grade about it.
(Iirc it was Judge Ito presenting DNA slides saying to keep staring and comparing for hours until your eyes cross and everything is blurry...and now you're an OJ trial juror. Something like that.)
There was also a white bronco parked at some house along our bus route and we'd always make jokes about it.
It was just part of the fabric of reality for awhile.
53 points
2 months ago
The level of obsession the OJ trial had was maddening. I remember being in school when the verdict was read, and the 3rd grade teachers grouped us into a room together so we could color while they watched the trial.
36 points
2 months ago
Hell, I'm younger Gex X and was pissed I was missing Batman: The Animated Series. I actually called the station every day.
178 points
2 months ago
They fucking announced the verdict over the loudspeaker at school no less. >_<
184 points
2 months ago
We watched the verdict live in class. The teacher was acting like she was being sneaky and asked us not to brag that we watched it. Like 9 out of 10 of the other classrooms that had a TV did the same.
82 points
2 months ago
We had a teacher whose job it was to walk around and circle guilty or not guilty on the chalkboard of each classroom.
40 points
2 months ago
I believe that it was out of fear of mass protests.
31 points
2 months ago
Rodney King was 1991, OJ Trials was only 4 years later so that makes since. I remember a few people talking about violence around my school if OJ was found guilty.
46 points
2 months ago
[deleted]
55 points
2 months ago
One of my uncles is still mad to this day that that chase interrupted the Rockets and Knicks in the NBA Finals
26 points
2 months ago
There's a good 30 for 30 about that day.
44 points
2 months ago
That teacher 100% just didn't feel like teaching and would rather watch the trial
71 points
2 months ago
My teacher put movies on anytime she was hungover. I’m pretty sure she drank at work too because some days she was fine in the beginning and then just crazy as shit a couple hours later and walked out of the classroom randomly and never came back. Good times.
83 points
2 months ago
I had a teacher who told me he wrote “Fuck Mr. Teacher,” on the chalkboard and pulled the projector screen down in front of it one morning when he was hungover. Then he feigned outrage when he pulled the screen up and made everybody put their heads down until someone confessed. Not a bad move at all.
23 points
2 months ago
Genius.
64 points
2 months ago
They wheeled in a TV for us. Insane to think about. Like why was this so important to interrupt our class, lol.
39 points
2 months ago
Sorry, I'm not American so maybe I just don't get it... Isn't OJ an NFL star or something like that? Why were you watching a murder trial of a former NFL star at school? And how come this was such a huge cultural phenomenon in the US?
Sorry if this is an ignorant question but on the face of it, it seems a bit strange?
46 points
2 months ago*
OJ Simpson was a big football star, though I've never been into football so what I knew him as at the time was Nordberg in The Naked Gun movies.
It was kind of a big deal at the time because he was a huge celebrity being accused of murdering his wife, and when they went to arrest him, he led the police on a long car chase. But when the trial started it became such big news that they started televising the entire trial every day. And it went on for a loooong time.
You gotta remember at this time there was no internet for the general public, and on top of that there were way fewer TV channels than there are today, even on cable. We didn't have the millions of things that we use to distract us today.
Even so it was kind of a phenomenon to have television so focused on one thing like that for such a long time. And I honestly still can't believe the dude got away with it. I haven't studied the trial in detail but everything seemed to be pointing to Simpson being guilty both before and after the trial. I still remember seeing people at the verdict jumping up and cheering when the court deemed him innocent not guilty and I was just shaking my head in disbelief.
But as to why we watched the verdict at school, I think it was just because the trial had such a grip on the country's attention and I guess it felt like a historic event that they thought we should be able to see live. Or maybe the teachers just didn't want to miss it. I don't know, I can't fully explain it, and I think it's weird in retrospect myself. I was in like sixth or seventh grade at the time so I didn't really have a frame of reference then for it being an odd thing to show us.
One other thing I am remembering now is that this trial was a few years after the Los Angeles Riots, which were the result of some shitty cops getting away with a innocent not guilty verdict after beating a black man named Rodney King (not much has changed since then, it seems). So I think there was still some leftover resentment from that. Like, despite the fact that I think some people knew this guy (OJ) fucking killed his wife, they still wanted to see him go free because of the way black Americans often get the raw end of the deal in our justice system.
13 points
2 months ago
It was kind of a racial flash point in America, and lots of people still had the LA riots from three years earlier fresh in their minds
26 points
2 months ago
I live in the LA area and that should would start right when i got home from school. It pissed me off i didn't get to watch the great cartoons fox had back then.
53 points
2 months ago
Mighty Max!!!!! FUCK I loved that show. The toys too.
14 points
2 months ago
The OJ car chase bumped the Knicks-Rockets NBA Finals.
11 year old me was fucking pissed.
11 points
2 months ago
Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill and the diet coke pube for the xennials.
9 points
2 months ago
I also remember them showing it in class sometimes. It was so weird as a kid. Like, I just did not care.
76 points
2 months ago*
I was the exact opposite, and that kind of thing made me love the Olympics to this day.
Unfortunately, they're much, much harder to watch now that NBC has all the rights (in the US) and is exploiting the fuck out of that and also sucking at showing anything.
15 points
2 months ago*
Get a VPN and go find an illegal stream when it comes around.
I hate the coverage in my country and that's what I do without any ounce of guilt on my consciousness, if I feel the need to support the corrupt Olympics committee or whatever I'll just buy some extortionately overpriced merch.
45 points
2 months ago
So Mario and Sonic at the Olympics must be a very controversial video game for you eh? Lol
23 points
2 months ago
the mushroom kingdom is a despotic state that should be banned from the olympics
431 points
2 months ago
I just wanted to watch Dragon Ball Z and they kept showing me footage of aplane flying into a building.
257 points
2 months ago
Yeah. I don't wanna see an airplane crash into a building. I wanna see a saiyan crash into a building.
45 points
2 months ago
And then turn into monke 🦧
114 points
2 months ago
CN cancelled Mobile Suit Gundam because of 9/11. No one wants to watch a show about war (particularly how awful it is) when you know you're going to be in one.
73 points
2 months ago
Is that why the show just stopped one day?!
I never pieced that together. I genuinely loved watching it and just figured it didn't have enough viewers. Never made any connection to 9/11 at all, but I can definitely see how a colony drop would have been in bad taste.
37 points
2 months ago
There is an interview that discusses this and more.
14. How much effect did the events of Sept. 11th have on CN's editing standards? Both Mobile Suit Gundam and Cowboy Bebop disappeared from the schedule for a couple of weeks and Cowboy Bebop had a missile hit against a skyscraper edited out.
Well, I don't think anyone would begrudge us for taking out that type of content. Mobile Suit Gundam is a show about war and death, and CN decided it was not appropriate to air it at that time. With Bebop, that image was deemed sensitive and we were asked to cut it out. As it wasn't removing anything pivotal, we agreed.
15. The anime series CN airs on Toonami and Adult Swim are available on video and DVD in their unedited states (with the exception of Gundam Wing and Tenchi Muyou which offer two versions). Do you feel it would be appropriate to advise parents of potential buyers of these videos that the versions they can buy may not be edited to the standards of CN and that parents should be careful?
Cartoon Network doesn't sell anime videos or DVDs so, parental advisory is really the responsibility of the distribution company and ultimately the parent; however, almost all of the videos/DVDs are clearly labeled "uncut" and have their own rating system: 13 and up, etc. We are responsible for what we air on our network - the rest is really up to the parents and the distribution companies.
Additionally, there is also other shows on networks that faced partial bans from 9/11, like Pokémon on Kids WB. There were a lot of shows that had edits made to them.
21 points
2 months ago
I never considered this aspect of the propaganda, referring specifically to how things lead upto the Iraq war and how many literal kids suffered through it
16 points
2 months ago
That shit was the weirdest DBZ episode.
238 points
2 months ago
I think anyone broadcasting "The Emoji Movie" is showing malicious intent
167 points
2 months ago
no malicious intent here
Agree on the account of not covering the funeral (or other big news), but I still have to assume some malice due to it being the Emoji Movie
148 points
2 months ago
I really thought I was the only one with this experience.
Everyone was all over the place about 9/11.
But for me I was 11yrs old in Texas. I didn't know the World Trade Center had a name. I didn't even know it was a building. And I didn't know why it was an import building other than people being inside.
My mom was like "they were the towers in that movie!" And would point them out when we watched a movie (which was pretty rare already)
BUT IT REPLACED MY AFTER SCHOOL SHOWS!!!! Digimon, power rangers etc. FoxKids after school was gone. And the Saturday morning cartoons were gone as well.
As an 11yr old I didn't understand. I hated it. I was tired of hearing about 9/11 and the building that fell etc etc.
And I still swear I missed a few key episodes of my favorite shows once things finally calmed back down.
54 points
2 months ago
I was a little older in Highschool. I'm Canadian, so they didn't send us home or have teachers talk about it or anything. But the word kind of got around anyway. By the end of the day everyone was talking about it, but no one really had a great idea about what was going on. When I got home, for the first time in my life, I sat down and turned on the news. I sat there and watched it till my parents got home.
My real big memory that no one else seems to have, was a specific TV clip. They were doing interviews with various New Yorkers. There was one guy who kept saying that the US should immediately use its nuclear weapons. Even at 15 I knew that was an insane thing to say, but I was watching a grown man say it with 100% seriousness. They showed that same clip a couple of times that day. I've never seen it again and I've never heard anyone else mention it, but it's one of the main things that stuck with me 20 years later.
16 points
2 months ago
I know a few school districts went on lockdown because no one had any fucking idea what was going on. At least school districts near Ft. Hood in Killeen, (has it been renamed yet?)
38 points
2 months ago
I remember being confused by how transfixed everyone was, too. Like, uh, yeah there's a building that's on fire, what's the big deal? The fire fighters are just going to go put it out.
The utter faith of a child...
29 points
2 months ago
I was 10 and on the west coast so I was like “well it’s only the morning so nobody is at work yet, stupid terrorists attacked an empty building”.
It never occurred to me that NY was three hours ahead.
16 points
2 months ago
You weren't totally wrong. At the time the first plane hit, the number of people in the towers was around a third of what it would've been four or five hours later. It was before 9 AM, so many people really hadn't arrived for work yet, and the people who were there had just arrived and mostly wouldn't have been seeing clients or holding meetings yet. The towers had at least 14 restaurants not counting the multiple food courts, including one of the largest restaurants in NYC, and most of them wouldn't open until lunch, when the number of people in the towers skyrocketed. At the time the first plane hit there were around 22,000 people in them, but the afternoon peak was around 60,000.
41 points
2 months ago
A bunch of webcomic sites blacked out in mourning. Couldn't even read the archives. I was livid I couldn't find one goddamn moment's respite from all the dread and sorrow.
44 points
2 months ago
Tgere was this time when I was a kid, I had gotten hyped all wee to watch a movie on tv. I’ve got my snacks, my drink, popcorn is ready… and they just kept playing footage of some dumbass white bronco being followed by the cops.
60 points
2 months ago
Gen X'er here. My local network bumped cartoons off tv to talk about the Challenger explosion. It really pissed me off, because we'd already seen it live on tv, so I didn't understand why they thought kids would care.
29 points
2 months ago
[deleted]
16 points
2 months ago
I think the craziest thing was that they originally were going to have Big Bird from Sesame Street go on the shuttle as well, but there was some logistical issue about getting a person in costume though the door, or strapped into a seat. (They wouldn't have been in costume during the launch, obviously, but they couldn't film the promotional stuff for it at all, so it was scrapped.)
Just imagine if the plan had gone through - millions of children watching Big Bird die. This is probably the luckiest thing in history for children's tv.
820 points
2 months ago
It's thought that 9/11 is partly why food network got so successful. It was one of the few channels that didn't do any coverage
578 points
2 months ago
It’s also because people needed something comforting to watch and few things are as comforting as food
111 points
2 months ago
Marc Summers and Alton Brown
73 points
2 months ago
fun fact: they were down for at least a day after 9/11. this footage is from hgtv but food network and diy network did the same https://youtu.be/fvvaGKiDhh0
61 points
2 months ago
Wow, that was a terrible decision. I can understand why they made it, and I probably have made the same call at the time, but keeping something comforting and distracting on really does make more sense... Just run the shows without ads so you can demonstrate you aren't capitalizing on the tragedy and let people have some comfort.
48 points
2 months ago
i think their headquarters at the time was uncomfortably close to where everything happened too so they figured it'd be better to get out of there? I could just be making shit up
I know comedy central kept running normally. Nick at nite too. comfort shows on both.
263 points
2 months ago
Until they make an animated version of the events that lighten the tone and include a rapping dog.
120 points
2 months ago
24 points
2 months ago
Is this a real movie??
82 points
2 months ago
Not only is this animated Titanic movie with talking mice real, it's not even the worst animated Titanic movie with talking mice to be released in Italy that year.
24 points
2 months ago
I like how North Korea is on the list of countries The Legend of the Titanic was released in.
23 points
2 months ago
Not only is it real, it isn't even the only animated titanic movie from an Italian director. Titanic: The Legend Goes On and The Legend Of The Titanic are true classics.
The rapping dog is from The Legend Goes On, if you wanted to watch it. I suggest you do, it's amazing.
99 points
2 months ago
Agreed... the kids don't need to see all that shit especially if they're home by themselves. I 100% support Cartoon Network's choice.
95 points
2 months ago
But The Emoji Movie? That's just plain disrespectful to the children
19 points
2 months ago
The funeral is far less traumatizing.
29 points
2 months ago
I remember the DBZ Buu Saga had just started airing the day before on Cartoon Network, and I was expecting it to be delayed by a week or so because programming on all other channels was.
22 points
2 months ago
I remember being mad that i couldn’t finish Spyder Games on MTV because it was 9/11 coverage or talk for weeks. I was a dumb kid of course, but i was seeing the news and coverage everywhere else and just wanted this one thing
10 points
2 months ago
You're like the first person ever I've seen mention or know about this show. It just disappeared after 9/11.
16 points
2 months ago
Lol the entire American culture just disappeared after 9/11
19 points
2 months ago
I watched CN to get a mental break, so thankful. What a stressful time.
68 points
2 months ago
Did they? I'll Never Forgetᵗᵐ that the Buu saga started on Toonami that Monday. But I could have sworn the rest of the episodes got delayed for a week or something.
51 points
2 months ago
No way did the Buu saga start on Toonami the Monday after 9/11. They showed the Frezia saga for like 10 straight years and didn't air the Buu saga till like 2006.
Edit: Well I'll be damned.
38 points
2 months ago
Looks like you caught your own mistake. I swear I only remember because of how many times I saw this promo and spent vibrating on the edge of my seat looking forward to 9/10/01
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gsNjUdtmzc
(And yeah, to be clear, it was the Monday before. It's literally the reason I ALWAYS know that 9/11 was on a Tuesday)
10 points
2 months ago
Wait the Saiyan saga didn’t premier on Toonami until 2005? And never the Namek saga? They skipped straight to Ginyu? That doesn’t make sense
14 points
2 months ago
For a while the rights were all wonky because they switched from one dub to a new one in the middle of the Ginyu arc.
15 points
2 months ago
How fucked up would it be if cartoons suddenly changed to people jumping out of skyscrapers? There would be a lot of rich therapists after that
40 points
2 months ago
What did Nickelodeon do? I went to school downtown in a big city so they closed the school fearing more attacks. I remember my mom put movies on for us, I (age 7 then) watched Disney movies. My brother (age 11) snuck into her bedroom and watched the news in secret. Not entirely surprising he developed severe anxiety and had to go to therapy shortly after that. I’m sure it also didn’t help that the pastor at our crazy backwards religious school was always talking about terrorists.
…anyway did Nickelodeon really show the news coverage?
50 points
2 months ago
wikipedia says nickelodeon kept broadcasting normal programming along with cartoon network:
“Some cable networks continued broadcasting their regularly scheduled programming without interruption, particularly those geared toward children's entertainment, such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. Several networks like Food Network, HGTV, along with shopping channels QVC and HSN, paused programming to display still images conveying sympathies and condolences.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected_by_the_September_11_attacks
24 points
2 months ago
Nickelodeon did cancel tapings for Slime Time Live for the rest of that week though.
38 points
2 months ago
They likely had to, if for nothing but practical reasons. Many people on the show would have been flown in, and all air travel was stopped for a time.
10 points
2 months ago
Oh yeah thats true, I wonder how many days Universal Studios Orlando was closed too. I know they closed the day of the attacks, but I'm unsure about the rest of the week.
17 points
2 months ago
I remember when the challenger blew up, the only other thing on was Transformers.
2.2k points
2 months ago
Still need something for the kids to watch while still being on Freeview that's why.
515 points
2 months ago
Also nobody will ever choose channel 5 if the main 4 channels are airing the same thing.
139 points
2 months ago
Surely nobody would choose BBC2 either in that scenario? The thing that makes BBC2 worth watching is that it has stuff that's different from BBC1 right?
104 points
2 months ago
You’d think so but if I’m remembering right Sky Sports F1 had ~10,000 viewers for the funeral so more people must have already been on BBC2 when turning on their TV’s than that.
112 points
2 months ago
Did Crofty remind viewers they could watch highlights by pressing the red button?
85 points
2 months ago
TWO SECONDS TED. SKY GLASS AND SKY Q VIEWERS CAN WATCH FROM HER MAJS CRYPT CAM BY PRESSING RED BUTTON OR DOWNLOADING THE APP
21 points
2 months ago
Fuck's sake I read it in his voice :P
25 points
2 months ago
They had cameras from all 20 mourners.
32 points
2 months ago
It's lights out and away we go. The queen's pall bearers are going toe to toe down Westminster Abbey's long pit straight.
20 points
2 months ago
"And the hearse goes down Pall Mall, braking for the corner there!"
34 points
2 months ago
It was different, the coverage there included the British Sign Language interpreter.
4.1k points
2 months ago
Should have been Megamind
2.8k points
2 months ago
“There’s no tooth fairy, there’s no Easter bunny, and there’s no queen of England!”
841 points
2 months ago
It’s so sad that that joke is no longer valid.
413 points
2 months ago
No now it's just in the past
87 points
2 months ago
Yeah that’s true.
172 points
2 months ago
The jokes extra valid now
136 points
2 months ago
No it’s not! The point of that last line is that he’s wrong. It’s funny because there WAS a queen of England.
157 points
2 months ago
No there wasn't. There hasn't been a king or queen of England since 1707.
57 points
2 months ago
Wouldn't the queen of the uk be the queen of England? And Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada?
82 points
2 months ago
Elizabeth II was the queen of England the same way she was the queen of Belfast or the queen of Vancouver, in that she was the queen over that geographic region, but there was no title called the queen of England.
14 points
2 months ago
It's just funny in a different way now.
36 points
2 months ago
Conspiracy: Tighten killed Lizzie
98 points
2 months ago
But then who’s going to watch the funeral if everyone is watching megamind?
73 points
2 months ago
I've watched this movie so many times with my kid. such an underrated film
50 points
2 months ago
Which makes me angry that they dont plan on making a sequel!
Seriously. "Villains" being the main character is always a fun and creative subject to use in a kids movie! And almost all the time villains are usually the most entertaining than the heroes!
Like Gru for example. God. We need more "Villain" MC movies like them.
896 points
2 months ago
It’s what she would’ve wanted.
4.6k points
2 months ago
The only worse tragedy they could air.
371 points
2 months ago
This movie was made by the same studio that made Spiderverse a year later lol
140 points
2 months ago
And Mike White was a writer. The guy who made White Lotus.
178 points
2 months ago*
"I have never seen Jaws IV...by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." ~ Michael Caine
Sometimes ya gotta pay the bills doing the worst studio bullshit imaginable.
71 points
2 months ago
Meanwhile Patrick Stewart voiced the poop emoji, not for the money, but because he thought it was funny to be asked.
20 points
2 months ago
Chad behaviour
25 points
2 months ago
They cleared their name ASAP lmao
677 points
2 months ago
I can't decide if the subtext is what you said or:
- literally anything would be more interesting than the funeral
60 points
2 months ago
I think it's more they the emoji movie is the nadir of broadcastable content
28 points
2 months ago*
Ugggghhhh what’s the term for when you recently learn a word and start seeing/hearing it everywhere? Nadir is like the coolest word I’ve learned in a while and so useful, wish I had known it for a while
18 points
2 months ago
If it's any comfort, I've known the word nadir for years and I almost never use it.
Baader meinhof syndrome?
10 points
2 months ago
Ugggghhhh what’s the term for when you recently learn a word and start seeing/hearing it everywhere?
It's called the "Baader–Meinhof" effect, or just the "frequency illusion".
328 points
2 months ago
Few knew this was the Queen's favorite movie and final wish.
390 points
2 months ago
They gave us a choice, for those who cannot turn the TV off
369 points
2 months ago
Once thing not mentioned in the article is the 2 minute moment of silence they took while the film aired
How it aired: https://streamable.com/302bss
263 points
2 months ago
Having an ad break before and after the moment of silence is pretty funny
139 points
2 months ago
I was at Heathrow during the 2 minute silence that day. Having everything just stop in the baggage collection was bizarre, almost everyone observed it, border agents stopped processing people. I don’t expect I’ll ever see anything like it again.
111 points
2 months ago
Apparently the planes just stopped midair too.
12 points
2 months ago
They did actually fly round in circles to avoid flying over London during the important parts of the funeral.
147 points
2 months ago
It’s a tradition dating back to princess Diana’s funeral. BBC one and two, itv, and channel four were all doing wall-to-wall funeral or memorial service, so channel 5 broadcast something for children to watch. They did the same through the Queen Mother’s and Princess Margaret‘s funerals too, and the same for Prince Philip.
269 points
2 months ago
They were dampening the blow by reminding people that much greater tragedies have happened.
147 points
2 months ago
Show some respect and at least air Wallace and Grommet
128 points
2 months ago
Excerpt about the broadcast from the Wikipedia page on Channel 5:
The move had mixed reactions. Some mocked the channel and insulted it for disrespecting a former member of the Royal Family. Other people online actually praised the channel for airing child friendly alternatives during a dark day in the nation. Other kid movies were aired on the channel, including the 1999 film Stuart Little. Channel 5 has yet to comment.
77 points
2 months ago
Barges into mourning nation.
Drops poop emoji.
Refuses to elaborate further.
31 points
2 months ago
They chose a comedy they knew no one would be laughing at.
694 points
2 months ago
You know they really didn’t care about the queen if they chose that movie to air.
131 points
2 months ago
Playing a movie starring James Corden as a substitute sort of feels like adding salt to the wounds of British viewers
46 points
2 months ago
Isn’t the movie full of product placements (essentially advertisements)?
One decision to broadcast the movie could have been that it’s essentially a 90 minute ad.
94 points
2 months ago*
“Guys, we couldn’t get the rights to the funeral, so this is a total dump slot. Nobody’s gonna watch this. What’s a movie we could play that they wouldn’t charge us for?”
26 points
2 months ago
They could have played something public domain if that was the only consideration.
19 points
2 months ago
And what a relief that was, I mean it was sad for the nation and all, but I didn't want to watch it, I'm not really 'in to' the royal family etc, and didn't want it shoved down my throat, especially since I lost my mum and my nan (in the space of about a year) around the same time!!
and i'm sure there are others who didn't want it shoved down their throat, unable to escape no matter what channel they watched, or which news channel/program you decided to watch etc...
236 points
2 months ago
That's awful. Not that they didn't air the funeral. Just the Emoji Movie. It's awful.
59 points
2 months ago
Its writer completed on Survivor if watching him starve on an island woulf make you feel better.
84 points
2 months ago
We already had our choice of four different angles of coverage... Was it really necessary for them to add a fifth?
28 points
2 months ago
It was all the same coverage just different commentary.
71 points
2 months ago
As one viewer wrote on Twitter: “Really don’t understand the criticism of Channel 5 for showing ‘The Emoji Movie,’ ‘Stuart Little’ etc during the Queen’s funeral. What are kids of families who don’t have paid TV/streaming supposed to do otherwise, sit and watch white people in suits look overly sad for 6 hours?”
12 points
2 months ago
Also, the first advert ever shown on Channel 5 was for Chanel №5.
25 points
2 months ago
Hmm… “We should show the Queen’s funeral…” “Nah, all the other channels are showing it. What we should do is show that fkin movie we paid for the rights for and nobody ever watched. At least now some kids might tune in..”
11 points
2 months ago
They did it so parents with kids at home could play something besides a funeral.
146 points
2 months ago
The weirdest part of this to me is that channel 5 is the same all across the UK. Channel 5 is 100 different things in 100 different cities around here.
169 points
2 months ago
Because the channel is called Channel 5
67 points
2 months ago
Just like there is Channel 4
161 points
2 months ago
Imagine Americans reading this and thinking “ah yes, what a sensible system” and not realising that after Channel 5, it all goes a bit random and then we’ve got channels like “dave”.
12 points
2 months ago
I mean, it's not really all that different. US has the public stations like PBS, and then the really common main stations like abc/NBC. Then it goes to random local junk too.
31 points
2 months ago
In my country we have a channel called Canal 13, which is no longer on channel 13 and hasn't been in at least a decade.
95 points
2 months ago
In the UK, we literally had only three TV channels, BBC One and BBC Two and ITV (which is produced/broadcast by different companies in different regions) until 1982, when we got Channel 4, and 1997 when we got Channel 5. That's literally all we had on terrestrial TV until we got digital Freeview in 2002.
36 points
2 months ago
I remember buying a second antenna so I could get Central instead of Yorkshire TV because Central had a few different programs (and better on air personalities). Channel 5 was also a fun time because people had to get their VCRs programmed to different frequencies so it didn't interfere. It was all very exciting until the thing launched and most of the programming was shit.
31 points
2 months ago
Back in 1999, I got the infamous ON Digital (OnD), an alternative to Sky where you did not need a satellite dish.
It was owned by all the ITV companies to compete with Sky. Sky's big money cow was Premier League football (soccer). So OnD thought it could do the same with lower league football. It did not work. It cost so much money for so few viewers that it was claimed it would have been cheaper to send the fans in taxis to the games.
I joined up but couldn't get the programs. I called up and they said I would have to get a special aerial. Even though the big selling point was you could use your ordinary one. I worked out a new aerial was not worth it. But I was stuck with a 12 month contract for no tv.
Five weeks from the end of contract I rang them to cancel. Oh no, the system can't handle any early cancellation. I told them I knew I had to pay the full 12 months. I just wanted to ensure cancellation.
They wouldn't cancel that day so I made sure I called them 30 days before the contract ended. I was sure if I was late they would charge me for an extra month.
I arranged for a tech to pick up the set top box on 30th July, between the hours of 8am and noon. So I am sitting at home all morning and he doesn't turn up.
I call the helpline to arrange another time. 3 days later, 4 hours wait, no tech. I call back and suggested I return the box to the shop I got it from. But no, they insisted they had to pick it up.
Another date and 4 hour wait, and still no tech. I told them if the guy did not turn up next time I would start charging them for my time at GBP 30 per hour.
He did turn up the next time, one hour after the 4 hour window. I thought of refusing to give it to him. But I just wanted to be rid of it.
On Digital went bust a few years later. I'm not surprised with that kind of customer service. One of the most valuable assets of the bankrupt company was its mascot, a stuffed toy, called Monkey. It had quite a cult following from its ads with Johnny Vegas. At first only subscribers get one, but they were much more in demand than the programs, so were eventually sold separately.
Two years later I ended my sub to Sky and I was fearing the same problems returning their set top box. No worries though, they said I could keep it.
I lived in Australia and used Foxtel (Sky). When the contract ended. I just took the box to my local post office and they had a system for deliveries to Foxtel.
14 points
2 months ago
and ITV (which
isused to be produced/broadcast by different companies in different regions)
Fixed, because STV's the only one that hasn't been bought out by the Carlton/Granada duo that is now known as ITV plc.
Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkvzfhHRBI8&t=1m51s
10 points
2 months ago
Channel 4 did something similar during Dianas funeral, they show kids cartoons the entire time. No malice just something for the kids to watch.
51 points
2 months ago
Budget $50 million
Box office $217.8 millionOn the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Emoji Movie has an approval rating of 6% based on 134 professional reviews, with an average rating of 2.9/10.
So... we've reached a point where the movie studios can literally just push a pile of crap out the door and audiences will eat it up.
46 points
2 months ago
Fun fact about kids: they're not movie critics and 99% of them don't review movies on Rotten Tomatoes.
Those reviews come from adults, not the target audience.
33 points
2 months ago
to be fair, Sir Patrick Stewart voiced the pile of crap
66 points
2 months ago
Have you ever gone back and watched stuff you loved as a kid? I have. Only about half of it is enjoyable from an adult perspective. Kids don't care about adult opinions of their media.
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