My pals, Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle, creators of Kim Possible, have been busy. In their “spare time” they’ve written a book called “Liar of Kudzu”. Disney Channel has already optioned the book for a Disney Channel Original Movie. But don’t wait for the movie, read the book! And don’t wait to buy the book, tomorrow (Saturday) go to Storyopolis in Studio City, California at 3:00 PM and meet the guys in person. They’ll sign your book. They’ll even sign any Kim Possible books you have.

If you’re on the other side of the country, they’re going to be at Square Books, Jr. in Oxford, Mississippi on Tuesday, April 3rd at 4:00 PM.

If you tell them I sent you, they might even pretend they know me!

As you probably already know by now, our special guest on yesterday’s live Stu’s Show was Doug Young, the voice of Doggie Daddy. Doug left Southern California around 1966 and to our knowledge, has not been interviewed publicly since, so this was a rare treat.

That’s a young Doug Young on the right of the picture above taken during the Hanna-Barbera heyday. Of course, the other two are the equally famous Daws Butler and Don Messick. Doug told the story of auditioning for the part of Doggie Daddy, with another famous character actor. But even Doug didn’t know the part of the story that Daws had told me. Originally, they wanted Daws to do the Durante impression, as he had done for them in some of the Tom and Jerry theatricals as Spike the dog. But Daws was already doing all the major characters in the Quick Draw show, including Quick Draw McGraw, Baba Looey, Super Snooper and Blabber Mouse, and Augie Doggie. He was afraid that doing the gruff voiced Doggie Daddy would tear up his throat, but he said he knew the guy who could do it. And that guy was Lou Shmoodlu. No, that’s not right. That guy was Doug Young… and the rest, as they say, is the rest.

If you want to hear the rest, Stu’s Show repeats every weekday and Saturday at 4 PM Pacific time. Doug’s interview comes a little over an hour into the show, but listen to the whole thing. You might get hooked!  As Doggie Daddy would say, “Dat’s my boy who said dat!”

Remember, tomorrow Mark Evanier and I will be on Stu’s Show with a special surprise!! For the details, I’m going to send you over to Mark’s Blog, where he’s written it up about as fine as it can be written. Who am I to imrove on such fineness?

You can use the picture above to get to Shokus Radio, or follow the links from Mark’s page. See you… I mean, hear you… er, me, tomorrow!

Is it time to unboard that house?

Adrian Hickman writes to tell me of Bob Iger’s comments at the recent Walt Disney Company stockholders meeting in New Orleans:

“The question about Song of the South comes up periodically, in fact it was raised at last year’s annual meeting which we conducted in Anaheim. And since that time, we’ve decided to take a look at it again because we’ve had numerous requests about bringing it out. Our concern was that a film that was made so many decades ago being brought out today perhaps could be either misinterpreted or that it would be somewhat challenging in terms of providing the appropriate context. Because there were depictions in that film that, viewed in today’s world, might not be viewed as kindly or as politically correct as perhaps they may have been in that time. But we have decided that we would look at it again and it’s being done by our studio and Dick Cook [Walt Disney Studios Chairman].”

Will it be a Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Day? Sooner or Later we’ll find out if we can go to The Laughing Place.

It’s that time again! This Wednesday, from 4 PM to 6 PM, live and in living sound, Mark Evanier and li’l ol’ me will be on Stu’s Show on Shokus Internet Radio discussing television animation from the first image of Felix the Cat on the first cathode ray tube, to… well, judging from how much ground we covered last time, we’ll probably get up to about Gumby before we run out of time. Stuart Shostak is your genial host and M.C. He’ll ask questions, you can call in and ask questions and hopefully Mark and I will have answers.

The show is repeated every day at the same time, except Sunday, when it’s on at 12 Noon Pacific Time.  Please don’t call in during the repeats, though.  It makes you look silly and it’s very disruptive to the others listening.

The Pogo books have gone bye-bye (except there is still an extra copy of Volume 10) and today we have two Disney cels. A production cel of Winnie the Pooh from Pooh’s Grand Adventure: The Search For Christopher Robin and an extremely limited edition cel, never available to the public, from Lion King II: Simba’s Pride. Take a look!

Way back here, I announced a tentative list of Hanna-Barbera titles for 2007. The list is about half correct, with some titles dropping out and others dropping in.

At that time, I mentioned there were three others being considered, but because of rights issues, I didn’t want to include their titles. Well, one of them currently has Bonus Material being produced, which is a pretty good sign that a release is imminent. There’s no point in drawing this out anymore, since I already telegraphed it in the title:

Josie and the Pussycats is in the works. The piece they are planning sounds interesting, a tribute to Dan DeCarlo, the artist and creator of Josie and the Pussycats. Among the luminaries being interviewed for the segment are (please remember that this hasn’t even been shot yet, let alone edited, so some of these people may not appear in the final version) Casey Kasem, Paul Dini, Scott Shaw!, Mark Evanier and Bill Morrison.

I had the honor of having one of my stories for Bart Simpson comics laid out by Dan. It was one of the last things he did.

As far as the DVD goes, I found something fascinating in the Warner’s film archives that should definitely be included on this set. If anyone from Home Video is reading this, you really should contact me. (I know how tacky this sounds, but sometimes you have to use hammers to get people’s attention.)

When I find out a release date, I will post it posthaste.

The Banana Splits have left the building

I’m sorry to report that The Banana Splits Adventure Hour is being taken off the release schedule. As I reported a long time ago, the state of the masters for this show are a mess. You can blame me for this decision, but I advised Warner Home Video not to release them in their current condition and there isn’t enough money in the budget to remaster them.

I’ll explain what the rpoblem is, but if technical specs and minutiae bore you, you can skip the next three paragraphs.

After the initial two season run, NBC had all the film elements transferred to 2″ tape, also known as quad tape due to the fact that the broadcast video tape recorders used four rotating heads that crossed the tape vertically. Each of the heads laid down a portion of the picture each time it crossed the tape. This differs from your home VCR, which uses a helical scan system. In quad recording, if the four heads aren’t in perfect alignment, it will create color banding (different colored stripes) through the picture. We didn’t look at every episode, but a random sample found that two of the 18 hours had bad color banding. There’s no way to correct this after the fact. The quad tapes are long gone and all that exists now are 1″ tapes that have these flaws recorded in.

To further complicate this, NBC re-edited the original hours, which now include the Season 2 opening and closing, plus other Season 2 elements mixed in. These are the only hour tapes that exist. There are also 36 half-hours of The Banana Splits and Friends, which are essentially the original hour shows chopped in two… but not exactly. The quality of these is much better than the NBC revised hours, but they would require a lot of research and editing to put them back into the hour configuration. And even then, some of the Banana Splits bits would still be missing or have to be lifted from the inferior hour tapes.

The good news, though, is that there is a complete set of 16mm films that are in the original hour configurations. They also have about 80% of the 35mm film, but it’s all cut into separate elements. Again, all the film transfers and editing required to restore these shows properly is cost prohibitive.

Finally, don’t lose all hope. They need product and at some point in the future when technology improves further, the cost of restoration may come down and they’ll revisit this title.

In the meantime, there’s talk of filling the open slot with The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show. I stress that no decisions have been made, it’s just talk at this point. I also suggested again that they look into the much written about Alice in Wonderland or What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? and the Gene Kelly Jack and the Beanstalk.

None of this really bothers me. I’m allergic to bananas.

Here are two more upcoming releases from the Hanna-Barbera catalogue. Long before Adult swim defiled them, there were Space Ghost and Birdman. On July 17, Warner Home Video will release them in their original configuration as Space Ghost and Dino Boy and Birdman and the Galaxy Trio.

In both cases, the first character was the “star” of the show and the second bananas were the back-up features. In other words, in each half-hour, there would be two Space Ghost or two Birdman episodes, with a Dino Boy and Galaxy Trio sandwiched in the middle of their respective shows.

It’s not totally unusual for there to be seven minute action cartoons. The format dates back to the granddaddy of all adventure cartoons, Fleischer’s Superman. Today, most non-humor cartoons are full half-hours.

And now, here is the release schedule for June:

6/5/07: What’s New, Scooby Doo?: Season 2
Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: Season 1

6/19/07: Powerpuff Girls: Season 1
Animaniacs: Volume 3
Pinky and the Brain: Volume 3

6/26/07: The New Adventures of Batman
The New Adventures of Superman

I expect to have a report on the status of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour in the near future.

So, there you have a summer full of cartoony goodness. That should satisfy your sweet tooth.

I debated about posting this, since anyone with a TiVo Series 1 should have received either an e-mail or an on-screen message or both, but since I started this a few days ago, I figured I would go ahead and update it anyway.

Of course, par for the course when dealing with any telephone customer service, the lady from TiVo was wrong when she said the times would automatically reset tonight. Not only will the times of the programs not reset, but the actual time will not reset for three weeks, when daylight savings used to start. They claim this will only affect your manual recordings, of which I have many to weed out recording unnecessary repeats. (Yes, I know you can set a Season Pass for “first run only”, but somehow it doesn’t seem to work with shows like The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.)

Here is the e-mail I received, which duplicates the on-screen message:

Dear TiVo Subscriber,

As Daylight Saving Time commences three weeks early this year, we thought we’d beat the clock to let you know how this unusual schedule might affect recordings on your TiVo(r) Series1 DVR. (Hint: Chances are slim.)

While the TiVo service will continue to automatically record your Season Pass(tm) programs and WishList(r) searches at the correct airtimes without incident, there are two things to note:

1) For the three weeks that follow the new Daylight Saving Time start date (March 11), your Series1 TiVo(r) DVR may display the incorrect time.

Again, to be clear, this is only a cosmetic issue and should not affect your Season Pass(tm) and WishList(r) recordings.

2) If you have any MANUAL recordings scheduled between March 11 and April 1, you will need to adjust those recordings as appropriate. Here’s how:

- From TiVo Central, select Pick Programs to Record, then To Do List.

- Locate your Manual Recording (by channel, date, time) and adjust accordingly. For example, if you have a daily manual recording from 8:00 am - 9:00 am, you will need to change it to 7:00 am - 8:00 am on March 11. (Quick Tip: If there are no recordings in this list preceded by the word “Manual”, there’s nothing further you need to do.)

- On April 1 be sure to change it back to its actual time, i.e., 8:00 am - 9:00 am.

For more details, please visit www.tivo.com/dst

Thanks for being a TiVo subscriber and here’s to a beautiful spring!

- Your friends at TiVo

So, there you have it. I’m assuming this only pertains to Series 1, since they specifically single it out and I know it only pertains to dialing in, rather than getting your program data online. Thanks, TiVo, for not going the extra mile! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go wear out my remote.