Word: kidvid
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Dates: during 1985-1985
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...Among the stars are such old friends as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Pinocchio (the classic Walt Disney movie is currently the top- selling children's cassette). But more recent favorites--from movies, TV and toy stores--include Rainbow Brite, the Care Bears, My Little Pony and the Transformers. Kidvid now accounts for 15% of the total home-video business, according to some industry estimates. Moreover, with their relatively low prices (typically between $10 and $40), children's tapes are usually bought rather than rented. Unlike adults, who generally view a movie only once and return it to the store...
Much of the original kidvid fare currently on the shelf looks distinctly cut-rate. The Golden Book videos, for instance, utilize an inexpensive process known as Picturemation, in which a camera simply scans the book's illustrations, adding only bits of animation (an eye blinking, a dog's tail wagging). The few live-action productions for children often look and sound like a school play recorded in someone's basement rec room. Several distributors, meanwhile, have merely rounded up cheap off-network TV programming and labeled it children's video. The widely distributed Kids Klassics offer such less than scintillating...
...nuggets can be found in the kidvid heap. In the first of a planned series of notable children's stories narrated by well-known stars, Random House this fall released Margery Williams' The Velveteen Rabbit, read by Meryl Streep. Despite minimal animation, the show is made irresistible by Streep's touching narration and George Winston's graceful music. (Still to come: Jack Nicholson reading Kipling's Just So Stories and Cher doing The Ugly Duckling.) A video version of The Macmillan Illustrated Almanac for Kids is an intriguing hodgepodge of informational segments on such diverse topics as why volcanoes happen...
...however, most kidvid fare seems less an alternative to dreary network programming than a reinforcement of it. "The good news," says Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children's Television, "is that children's video is the most likely place to find alternatives to toy-commercial video, which is what network children's TV has turned into. The bad news is that all this stuff on network TV is also in home-video stores, and the promotion budgets are enormous...
...Today show, the most bracing of the three sunrise coffee klatches, has mounted a strong assault on longtime ratings champ Good Morning America at ABC, while the CBS Morning News continues to flounder with the abrupt departures of Anchors Bill Kurtis and, last week, Phyllis George. The Saturday-morning kidvid schedule remains No. 1. Carson is still king of late-night, and Letterman the hippest of clown princes. Only daytime is a slum for profits when it could be a gold mine; ABC's supremacy with its afternoon soaps helps it lead NBC in total network profits, despite the tailspin...