Thursday, January 19, 2017

Getting Schooled: Jim Henson's Animal Show (1994)

After Dog City had been cancelled by Fox, the Jim Henson Company developed one more series for the network, and this one lasted a wee bit longer.

Jim Henson's Animal Show With Stinky & Jake (to use the full title) ran for three seasons (1994-7), but you wouldn't know where to find it on the schedule, since Fox didn't go out of its way to promote it, in this writer's estimation. Stinky the Skunk and Jake, a polar bear, serve as the hosts for this series, co-produced with Survival Anglia, Ltd., which is better known for, ah, tooting its own horn, if you will, with World of Survival back in the 70's.

Here's the intro:



65 episodes were produced across the 3 seasons. 26 each in seasons 1 & 3, 13 in season 2. Try figuring out the logic in that decision making process if you can. Sam the Eagle, formerly of The Muppet Show, appeared for a 1-shot in season 3, presumably to promote Muppets Tonight, which was airing on ABC at the time. With 65 episodes, Fox could strip the show and run it as much as six days a week during the final season if they wanted to.

As talk show parodies go, and this was one, to an extent, this had legs, but Fox saw how the ratings were dropping that final season, and pulled the plug. Don't know if this is on DVD. If it is, get it, as it would serve as a teaching tool even today for the wee ones.

No rating.

2 comments:

Silverstar said...

IIRC, Jim Henson's Animal Show ran as part of the Fox Cubhouse, a rotating block of preschool shows which aired weekday mornings on Fox Kids. Animal Show aired on Mondays and Fridays, another show called Johnson & Friends aired Tuesdays and Thursdays while a third show called Rimba's Island only received a single airing on Wednesdays. I had just started my (then) new job around the time of this block's debut, so I only managed to catch fleeting glimpses of it. At some point, another show, an animated series titled The Magical Adventures of Mumfie, was added to the Cubhouse lineup before the entire block was scrapped.

hobbyfan said...

Ok, thanks for the info, Silverstar. Now I know why I never saw it. I was on my way to work when the show was on.