That, for all intents and purposes, children’s show quality has declined significantly?

Totally!

When I think of the golden age of children’s television, three or four shows come to mind. One of them being Sesame Street. In this show, aesthetically appealing anthropomorphic animals teach children many important lessons. These include literary lessons (the alphabet), numerical lessons (numbers), and moral lessons (sharing/friendship). While this T.V. show owes a lot some very important predecessors (especially in the vain of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood), it spawned a great deal of productively educative followers like Barney, Reading Rainbow, and others.

Since then, the priorities of children’s shows have shifted greatly.

Case in point number one: encouraging sensible language development has pretty gone by the wayside. This can be seen even in just the names of recent children’s programming: Teletubbies, Boo-bah, and Yo Gabba Gabba. And the insane lack of English coherency doesn’t stop at the name. Rarely do these promote any form of modern English for more than 20% of the content. Apparently, nonsensical gibberish is now held on a higher educational pedestal than English. Weird.

Case in point number two: most children’s television has completely distanced itself from any form of reality. A prime example may be seen in the British T.V. show In The Night Garden. Essentially, the show chronicles a character named Igglepiggle as a he journeys to a secret garden. While there he meets many oddly shaped talking objects including Makka Pakka and Ninky Nonk. When I remember my favorite T.V. shows, I remember a human being guiding me through learning (potentially surrounded by other non-human characters), but still, being able to relate to another human helped attach me to at least some form of reality. Unfortunately, this mentality has disintegrated. Weird.

Case in point number three: children’s shows have become horribly inefficient. Aside from being dominated by gibberish, most children’s shows will completely replay certain clips multiple times. For example, in the ever-popular television show Teletubbies, the character’s stomachs display childhood interactions for about five minutes. Then the producers of the show replay the clip in its identical entirety. Does that seem like a slight waste of time? Probably.

Case in point number four: View the following:

Boo-Bah
Sean Kingston on Yo Gabba Gabba.
Party in my tummy?
WARNING: Terrifying