Monday, May 15, 2006

Update on Baby First TV


This is really weird; So I turn on the boob tube early yesterday morning, while my wife was getting ready for lunch, flipping through the channels as usual and guess what DirectTV is previewing – this channel, until the end of the month. And let me begin by saying the shows we came across looked HORRIBLE. Cheesy web flash-animation and really, really bad voice over --“Rainbow Horse”, “Sali Mali”, ‘Petey Paintbrush”. I never thought I would say this but it made Baby Einstein look like a Spielberg movie and Playhouse Disney look more like a Fellini Film as quality is concerned. I couldn’t help but wonder, what kind of parents would seriously shell out $10/month for that crap. I really think the programming was made in a basement and they used Chinese orphans to create the animation and some used car “salesmen of the month” to do the voices, because that’s what I saw. And then they put up these bad subtitles (I’m guessing to claim it’s “educational”) that says stuff like “Ask your child to Dance, or Point at the color Blue, or… beg your parents for this channel?”). So what did my 10-month daughter do? She didn’t even pay attention for more than a minute. I’ll probably tune in again to see other shows out of curiosity when I get the time.
As for the critics of this channel who are up and arms over this thing. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If they keep up this kind of bad programming, it will eventually die out. Because no parents I know would pay $10 for something that looks like it came from the .99-cent store video section.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I agree it is kind of cheesy but my 2 year old loves it. I get these shows on Netflix so I dont have to pay $10 luckily and I wouldnt either.