The Extras - MeTV Toons Preview With Jerry Beck

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Animation historian Jerry Beck opens the vault to the newly launched MeTV Toons channel, airing on June 25th.  Get ready to be taken behind the scenes as we delve into the collaborative efforts between Weigel Broadcasting and Warner Brothers Discovery to create the only classic animation channel available for animation fans. Jerry gives us exclusive insights into the rich lineup of content, special projects he is involved with, and how to find the channel in your local area.Links:MeTVTOONS.com WebsiteTV Cartoons that Time Forgot Facebook PageAnimation Scoop WebsiteCartoon Research Website Past Present FeatureA filmmaker appreciation podcast hosted by Emmy-winning director...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifyThe Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras. I'm Tim Larder, your host. And joining me today to talk about the upcoming launch of the MeTV Tunes channel is animation historian Jerry Beck. Hi, Jerry.

Hello. Great to be here. Looking forward to our discussion. Yeah. I mean, there's just been a lot of excitement in the animation community for those who listen to the extras and on our Facebook pages and everything about this launch of the upcoming MeTVTunes channel

on June 25th. And I know you have been involved in it, so I appreciate you taking a few minutes to, out of your busy schedule leading up to this launch, to give us a little update about it for our listeners. And let's just start right at the beginning, in a nutshell, how would you describe this new animation channel? Well, this is gonna be the home for classic animated series,

animated cartoons, shorts, even features. There's so many things to say, and it's really a dream come true project because this is, believe it or not, not a channel aimed at children. You won't see cereal or toy commercials on it. It's really aimed at our age, dare I say it that way? Those of us who grew up with these great cartoons and wish they were back, and here's an opportunity for them to be back on this channel. We are hoping to,

I don't want to say it's a TCM like channel. It's not, it's got commercials, you know, but it's, it's like TCM, we hold classic animation in high regard and we'll, you know, we have fun with them, but we will treat them very seriously and we will have, you know, tidbits and informational sections and segments that will enhance your viewing pleasure of the classic cartoons. So it's a dream. That's all I'm going to say right now about that. It's a dream come true channel for those of us who love classic animation.

I think that MeTV Toons has self-described themselves as the only TV network dedicated exclusively to classic animation. And that I think is what sets that apart, of course, and what makes this so exciting. And the fact that it's in a world of streaming where everything going to streaming, the fact that this is like programmed, like the old school, the way we watched it, this is on nine o'clock, I mean, it maybe is a little bit of a throwback. But I think that actually appeals to people in a strange way. Because when it's all on you to decide what I'm going to watch, everyone, you get paralyzed because the whole world is your oyster out there. Or at least being offered. And then here, somebody's

going to set it up. You can check in and we'll talk about the program here in a little bit, but I think that's kind of fun. And then I also want to talk about this collaboration of who is behind the content for this. And is it Weagle and then Warner Brothers Discovery? As the primary? Yeah, Weagle Broadcasting and based in Chicago, the people behind MeTV, Catchy Comedy, Heroes and Icons, MeTV+, and many other channels that they do.

They do these, basically they call them digital sub channels. They're part of the over the air, your local channel five or seven or eight or whatever, and it's one of those sub channels below that and it's collaboration between them and Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers Discovery and that's of course fantastic because it gives us what I call the foundation. It gives us all that basic stuff that Warner Brothers owns. Basic stuff like Looney Tunes, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Hanna Barbera, the whole library, the MGM cartoons, Tech Savory, Tom and Jerry, the Popeye cartoons,

and on and on from there. There's a library in there that I don't think people even knew they had, and we've been going through it and unearthing things and placing them on the schedule. think people even knew they had. And we've been going through it and unearthing things and placing them on the schedule. But, and you may be getting to this, but it's more than that. It's bigger than that. This isn't boomerang. This isn't the Cartoon Network in 1992. Believe me, I've been involved with those channels at those times. This is this plus. It's literally the library plus. We've gone out and with the resources of MeTV, they're experienced with classic television on MeTV and catchy comedy

and all the others. So they had access to all the other studios out there and arrangements have been made. We'll have Rocky and Bullwinkle, you know, we've got Casper the friendly ghost, we've got Speed Racer, you know, we've got all these things that I grew up with. We're going out of our way and it's just been really a pleasure to help dig that out. I'll tell you another thing about that. This may not be, I know we're talking to the fans here, and you may not see this on every show that we've acquired, but some of the people that we've acquired shows from, because we've acquired it, because

we showed interest in wanting to show it, they're going out of their way to restore their library. And Warner's is restoring its library. You know, it's going to be pretty amazing. In fact, some of the restoration stuff is taking a while to happen. So it's this channel. I look at it as a work in progress for the next six months, because it's going to look great as it goes along. More cartoons, more than what's been announced already. We've

only announced a smidgen, the tip of the iceberg of what we have access to. That ain't the schedule set in stone forever. That's the first schedule, the initial schedule. That's the launch schedule, so to speak. And I think that created a lot of excitement because of what you just mentioned. Yes, a lot of Warner Brothers discovery content, Looney Tunes, so forth. But then all of these other shows from other studios as well,

which I kind of saw your hand prints there on those because I know of the Woody Woodpecker that you have written about as well. So it was great to see. So that kind of brings me to this question. I know you've done appearances on the MeTV and the show and everything, but how did you kind of get involved? Was it through that that they said, Jerry, we would like you to work with us on this?

Well, in a way, what happened was it wasn't that it was the other way around what happened was i do blogs blogger animation scoop and cartoon research dot com. And when i first even heard about their acquiring one of those cartoons and starting a new show called tune in with me my antenna was way up and unbelievably. me, my antenna was way up. And unbelievably, incredibly, a week or two or three before that show actually started, which was like two or three years ago, unbelievably, I was on the press list and I got a request of, do you want to do an interview about just about the show so you can publicize it on your blog? I go, yes. Yeah, I do want to do it. And that was the thing. I talked to Bill, who's the host on your blog. I go, yes, yeah, I do want to do it. And that was the thing. I talked to Bill, who's the host on the show. I got to meet Neil Saban, whose name should be known. He's the George Feltonstein here, if you know what I mean. He's the guy behind

this. He's one of us, by the way. He's a film buff. He's a cartoon buff. And got to meet him through that. And I found out immediately that they were using all my books to help them program the channel and all that. And that was flattering me, but I was like, you guys are doing great. I love what you're doing. So we ended up talking semi-regularly and without going into detail, which I'll save for a future book or something, without going into any detail, the idea of expanding, you know, what Tune In With Me was, what the good news was because of what they were doing,

what Neil was doing, what Bill was doing on that channel, the ratings were spectacular. The ratings were very, very high for the cartoons on MeTV. And between the ratings and us talking about, well, what if we could use this or get that or acquire this from, you know, you're dealing with, you know, you're getting Leave It to Beaver from Universal. Universal also owns the Woody Woodpecker cartoons. Oh, yeah, right. You know, it just kind of went from Universal. Universal also owns the Woody Woodpecker cartoons. Oh yeah, right. It just kind of went from there. One step leads to another. We've been working on this for about a year in secret because, well, we didn't know if we could completely pull it off in every direction, but mainly what could we acquire and could

we acquire the kind of stuff that we felt would be really perfect for this channel, the stuff that we would want to see again. And so far, I think we've hit the bullseye many, many times on our target. We've been cherry picking the shows that we think we would want to see on a channel like this. It's been a pleasure to do this. And I had to track down in some cases where the people were who own the rights and got very good, really went deep in the weeds here on some of these shows. But it's all working out. And so far, the last ingredient is the audience reaction.

And the channel is going to launch on June 25th as we mentioned, but just the announcement within the last month or so of the channel and the schedule that we have set up, the reaction has been living up to what we hope. Now the next step is the ratings of this channel when it starts and i'm still i'm insanely optimistic as you know i'm. Cartoon promoter champion i don't use that word but you know i'm cheerleader for the for the universe of animation especially. The stuff i grew up with the classic scene of the old theatrical cartoons heck i'm a silent cartoons speak classic earlier tv cartoons from all studios i don't love everything there stuff i think is junk. As you may know i do a program at the san diego comic con every year i'm doing it again this year in july. called the worst cartoons ever and it's basically a fun showcase of a lot of wacko ideas from the 1950s mainly. Nothing modern and not even anything from

Hanna or Bear or any of that stuff. It's all really wacky shows like Clutch Cargo, you know what I mean? Things like that that are just so bizarre and the audience laughs and gets has a great time with it. So I'm into all of that stuff. But we really went for stuff that we knew and we hoped that we knew it would play and still play and be funny today. And that were favorites, things that people remember. Oh, I'll give you a quickie.

You know me, I can talk forever about all of this. But a couple of months ago, well, maybe it was a year ago now. I don't remember when we did this, but a couple of months ago, sorry, a friend of mine, Mark Arnold, who's another writer, a historian of animations, written several books about the oddball studios of cartoons. I do a couple of Facebook pages. I have a Looney Tunes page and I have a UPA page. I have all that kind of stuff. I like to put pictures on those pages.

Oh, I got this great new image. I want to put it somewhere. I put it on the UPA page or the MGM cartoon page. Then I realized I had a bunch of images from some of these clutch cargo like shows, you know, from the sixties. I'm like, I have no place to put them on Facebook. I wanted a place to put them. I use Facebook like a file cabinet.

And so I went to my friend, Mark, who was like-minded and I said, why don't you want to be co-moderator with me on a page? I have a great idea. I want to call it TV cartoonsartoons That Time Forgot, because that's what they were. And he said, sure, I'll be the co-moderator, whatever. And we started this page, and it started with all these oddball,

super president and all these oddball cartoons that nobody remembers anymore. And it went viral in a way I've never seen. Most of these pages, these cartoon pages I do And it went viral in a way I've never seen. Most of these pages, these cartoon pages I do that are about the specific studios or character, those usually get anywhere from 5,000 members to maybe a really, really popular page will get 20,000 members. To me, 20,000 sounded pretty good.

Well, this page, TV Carto, that time forgot, it went what I call viral. It's out of my control. I don't post on it hardly anymore because we have a lot of members and I'm going to tell you the number right now. The number is over 200,000 members on this page. I call a lot of normies, I call it normal people have discovered this page because the real world loves cartoons. The real world all remembers cartoons from when they were kids and they haven't seen them for years. And so everybody posting today is posting stuff like Yippee Yappee and Yahooie or the Hillbilly Bears or some of the oddball more obscure Hanna Barbera or the anime shows, the Astro Boys and even then they're posting stuff that everybody's

even heard of. They'll post normal cartoons of some sort. It's gotten way out of hand, but I'm very happy to welcome them to our club and hope they enjoy this channel. All this was happening while we were working on getting this thing set up. And I was like, Oh my God, I cannot wait to post about this, about this channel on TV cartoons. I forgot, because that because that group, 200,000 people plus, are going to want to know about this channel. Because this is basically your baby.

This is your home place. So I'm optimistic that the channel will succeed. I wouldn't bet the farm or anything, but I have very high confidence that this is an idea whose time has come. There is definitely an audience out there that wants this. Yeah. And I think you said it already, people need to show up. And we talk a lot about animation with you, like the Looney Tunes collector's choice. Each time we say, hey, look, if you want another volume, you need to just not talk about it or isn't it great or give reviews on why you wish this had been selected over that one. You need to buy it.

Let the studio know or in this case, the network know that you're more than just going to post about it on social media. You're going to show up. You're going to watch, you're going to tell people about it. And you're going to do that from day one so that they have the ammunition to go to advertisers or whoever sponsors it. And then also the studios to say, Hey, we would like more. There's an appetite for this. And it's a, uh,

what you would call that virtuous cycle where the studios, when they see that, will put more money into restoration. They will do that. And you get that cycle. They'll say what they call a financial incentive. They will do it. You know, good news for the consumer, for the viewer in this case is that it's you don't have to buy some subscription or it's an over the air channel that literally anybody in the world we live in today, you have to have the digital converter box and the antenna and a television set. But then that's what most basic people have.

It's now more people have streaming and cable. But this channel is going to be available over the air. It's technically free. It's a free channel. It's not a thing where you have to subscribe to it. You're just going to have to look for it. And we'll put links in the notes here and on the Facebook page.

And I know you'll be posting more and more as well. We'll have a page. Well, let me do a major plug for the website, which is the website of the channel, MeTVTunes.com, which is now there. There's articles, there's fun little trivia games, there's a complete list of the initial schedule for every day 24-7. And there's also a page that lists every state in the country and every town and it tells you what channel or where you can find it. And so, you know, again, we just can't wait for the world to see what we've got planned. Well, in our encouragement for people to show up,

there has been a listing of the programming that will be starting on June 25th. And I thought maybe we could take a minute or two to talk about that because I saw, well, kind of like five areas that I wanted to kind of talk about. First off, it was cartoon all-stars. And that is, I take it, just different shows that you're going to have throughout the day, Monday, Tuesday, through Friday, at a certain time every day.

I think, it's weird that I'm saying it that way. That's a very good idea, but I don't think that's what the plan is. I think the plan is it's really going to be the seven minute classic theatrical cartoons. I mean, they do a version of this on, well, on Saturday morning. They actually don't do a version. Oh yes, they do. On MeTV Plus, they have a block they call, I forget what they call it. It's a Sunday night cartoon thing where they'll run a Looney Tune next to a Columbia cartoon next to an MGM cartoon next to a Paramount cartoon. It's that sort of thing. A short seven minute shorts.

Tanner Iskra So, it says here on the program schedule, like at eight o'clock, you got Bugs Bunny and Friends, nine o'clock, The Underdog Show. And this is going to be every day during the week, right? Starting at eight, the Smurfs, the Penn. And we won't go through the whole thing because people could just look at that. But you've got a Monday through Friday schedule that people can go and then it looks like it goes until from like eight till 1130 is the last program thing I see. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Marcus Mazzell, host of Past, Present, Feature, a filmmaker appreciation podcast showcasing new festival releases and the past films that inspired them.

As a filmmaker myself, I started this podcast with the intention of building community while talking shop and to show love to past cinema that sparked a new wave of filmmakers to create the films of the future. Please like and subscribe to this podcast and follow us on social media at past present feature. Thank you for listening. Let's roll it. No, you might not be looking at it online on the meet MeTV. If you can do it now while you're on, go to meetvtoons.com. There's a, I don't know the exact name of it, but there's a link. I think it says schedule or something like that. And you click it and it's 24-7. It is.

Okay. So what I'm looking at is what was released. It's great middle of the night programming, including, and I always feel this is slightly controversial because it's technically live action, but including the old puppet shows, the things like Supercar, Captain Scarlet, those great shows from England, the Supermarionation shows, the kind of thing that they were spoofing in Team America, if you saw that movie. You know, Supercar, Sting Ray, they did a whole bunch of these in the 60s.

They're fantastic. Those are on late at night. They've got a whole bunch of things. There's an anime block. Again, I don't know what you have on your list there. We're going to have like Speed Racer and Marine Boy and a couple of things like that. There's all, why don't you tell me what else you have on your, that you're looking at? Well, I mean, I tell you what, since this is being updated frequently, we'll just let

the viewer go there. But I was just looking at that one that was sent out with, I think, the press release. They sent out something with the press release that didn't list the entire thing. I don't know why they did that, but they almost immediately put out the full schedule and it is online on that website. Yeah, but I mean, on the schedule that was previously released, I mean, just for fans out there, you already mentioned Casper, Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, Peter Potamus, Yogi Bear fans, there's tons, Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo of course, Jetsons, Flintstones,

Bugs Bunny we mentioned. There's just a ton that's going to be Monday through Friday. And then you have a separate kind of Saturday and Sunday where the schedule is a little bit different it looks like. And then there's going to be feature films as well? At the moment, that's going to be like a kind of a special. I should pull up my own schedule of it while I'm talking to you. That way it might be helpful for me.

We are running some specials. For example, where it says, I don't know what you're looking at, but on Sunday at one o'clock, there's a Flintstones blog, but that's going to include Flintstone features. The thing is, they have the Warner Brothers library, as I said, and I did on my own, I did a count of how many animated features does Warner's own and I cut it off at the year, like the year 2000. I didn't even want to go into this century. I just wanted to go 2000 back. You know, hey there, it's Yogi Bear, the man called Flintstone, Gabe Perry with Judy Garland. They have a lot of anime. In fact, I ended up counting them and you won't believe it,

but the number came out to like 50. And it's hard to believe, but that the reason is, is that there's a lot of made for TV features that had a Barbara did. They own a rank in bass, uh, features that were made in later years in the seventies. And so, so when you add it all up, there was like, Oh gee, you, you could almost run a feature every week just with what Warner says. And I'm not even counting the other studio. So, uh, you know, that hasn't been decided on how we will deal with that yet, but there will be features on here. And even right away on some of these other blocks, we'll be able to stick them in.

Yeah, so you mentioned the Flintstones, and I know that Scooby-Doo, they're gonna, you know, have features for that. That's tons, tons there. Oh yeah. And some of these, I'm sure are the ones that were recently released by the Warner Archive, you know, will crop up because they were recently restored. So they're... Yeah. And I, I'm, a lot of that hasn't been figured out yet. You know, I think you're right

about that, but I, you know, right now, right now in my mind, it's one thing at a time. And we're, we're getting this thing just set up to begin with. And that's really exciting to me. There's just so much potential. It'll be interesting to see what people gravitate to. A lot of the stuff is stuff that I grew up with, that you grew up with. There's also material on here that a lot of what I call younger people, what do I mean by younger people?

People in their 30s, people in their 40s is younger to me. So there's stuff that appeals to them that's on this schedule as well. We really wanna make it wide. We're already getting people online like, well, it's part of Warner's, so you guys can get all those brand new Cartoon Network. We're not gonna do that, at least not now.

I mean, there's no plan for that. This is going to be where the classic animation is. This is where there's so much that you, you young person have not discovered yet, you know, and don't know because you haven't seen it. And the way that you see it, I think, I think we're going to start having, you know, brand new fan clubs and, you know, merchandising from whoever owns it on some of the nostalgic characters that we're going to be having here that haven't been seen.

We're showing some shows that haven't been seen in 40 and 50 years on TV or and haven't been on video because of that. So the very nature of this show existence is going to allow restoration, is going to allow access and availability, visibility to classic animation. There's so many wonderful treasures here. So... Yeah. Well, there's a couple others I'll just throw out before we move on.

But those of you out there who are into Johnny Quest, Top Cat, Smurfs, Jetsons, The Real Ghostbusters, Police Academy, the animated series, The Mask. I mean, there's just a great amount of variety here and that's just for the launch. That's just for the launch. And as you mentioned, can't get into specifics, but it's going to evolve and continue. And I think people show up for this. They're going to give you the ammunition and the network to do a lot more of this.

Yeah. The initial schedule, as great as I think it is, is basically the question to the audience out there. Is this a channel you will watch? And if the answer is yes, then we will be getting in a lot deeper. Again, there's a lot more I could say and I have to hold back a little bit because we're going to reintroduce things and introduce things as we go along and we want them to be surprise, surprises to the audience. We want to say, oh my God, they're going to be running blank. We want that kind of excitement going on.

I'm also involved, I don't know if this was on your list, but we're creating interstitials for the channel that will, like I said, inform, be fun. I'm working on a series called, I think these are a series of like two minute spots that'll be in between the shows called Cartoon College, where we talk about what's the difference between a Looney Tune and a Merry Melody or 3D cartoons. And we go into all the different aspects of cartoon history in an entertaining way. So that's part of the channel too. There's just going to be a lot there.

Yeah. I was going to ask you, because I had read that you were going to be maybe on some special projects or some things. And that's what these interstitials, that's one of those that you'll be doing. Yeah. I mean, I don't, we're working on a special, I guess I'll keep my mouth slightly closed about it. I don't know if it's been announced or not. I really don't, maybe it has. But in July, right away, in July, we're going to be, let's put it this way, we're going to be celebrating a very classic character with special stunt programming and a brand new documentary about that character. And that'll be in late July. So that's what the first of many, special things that we will have on the schedule as we go month by month by month into it.

So it's, we're opening up a gift box here, you know, when you tune in on this. Yeah, I mean, it launches June 25th. July is not too far right after that. Of course, everybody's got their summer vacation holidays, but we want people to log in and find where it is in your area. You like the channel and you happen to be at the Comic Con and you happen, whether you come to my worst cartoons program or not, on I believe Friday of the Comic Con, there will be a MeTVTunes panel where we're going to talk about it in person and take questions

and show clips and things like that. So if you happen to go to that big San Diego shindig, come see us. I'll be there. It'll be cool. And I know right now this is in the US. Is there plans to expand into Canada? You know, I don't know the answer to that. Okay.

All right. Well, we'll have to just point people to the website so that anybody in Canada and other places can see. I'll tell you, I remember when Cartoon Network started. I'm such a fanatic. And I remember that, and I forgot the name of it now, somebody out there will know it, but there was a Canadian on its own,

separate company version of Cartoon Network that only developed because of the American Cartoon Network. They had that, it wasn't Warner's, it wasn't owned by Turner, it was just some Canadian did it themselves, but they got the rights to run all the Cartoon Network stuff. And because they weren't really connected, they did a similar thing. They went out and got a lot of oddball cartoons that they could pick up. And I remember being jealous of that.

I think it was called Teletoon. So one of your Canadian listeners and viewers will probably remember that. It may still be there. It was called Teletoons. And in the beginning of that, I was jealous. I was like, wow, I want that network. Right, right. You know. So I don't know if it exists and if it does, it's gone the route of all of these channels

which eventually start doing new programming. And I'm going to tell you guys right now, that is beyond, not even near the point. There's no plan for us to start developing original cartoon shows. We're just going to, we're going to develop, well, you know, shows that are about classic animation. We're not doing new animation of classic characters. We're not doing anything like that. On the shows, no plan for it, no intention of doing it.

We're the home of classic cartoons and the history of animation. Well, I know there's so much that you cannot talk about yet. And that's great. That's fine. Because there's so much you just did talk And that's great. That's fine because there's so much you just did talk about that's exciting. And I think just the idea that there is this place now for the classic animation fan

that is really speaking to them and putting out those shows is great. And again, as hopefully the popularity increases, then these fast channels, hopefully those opportunities will come up, which will make it available to even more people in areas where it's a little more remote where you live or something of that nature.

Thank you so much for just coming on and just sharing with us what you could. Looking forward to it. And we'll have you back on as this develops a little bit, hopefully, where we can talk a little bit more about your special projects and things of that nature. So, yeah, it'll be a lot of fun. So really looking forward to it. Thanks, Jerry. Thank you.

Well, it's always great to have Jerry on to talk animation. And this is really cool that he came on just to give us a little bit of a preview of what you can expect on this MeTVtoons channel, where to find it, and just some of the programming that's going into it at launch. And he also mentioned a couple of the things that he's working on, like interstitials, maybe some documentaries and things of that nature in the future.

So that's kind of gonna be kind of cool to hear from him and what these little new little tidbits are that mix in with the programming there so he made it pretty obvious that people need to show up uh people need to support this so that the network and the sponsors behind Warner Brothers and others can know and the other studios and those providing the content can know that their efforts are worth it, people want it, and that it's gonna be a growing audience for it as we move forward. So hope you guys will check it out, tune in, and support Jerry and the efforts of the studios and the networks and let them know how much you want this classic animation. And that virtuous cycle that we get when people

ask for it broadcast, the studios restore it, there's a physical media aspect that could potentially then crop up as well, because we all want to own some of our favorite cartoons, especially when they're restored and looking better than we've ever seen them before. So as always, we'll have more links and information in the show notes here. I have the link to the website, uh, so that you can see where the programming is, uh, how to get it over the air and keep up to date with all the fun stuff that they put up on their website and everything as well. So as always follow us on social media, subscribe if you haven't yet.

And thanks for listening.