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Comment by noblethrasher | Hacker News Reader

>TV for kids just sucks these days. The audience isn't kids, it's grandparents who imagine that their grandkids will be entertained by it.

I am curious about what you mean by 'TV for kids'.

It seems to me that 'kid shows' have been pretty good since the early nineties (Ducktales, Animaniacs, Gargoyles, the DC Animated universe cartoons). More recently: Kim Possible, Spectacular Spider-Man, Samurai Jack, Sym-Bionic Titan, Transformers Animated, the Avengers and Young Justice have been phenomenal with respect to writing, voice acting and animation. This is one area where I'm a little envious of kids these days.

I grew up with cartoons made to sell toys. They get shows made to tell (good) stories.

EDIT:Spelling

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And I would give credit to Disney and Viacom/Nickelodeon for trying to create entertaining sitcoms for kids. It can't be Spongebob and Phineas and Ferb 24 hours a day (although it sure seems like it).

You may think it's crap, but go back and watch the sitcoms you watched as a kid (Brady Bunch for me). It's even worse than you remember.

Where do you see these?

I certainly never see them on cable when I visit friends and family. I saw Kim Possible once a long time ago, and I also was really impressed with Teen Titans, enough to get the box set.

Are these on a channel they don't get? On AMZN or Netflix? Or do you just have to get them through BitTorrent?

There might be some good stuff, but it's never on. Spongebob Squarepants is always on... I wonder if there's a connection.

Spongebob Squarepants, at least early on, had terrific writing.

Oh I forgot about Teen Titans. If you liked that you'll definitely enjoy Spectacular Spider-Man, Young Justice, and The Avengers (they were all available on YouTube recently).

Also check out Sym-Bionic Titan, it's the Firefly of animated TV shows.

Kim Possible: Disney Channel Sponguebob Square Pants: I think Nickelodeon Teen Titans: I forget, probably Cartoon Network.

Honestly, the only way I'd ever go back to cable is if I had an a la carte system; and then I'd take Disney, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, G4, Discovery Channel and their affiliates. I don't want/need the rest...

(also, haven't paid for cable in > 2 years. Netflix, Redbox, Vudu are my friends)

Yo Gabba Gabba is a phenomenal show, too. Plenty of really good cameos (Flaming Lips, Jack Black, Sarah Silverman, etc).

Don't forget Avatar (which has an upcoming sequel show) and the new My Little Pony.

> the new My Little Pony

Which is extremely entertaining, by the way. Also, oddly enough, it has formed quite the internet cult following. I think it's quite the cute show.

It's annoying that my kids and I can only watch it in letterboxed SD. I've torrented HD versions (from an HD stream of the same channel, no less), and it looks great.

The lady in charge worked on the Power Puff Girls, and Foster's home for imaginary friends. I am not to surprised that she went on to other quality projects(especially since it wasn't just her but a number of people on MLP are veterans of those shows.)

Those are good, yes! But there's also a lot of survivor bias there. Sturgeon's Law still holds: for every individual Freakazoid! there's a posse of Dumb & Dumber (yes, real: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_and_Dumber_(TV_series) ).

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