Mister Rogers is off your TV

Chris Spags Founder and Editor

You know how Fred “Mister” Rogers died seven years ago? Well, his show was still on the air…until this upcoming week.

But news that, starting Monday, “Mister Rogers” will disappear from the schedules of many PBS stations—including WTTW-Ch. 11 in Chicago, as well as stations in Los Angeles and apparently New York—has legions of parents and other fans lamenting what they see as a timeless show’s end.

They are wondering, as Mr. Rogers himself might say: What do you do with the mad that you feel?

“It sucks, man,” said Brian Linder, a South Carolina writer who grew up watching the show on a wood-paneled television and now watches it on a flat-screen TV with his twin daughters. “That’s not a Mr. Rogers thing to say. But maybe in this case he’d even say it.”

“You’ve never seen Mr. Rogers’ face on a diaper,” Linder said. But that also means that only a handful of episodes are available on DVD, and just a few clips—like an episode where Mr. Rogers learns about break dancing—are on YouTube.

Yes, that’s Mister Rogers breakdancing above. I uh, don’t exactly know what to make of it. I think property values in his Neighborhood must be taking a nosedive. Call it a hunch.

I don’t know that I’d agree about Mister Rogers saying it sucks. If you reached him for comment, he’d probably say “——”…because he’s not alive. Anyway there’s more in the article about how people want to save the show and how in response PBS is going to ramp up Mister Rogers’ Web site. I say they should just recast a generic pedophile in the role and see what happens. Ideally he can tie his shoes and, so long as you keep a Lecter mask on him in between takes, not diddle the children too profusely. TV is easy.

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