Children, like cats, are notorious creatures of habit. They tend to embrace a routine that they can follow day after day. We've been reading the same four books to our eldest son before naps and bedtimes for at least the last six months (or maybe it just feels like that long a time).
One is the classic Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown & Clement Hurd.
Another is Big Red Barn, also by Margaret Wise Brown and, at the risk of being charged with apostasy, it's a better book than Goodnight Moon.
The other two books currently in heavy rotation are Good Night Gorilla and 10 Minutes till Bedtime, both by Peggy Rathmann. Our son absolutely loves both of them and they're fun for the parent too because the only words are dialog. You get to narrate the story as you see fit, which means it ends up different each and every time.
Well, it's fun for the parent the first seventy-eight, seventy-nine times you tell it. After that, the creative veins are much tapped out and you struggle to find new ways to describe the same scenes over and over and over and over again. That's why a book with a good rhythm and pace like Big Red Barn is now preferred, especially at night when your own synapses aren't firing on all cylinders.
The point of this is not to give you the inside dope on the bedtime goings-on at The Elder's Estate, as fascinating as I'm sure you find it. It's to establish the fact that youngsters crave routine. They expect the same things at the same time and usually the more that you can deliver that, the more satisfied they will be.
Which brings me to Nick Jr. Their programmers are either sadistic sociopaths who enjoy messing with young minds (to say nothing of parents' sanity) or they're evil geniuses who've figured out a creative method to ensure ratings. Because on this cable channel--which is supposedly dedicated to children's programming--there is often no rhyme or reason to their daily schedule.
Today, "SpongeBob SquarePants" is on at 7am. Tomorrow, "Dora The Explorer" may be on that time. The next day, there might be a "Go Diego Go" mini-marathon of four episodes in a row starting at 7am and the day after that "Diego" may not be on at all.
For three months in a row, there will a "SpongeBob" every Friday night at 6pm. Then suddenly, it will move to 7pm. Then no "SpongeBob" will be on Friday night and after that six FREAKIN' "SpongeBobs" in a row will be aired on a Friday. Stop the madness!
Now those of you without children are probably saying, "What's the big deal? Stop your whining. Why aren't you and your wingnut buddies writing about Scooter Libby?" And some of you with children are probably tsk tsking, and saying "The TV shouldn't be used as a babysitter."
Lighten up. After all, JB and I were raised on a strict schedule of no more (or no less) than eight hours of television a day and we turned out just...What? Oh sorry, lost my train of thought there, short attention span, easily distracted and whatnot. What was I saying again?
Oh yeah. Imagine if you will what would happen if Fox followed such an unpredictable schedule with their most popular show, say "24" (a much inferior and far less plausible program than "SpongeBob" by the way). Legions of easily amused "24" fans tune in on Tuesday night and sometimes the show is on and sometimes it isn't. Can you imagine the outcry?
Or maybe people would just start tuning in to Fox more often, never knowing for certain the exact time their favorite show was going to be on and not wanting to dare miss it. That's what is no doubt actually behind the Nick Jr. strategy of random programming. Better keep it on Nick Jr. all the time, lest you chance missing your kid's favorite show.
Better get going. I think "SpongeBob" is on. At least I hope it is.
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