![]() The greater gamble for the network, though, was how airing an animated children’s special at night would change its primetime philosophy. The public would have specific expectations, then, when CBS aired for the first time an animated adaptation of the comic strip on December 9, 1965. And they would for another 50 years, for as creator Charles Schulz would later reflect, “All the loves in the strip are unrequited all the baseball games are lost all the test scores are D-minuses the Great Pumpkin never comes and the football is always pulled away.” The group’s personal and social misfortunes captured American sentiment: for not much more than the cost of Lucy van Pelt’s 5-cent therapy booth, readers could relive their childhood angst through the antics and quips of Charlie Brown and his gang. ![]() Newspapers, though not The Times, of course, had delivered the tales of the “Peanuts” characters to American doorsteps every day since October 2, 1950. ![]() “It will attempt a half-hour animated cartoon in color based on the newspaper comic strip ‘Peanuts.’ In lifting ‘Peanuts’ characters from the printed page and infusing them with motion and audibility, television is tampering with the imaginations of millions of comic strip fans both well and self-conditioned on how Charlie Brown, Lucy and others should act and talk.” ![]() “Television is running a big gamble,” wrote television reporter Val Adams in The New York Times on August 8, 1965. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |