A tomato, a cucumber and a two-faced peacock
I did not realize that NBC had begun running VeggieTales episodes on Saturday morning.
But there’s more to the story (hat tip to Kevin Hendricks). The episodes have been edited down. NBC claims, in a trade magazine, that the episodes were trimmed for time. But Phil Vischer, one of the original creators of VeggieTales and the voice of some of the characters, says they turned in perfectly-timed episodes to NBC and that NBC sent them back and wanted specific lines removed. The edits were not just for time, as NBC claims; they clearly had to do with content:
We sent them our first episode for TV, which was already edited to EXACTLY the right length, and they rejected it because, at the end, Bob the Tomato said, “Remember kids, God made you special and he loves you very much.” They demanded we remove that line. The show wasn’t too long, it was too religious.
If this is true — and I don’t see what Vischer’s motivation would be for making it up — it’s infuriating. Bad enough that NBC would demand such edits; even worse that they would, apparently, lie about it.
UPDATE: If you follow the link above, Phil Vischer has now replaced his original post to say that NBC has now released a new statement acknowledging that the edits were made for content.
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Michael
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