When I was a young lad, on New Year’s Eve I would watch cartoons on Cartoon Network. The whole family would be over. The kids were in the basement watching TV and the parents upstairs enjoying some tasty beverages. It was a blast, especially the cartoon part.
The one year that comes to mind, Cartoon Network was previewing a number of shows that were being considered for full time. Among them were (if my memory serves) Power Puff Girls, Johnny Bravo, and Dexter’s Lab. Throughout the night you could call in and vote for the one that you thought was the best. I never called, mostly because I thought it was silly and didn’t make a difference. In hindsight I was most likely right.
That year as I sat and watched these shows I started to get a little down. You see, I didn’t have the knowledge I do now and had some interesting thoughts about the TV studios. In my mind there was a single man in the studio who had to put in the tape (this was back when my family owned a VCR) to start the next show. He would manually load all the shows and commercials and take all the calls. I started to feel bad for this person and wonder why I was so lucky. I imagined that he was sitting there in this dark room all sad that he had to do this while his family was having a party at home. I wondered what he did to pass the time. He must have already seen these new shows since he worked for Cartoon Network. I could only guess that he sat there staring into space with a bottle of juice. I really wished we could invent a robot to switch the tapes so he can go home with his family.
I now know that it is mostly automated and there is no one manually changing tapes in a VCR. There probably is someone who is working there during New Year’s Eve, but I don’t think it is anything like the scenario I imagined. Looking back, I find it interesting that I never felt this way on Christmas.
