Television: The Junior Season Opens

The opening of the new season on children's television traditionally coincides with the start of the school year. Last week's curtain-raising on the fall schedule for children was accompanied by a fanfare of advertising promising, as CBS put it, "quality programming for the young." Unfortunately, few of the shows live up to that billing. Though all three networks are preparing occasional specials for other time slots, Saturday morning—the most concentrated stretch of children's television—remains a particularly bleak wasteland, where flashes of wit or originality are rarely seen.

Of a total of 16 hours of Saturday-morning programming on the three networks, 9 hours and 10 minutes are unchanged. CBS offers only 2 hours 20 minutes of new programs, and more than half of that time is given over to cartoons on the order of Pebbles and Bam Bam and Archie's TV Funnies. NBC offers two hours of new children's programming and ABC 2½ hours, plus one new half-hour on Sunday morning.

Look, No Thumbs. Within that narrow range of new time, there is some evidence that the networks are at least beginning to make an effort—still overly modest—at providing something better, with varied success. CBS has called on Walter Cronkite to lend both maturity and reality to some of its children's programming. He will preside over the revival of a 1950s favorite, now aimed at junior audiences: You Are There. This series dramatizes historical events in the form of on-the-spot interviews by television correspondents. The first episode last week, "The Ordeal of a President," dealt—confusingly—with the political maneuverings behind America's entry into World War I. But it is a promising series, and future segments will re-create the stories of Paul Revere, Lewis and Clark, and the defenders of the Alamo. Another noteworthy attempt by CBS at quality programming for youngsters is In the News. This series of eight 2½-minute news segments will be dropped into the Saturday-morning schedule at half-hour intervals.

ABC is short on history, but does provide a glimmer of visual originality. Curiosity Shop, a one-hour show aimed at children aged six to eleven, is purportedly devoted to helping children question and deal with ideas. It is peopled with puppets and three children who ask disarming questions. There are animations, films and music. Curiosity Shop is inoffensive and cute, but on the whole trivial. And it is debatable how far a child—or a show—can go with questions like "What would it be like without thumbs?"