THE LID’S NOT QUITE SHUT ON ‘GARBAGE PAIL KIDS’ AT CBS

The Garbage Pail Kids, seemingly put in the dump by CBS, may yet crawl out.

Yanked from the Saturday morning lineup just three days before it was to have debuted last month, CBS’ animated “Garbage Pail Kids” series remains in production--even though a corporate spokeswoman says the network has no plans to air it.

“It is not going to be on the schedule later,” declared Alice Henderson, vice president of communications for the CBS Broadcast Group. She said she was unaware that the series, a CBS production based on the controversial gross-out trading cards, was still being produced.

That it is was confirmed by Judy Price, vice president of children’s programs at CBS.

“It ain’t over until the fat lady sings,” she said in an interview. “It (the cancellation) doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop trying (to get the show on the air).”

CBS’ internal conflict over the fate of “The Garbage Pail Kids” is just one element in the confusion that continues to surround the network’s abrupt Sept. 16 announcement that it was canceling the show--a decision so unexpected that even the show’s writers found out about it in the next day’s papers. (With no time to mount a replacement series, CBS extended “Muppet Babies” from an hour to 90 minutes, using “Muppet Babies” reruns for the third half hour.)

Who made the decision? And why? It depends on who you ask.

Price, the executive in charge of the production, said the decision to pull “Garbage Pail Kids” was a corporate one and that she didn’t know why it was made. “We were delighted with the show; it had gone through all the proper channels of Program Practices,” she said.

Henderson said the decision was made purely on artistic considerations by the entertainment division, the department in which Price works. B. Donald Grant, president of CBS Entertainment, did not return calls to his office.

Although CBS waited until the last minute to get rid of it, “The Garbage Pail Kids” has been plagued with controversy ever since CBS announced last spring that it was on the fall schedule.

Officials at many of CBS’ affiliated stations wrote to protest the show. Some had decided not to run the series even before it was canceled. Parents and special-interest groups also assailed CBS and potential Saturday-morning TV sponsors with letters and phone calls. Later, some advertisers expressed reservations about being associated with “Garbage Pail Kids.”

All of this happened without any of the protesters actually seeing the show.

Price repeatedly asserted that the show would be wacky but in good taste and would not, as some of the protesters feared, include the grossest elements of the popular cards manufactured by Topps Chewing Gum--such as deformities and violence. But some critics, such as Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children’s Television, argued that even a sanitized show would do a disservice by indirectly promoting sales of the cards.

The group that went the farthest with its protest was the Tupelo, Miss.-based Christian Leaders for Responsible Television, whose president, Rev. Donald Wildmon, acknowledged that the organization asked advertisers to disassociate themselves from “The Garbage Pail Kids.” He believes they cast the decisive vote in CBS’ 11th-hour decision to pull the series.

“We have very little influence over the networks but we do have influence over the advertisers,” Wildmon said in an interview. “The response from the public--that alone wouldn’t have stopped (CBS from airing the show); it was that combined with the fact that the advertisers were unwilling to buy it.”

CBS’ Henderson branded as “hogwash” the suggestion that it had bowed to outside pressure in withdrawing the program.

Jerry Dominus, vice president of sales at CBS, acknowledged that it was “not untrue” that some advertisers were wary of “Garbage Pail Kids,” but said the decision to pull it was based solely on the quality of the show. He said some advertisers had balked because the show was not ready early enough for them to preview; nonetheless, all the advertising time had been sold, he said.

“There are people who object to everything--there are people who objected to Walter Cronkite,” Dominus said. “I don’t talk about who wanted out, I don’t talk about who wanted in. Fortunately, we have a broad range of advertisers.”

A representative of one potential advertiser, Nabisco Brands, said the company had been unwilling to commit to “Garbage Pail Kids” before seeing it, but the network pulled the show before Nabisco was forced to make a decision. The company “was not displeased” about it, the spokesman said.

Another theory advanced by some people associated with “Garbage Pail Kids” was that CBS dumped the series because a recent feature film called “The Garbage Pail Kids”--based on the same cards but otherwise unrelated to the TV venture--was reviled by the critics and bombed at the box office. Henderson said the film did not influence CBS, either.

CBS, however, has been clearer in denying that outside pressure affected the network’s decision than in explaining exactly what did. Henderson would say nothing more specific than: “Sometimes the sketches and story line don’t translate the way you think it will and fit within the mesh of the whole Saturday morning schedule.”

Because this was a CBS production, in association with Taft Entertainment, why wasn’t the network able to make that determination sooner, before investing so much time, effort, money and promotion into the new show? One of the show’s writers estimated that about $3 million has been sunk into the series so far.

Henderson said the decision came late simply because tapes of the show did not become available for the network to view until then, as is often the case with cartoon series; the process is often slow because some of the animation is done abroad.

Her explanation has not won universal acceptance.

“I think it is always tragic when people with very small pressure groups are able to basically censor the free press and are able to prevent the public from even seeing the product in the first place,” said Flint Dille, who wrote the pilot episode for the “Garbage Pail Kids.”

“I thought democracy gave you the right to voice your opinions,” Wildmon said, “as well as to spend your money. . . . Nobody stopped airing ‘Garbage Pail Kids’ but CBS.”

Even Charren of Action for Children’s Television, despite her verbal attack on the show, said her group does not support pressure groups trying to force a show off the air. “We think that the good news is that a creepy (show) isn’t going to happen, but the bad news is it’s a very dangerous precedent for a network to respond to mail like that. . . . This is a case of listening to the viewer too much.”

Not all members of the children’s TV industry agree. Gerard Baldwin, a producer/director at TMS Entertainment, Inc., an animation company whose productions include “The Bionic Six,” “Visionaries” and “Galaxy High,” said of CBS’ decision: “I think it’s not censorship, because it is a corporate decision, and not the result of government interference. A business has a right to please its customers.”

Nor were CBS’ affiliates unhappy about the decision. Phil Jones, general manager of KCTV in Kansas City, Mo., and chairman of the CBS Affiliate Advisory Board, said he thought the network decision was “appropriate” and added that about 30% of the affiliated stations had protested in some way against “Garbage Pail Kids.” A few, including Topeka’s WIBW-TV and Tulsa’s KOTV, had decided well in advance of the cancellation not to air the show.

“The kid’s television business is so splintered these days, with kids programs on (various cable networks), the value of a morning kids show to an affiliate station is absolutely minimal,” said Phil Keller, general manager of KOTV. “The ‘Garbage Pail Kids’ issue was getting to be more than it was worth.”

No matter what prompted CBS or individual affiliates to make their decisions, “Garbage Pail” writer Buzz Dixon believes it was premature. “The sad news is, I think ‘Garbage Pail Kids’ would have been successful,” he said. “I really think CBS jumped the gun in canceling this show.”

So does Price. Explaining that money for the show already had been budgeted, she said she plans to keep the series in production at least through December in hopes of persuading her bosses to change their minds about putting it on the air.

Some of the show’s writers said even if the show does not air on CBS, it might be sold elsewhere, most likely into syndication or the video market (although at least one guessed there would be too few episodes to make syndication viable). Price said she had already received calls from parties wishing to buy the show from CBS.

“It doesn’t take long for them to start circling over the carcass,” she said.