TECHNOS

November 20, 2008

TECHNOS QUARTERLY Winter 1996 Vol. 5 No. 4

Interview with Bob Keeshan, TV's Captain Kangaroo

By Mardell Jefferson Raney

A native of New York, Bob Keeshan began his media career in high school as a page for NBC. After serving in the Marine Corps during WWII, he returned to NBC, where he joined Buffalo Bob Smith's new “Howdy Doody” Show. Here Keeshan created Clarabell the Clown, a role he played for five years. Later, Keeshan was asked to create a children's program for CBS, and “Captain Kangaroo” was born. An instant hit, the program ran on CBS and later PBS for almost 40 years—the longest running character and children's show in history. In 1982, the NEA recognized Keeshan's achievements by awarding him the National Education Association Award for Advancement of Learning through Television. Here he talks about his career, his future, and his continuing concern for America's children.

As Captain Kangaroo, you were ahead of your time in many ways: encouraging parents to participate in their children's lives, to monitor their TV viewing. You promoted self-esteem, non-violence, and developmental childcare. What was your background in these areas?

Actually, I guess my mother taught me. I don't mean to be flippant, but it's true. My mother knew the value of self-esteem and was very instinctive. Like most women then, she had the luxury of being able to nurture full-time, whereas many mothers today have to work outside the home, particularly in single-parent families where half our children live. Being a parent takes time and children grow by having access to parents. It doesn't matter too much what the parent is doing; just spending time with a child builds self-esteem.

Can you give us an example that illustrates what you mean?

Reading to a child has obvious benefits, but the real benefit is developing that parent-child relationship. That's why, in Books to Grow By, I encourage parents to start reading to a newborn when they return home from the hospital. Babies won't understand the storyline or the words, but they will understand a parent's smile, a parent's face, or the smell of a parent—the proximity of a parent. These relationships develop from the earliest time. My mother probably wouldn't have needed this book, but today's parents are, in a sense, far removed from parenting. And, unfortunately, parenting is a critical life skill for which we offer very little instruction.

You've won so many awards: six Emmys, Golden Globe, three Gabriels, two Peabodies, Ohio State, Broadcaster of the Year, and the National Education Association Award for Advancement of Learning through Television. What have these honors meant to you, and which was most meaningful?

I look on these awards as honoring my work, not me. To think that my work has been valuable and is highly regarded by others is my greatest reward and what I'm happiest with. The NEA award was especially significant. When I started, an enormous number of educators didn't look positively at television and felt somewhat threatened by it, which I could understand. Television has the ability to do all kinds of things: work all sorts of magic, use special effects and images that a teacher can't create in a classroom. However, there's nothing in the world more effective than a teacher reaching the mind of a child. That relationship is unique and there's a power there—a strength—that can't be matched in television. Television is an auxiliary that we can all use if we provide—and guide children to—the right kind of programming. So to receive the National Education Association Award 25 years after I began was kind of a turnaround. I felt that teachers had become more secure with the medium and recognized its potential for use in education.

What did you mean by your statement that “If ‘Captain Kangaroo’ were starting today, it would never get on the air”?

I came along at a very early time when people were looking for ways to use television effectively. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the potential of children's television. I think if I walked into an executive's office today and proposed such a program, I'd be laughed at. In fact, 15 years ago, I did a prime-time sketch with Carol Burnett, in which she played a television executive. I walked into her office and told her about this grandfather clock that I had and a bunny rabbit and a moose with all those ping- pong balls. She just kept doing takes on my lines and giggling. Finally, at the end of my presentation, Carol was in hysterics. There certainly was—and is today—a lot of truth to that scenario.

Are executive producers becoming more receptive to ideas for quality children's programming?

We have indications of change, with some industry agreement, to provide educational programming for children. I expect we'll see changes within the next year or so. The President recently worked out an agreement with broadcast executives, and the FCC has implemented regulations requiring every licensee to program three hours of educational programming every week. Agreement on both sides of the political aisle and the White House really persuaded the broadcast industry that they'd better get with it, because there were no skirts they could hide behind. But this won't mean a thing unless parents understand their role. Government prodding and efforts by the broadcast industry to provide superior programming are fine, but parents have to be responsible for program selection and not use television as a babysitter. Otherwise, it's futile. We may as well not be producing anything of value in television.

When broadcasting was deregulated in the ’80s, broadcasters were no longer responsible for the quality and content of the programming. The new Television Act has changed this somewhat. Is this law enforceable in your opinion, or is it too nebulous?

Well, unquestionably, there's a nebulous aspect to it: how do you define educational television? This isn't really a new law, but part of the Children's Television Act of 1990 which regulated commercials. Commercial time is easier to regulate because we count minutes; so it was just a matter of arithmetic to cut back from 13 or 14 minutes to nine minutes per hour for children's programming. Easily done. But asking broadcasters for educational programming was also part of that legislation, and broadcasters became very creative. They said, “Oh yes, we have educational programming. We have ‘The Jetsons,’ which teaches children about travel in space, and ‘Family Feud’ teaches children to cooperate in a family setting.” They were terribly creative in interpreting the Act. Today the industry recognizes that we're talking about programming with genuine educational value, and I think the criteria will be much more strictly enforced. I hope that the good sense of the industry will lead them to the kind of programming that's good for kids.

Do you think fewer interpretations will be possible?

I think the broadcast industry recognizes that this is it. We've hit this three-hour mark, we've got to do it, and it's got to be programming that everybody recognizes as being of value. The industry runs a tremendous risk if they don't come through this time.

You don't seem to think much of today's television programming.

You can't really think much of it, because, for the most part, it came out of the atmosphere of deregulation where licensees weren't required to be responsible. In prior years, they had to fill out volumes of material for their FCC license. Now you can get your license renewed by sending a self-addressed stamped postcard. There's really nothing asked of broadcasters today. But I think this law will make a difference.

Rather than the cognitive approach used by many children's television programs, you and Fred Rogers, for example, used the affective approach. Does cognitive instruction have a place in children's programming, and where?

Indeed it does. The principal difference is that Fred Rogers and I worked with a younger audience, while the cognitive approach is more appropriate for older children. Fred and I placed greater emphasis on the emotional development of the child under six years of age. “Sesame Street” began with an enormous emphasis on the cognitive development of the young child; then they found that it wasn't working as well as they wanted. They weren't programming computers; they were dealing with very young human beings in whom the developmental aspects of education were critical. So today, “Sesame Street” is much more developmental than it was 25 years ago.

Does the future of children's television lie with Congress, network executives, commercial sponsors, or who? Who will control what our children see and how it affects their development?

All of the above, because everybody has to have a hand in it. However, the primary control force that we ignore so often is the parent. Parents can make the difference. As I said, even if these new regulations produce ample, good-quality educational programming, it won't do any good if parents simply tell their children to go watch television, because children will watch what is not appropriate for them. When did television come off being the unregulated, unsupervised area in the life of a family? Most parents are concerned about their children's nutritional needs and understand that they need proper food to grow a healthy body. But what about the mind, which also needs nutrition for proper development? If we don't feed a child proper mind food, we're going to have a mind that's not healthy or well-developed. Much of television is junk food for the mind. Parents have got to be involved in all areas of their child's development. That includes television.

Do you really think parents can have an effect on boardroom decisions?

Absolutely. Actually, television is a voting booth. Except for public television, there's only one reason that most shows are on the air: a lot of people watch them. We shouldn't have to knock television, because television has wonderful things to offer. It broadens children's horizons, it increases their vocabulary, it acquaints them with different cultures around the world and kids living right next door. It poses real life problems and dramatic situations. Wonderful stuff. But you have to be selective. When a mother tells her five-year-old son, “I'm busy. Go watch television,” he might watch a soap opera, where he sees adult scenes and notices the way women are treated. He mentally observes, “Oh, that's how we treat girls in our society.” Then, when he's fifteen years old, he starts displaying inappropriate behavior, and we ask, “Where did he ever learn that?” Adults watching the same program say, “It's not real. They're doing that for dramatic effect,” but a five-year-old doesn't know that. Thus a child is programmed in a way that can be quite negative.

You've described how viewership determines whether a program stays on or not. However, in your case, CBS ended your show after 30 very successful years and extremely high ratings, because they wanted a show that would compete with “Good Morning America” and the “Today Show.” Wasn't there an outcry from parents?

Oh yeah, but that didn't affect a network executive who pounded on the table and shouted, “I'm going to beat ABC and NBC. We're going to show them who's superior in providing early morning news and information. I'm going to be the number one show.” I told him, “You are the number one show. You're number one in serving American families. You're even number one in audience.” Most of the time we did have a larger audience than “Good Morning America” or the “Today Show,” but the size of the audience was never at question. It was a vanity issue. CBS wasn't looking at the service they were providing, viewership, or even the bottom line. And that's pretty hard to reverse. Ten years later, they're still trying to find their way and reconstructing the show for the fourteenth or fifteenth time in that period.

Was this again another indication of the priority we place on children in this society?

Oh, I think so. Children are not a high priority in our society. This was certainly an outstanding example of how little they are regarded in broadcasting—unless they're a good commercial market, which they are. Now most programming for children is designed to sell product.

With one out of four American children living below the poverty level, many children don't have access to cable or newer technologies, such as the Internet or Web. Commercial television may be all they see, and it's pretty trashy sometimes. What does this mean for those children?

Unfortunately, most of us live our lives without even thinking about the fourteen or fifteen million children who live below the poverty line. But it's just incredible to me that the wealthiest nation in the world would take twenty-five percent of our future and toss it away. Yet we have more and more mean-spirited people in Washington who only want to cut budgets, no matter how much it hurts children and families. That's dumb; because in the end, the problems that we have in our nation that result from poverty are very expensive ones—teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, and crime. These all result from not taking care of kids in the beginning. We could do preventive maintenance on children from ages one to four, really set them up with high self-esteem, and send them off to school. What we do with them in television, of course, is use them as a sales target. Unfortunately, kids living in poverty watch commercial television more than other kids; they don't have access to cable systems and VCRs. Aside from public television, there isn't much hope. But now Newt Gingrich and others say that we shouldn't spend so much money on public television. Public television has responded very well by asking, “If public television doesn't do it, who will?” And indeed, who will do it? We hope to see improvement in the commercial sector, but it's public television that remains on the front line, providing quality programming for American families.

What accounts for this casual attitude that we have about our children's development?

We're so silly, you know. If I said to you, “Hey, I just completed seventy-five thousand miles driving my automobile and I haven't changed the oil yet,” you'd think I was insane. Yet that's what happens with kids. We save the money that should be spent up front when they are very young. If we identified those who are at risk and helped them, they would get to kindergarten feeling great and say, “Hey! I'm good. I know I can do these things. I feel good about myself.” And then they might grow up to be something wonderful called a taxpayer. If not, somebody (maybe a drug dealer) is going to tap them on the shoulder, and they're sitting ducks. Then people in Congress and elsewhere say, “Oh, we've got to hire more cops to address the drug problem,” but they have no idea where the problem came from. A kid who feels lousy about himself, who couldn't care less, who has been kicked around or abused for years, is not going to “Just Say No.” He feels better than he's ever felt in his life when he's on this stuff. And don't tell a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl that she's immoral for having a baby. Conventional morality means nothing to these kids. We expect them to live by a standard that they can't live by because we've destroyed them. These girls have been abused by fathers, brothers, mothers, everybody; then, all of a sudden, they meet Prince Charming. He's not the Disney type of Prince Charming, but he's a nice guy, maybe a kid who shows them kindness, which is something they've never known in their life. Before you know it, another child is born with nobody to take care of it. As I said, we're tossing a quarter of our kids away; and that's bad news for the future of this country. If you're a taxpayer, get ready; your taxes are going to increase, not decrease. Don't believe whatever Congress tells you about saving money on these programs for families and children. You're going to spend more money down the line by many fold. Just as you'll spend more money on your automobile if you don't do the maintenance, you've got to maintain kids.

You have a wonderful line, “Americans are ruffled by complexity.” We want simple solutions and answers that can be printed on bumper stickers or chanted by rock stars. Why do we expect a quick fix to everything?

Because we're lazy. We don't want to confront problems. When we identify a problem, we want a fast solution. Drugs and teen pregnancies aren't going to go away with the snap of a finger. It's going to take years, a generation to clean this nation of those problems. But that's too much work. Let's just get bumper stickers, “Have You Hugged Your Kid Today?” and “Just Say No.” Wonderful! But these kids aren't going to listen. You've got to deal with basic human beings and address their real problems, which may be difficult for us to understand. They come from backgrounds where they are kicked around, beaten, and abused (physically and emotionally). By the time they get to kindergarten, they feel rotten about themselves, and they're not able to succeed. Everybody talks about high-school dropouts. Kids don't drop out in high school, they drop out in kindergarten. They just hang around for a few years to make it official.

Is it more difficult to raise—and to be—a child today than it was 30 years ago?

I don't think it can be put in those terms. My mother would think it's a dreadful time to raise a child because there is such influence from the media and surrounding cultural forces. My mother had me pretty much to herself, and her standards and values were kind of drilled into me. That's difficult for parents to do today because there's so much hype, glitz, and glamour, along with incredible peer pressure. I smile when parents say, “I don't let my child watch television,” but what about the other kids? Your kids may not be watching television and demanding the latest in sneakers; but other kids do watch television. They demand and get those shoes, wear them to school, and say to your child, “What do you have on your feet? What's the matter with you? Don't your parents love you or what?” That's why the President has suggested that maybe students should wear uniforms to school. I'm a little uncomfortable with this, but it may not be a bad idea.

After leaving CBS, you took your show to PBS. Can you compare those two experiences?

Both were positive. Except for the network executive who always wanted to do news programming, I never had any pressure from CBS to do anything different. In fact, when I joined CBS, the executive said, “Just tell me what you need and we'll get it for you. But please don't ask me what you do. I have no idea how to do a children's program.” That's the kind of freedom I had. Although I had some battles when sales department people brought in commercials that I thought were inappropriate, I can't even say that I fought those battles. Frank Stanton, a wonderful man who was president of CBS at that time, reviewed the first commercial and said, “He's right. He's got a special audience and we ought to sell the show in a special way. Let's set up a code that will apply to the Captain.” That code eventually became the code for all children's television commercials. I had great support at CBS, and likewise at PBS. Of course, I had been established for 30 years by then, and PBS understood what I was doing. Many people have asked, “Why didn't you start in public television?” When I started, there were just two public television stations in the entire nation: one at the University of Houston and one in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. All the others came on after I was already on the air. Public television was great to me.

You've commented that quality children's programming is much more common in England, France, Germany, and Italy than in the United States. Why is that?

Because culturally they value their children more. You won't find children as commercial targets in England. They know that's inappropriate. Traditions in Germany, Italy, and France dictate that they treat their children in a very special way. The cultural influence on children that's represented in television is quite significant, and they want to make sure that their children are treated culturally in a special way. They have that national perspective because they know they are dealing with their future. In this country, it's the American way. Kids are a target audience; let's sell to them. That's short-sighted.

Since 1984, you've been director of the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse. How did you get started in this and what do they do?

Gee, I don't know how I got started, but I think I've been in it all my life. Donna Stone, a wonderful lady and philanthropist, was very concerned about the abuse of children and founded the Committee to Prevent Child Abuse. We didn't talk much about child abuse fifteen or twenty years ago. It was kind of a dirty secret. This committee began to educate people, and then got legislation passed in every state. Now professionals like physicians and teachers are required by law to report suspected cases of child abuse. Today, people do report suspected cases of child abuse. Our government agencies generally do a bad job of handling these cases, but at least we're doing, I think, a better job than twenty years ago.

In 1987, you co-founded Corporate Child Care with former U.S. Secretary of Education and Governor of Tennessee, Lamar Alexander. How does Child Care work?

I always felt that developmental education (as opposed to purely custodial education) was critical. Developmental education develops the child in the first five years of life, a critical growth period. But it's expensive. It means having academically qualified teachers and a stimulating, safe environment. So I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could convince American businesses to provide developmental education for the children of their employees. I had been talking to the East Tennessee Teachers' Association when I met Lamar Alexander, who was just leaving the governor's office. Lamar, who had been instrumental in improving education in Tennessee, liked my idea. Together we founded Corporate Child Care, which was designed to supply developmental education to American businesses for their employees' children. We now have about 110 centers across the nation from California to the east coast, from Illinois to Florida, supplying a very high standard of developmental education to tens of thousands of children. I wish more businesses were involved. We and others are providing only about one percent of the nation's total care, yet developmental childcare is critical at this age level. Again, if we invest in our kids, it's going to pay off.

Your recurring message for children in your Child Care centers is to always use words to solve problems, instead of fighting or other inappropriate behavior. What about Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, and other popular figures? They may be good guys, but they use real violence to accomplish their goals. How can your message compete with them?

A young child will be very direct in trying to solve a problem, saying “I got this bike first. Tough!” In educating children, particularly very young children, we're socializing them—teaching them to live in the world, that violence is not an appropriate solution to problems. Yes, the Power Rangers and other so-called heroes use violence. The producers say, “They're doing it to a good end,” but the end doesn't justify the means. We're teaching kids that violence is an appropriate mechanism for problem solving. That's disastrous. If you don't like what you see in society, you drop a bomb, or pull a knife or pistol. We see it all the time. Somebody who's cut off on the Los Angeles (or Texas or New York) freeway suddenly gets out of the car with a pistol, and shoots the other driver. But I know words can work. I've watched it work on our playgrounds. You must learn that in life. But we don't learn it. We whack our spouse and we whack our kids. Corporal punishment doesn't work; we should be teaching positive discipline. When we teach corporal punishment, we're teaching violence as an appropriate solution to problems. Surveys of prison inmates have shown that over ninety percent were subjected to corporal punishment when they were young. Did it work with them? Obviously not. You've got to take the more patient approach and reach the minds of children—teach them to socialize, to internalize values. Then they're going to be good when they're away from you. That's what positive discipline does.

The Captain and Friends. From left: Dennis, the Painter's Apprentice (played by Gus Allegretti); Captain Kangaroo (Bob Keeshan); and Mr. Green Jeans (Hugh Brannum).

Do you plan to do more TV? And what about doing CD-ROMs or having a Web site that could be interactive with parents or teachers or children?

Funny you should ask. I'm on the Web on several sites, and I get a lot of hits at my publisher's address. And Microsoft is doing a parents' page for which I'm writing material; that should be up soon. Microsoft is also getting very involved in parent and family affairs, and I'm doing one of their features. With the new legislation, I'm now in serious discussions about doing more children's programming.

So there will be some quality children's material on the Internet in the near future?

Oh, I think there'll be a lot. But even so, if parents don't actively support what we do, it's not going to work.

Do you own the rights to the Captain Kangaroo name? And will you have control over subsequent Captains (if there are any)?

No, I don't own the rights. They're rather confused. But that's not important to me, because I'm the Captain and nobody can do exactly what I do. Nobody would dare come along and play a Captain carrying an Uzi. The uproar would be too great. Any future Captain would be very benign and positive, and I would be involved in that.

We see program-related products and their sales pitches everywhere. Indeed, sometimes the product comes before the program—in commercial television and even, in the case of “Sesame Street,” in non-commercial broadcasting. Given their shortage of funds and increasing production costs, is there anything wrong with public television or non-profits making money off this kind of thing?

Sometimes I'm a little uncomfortable with the way it's done. “Sesame Street” really supports itself with this. Seed money initially started them, but those funds dried up. So they've had to look for other sources of income, and merchandise has been that. “Sesame Street” does it pretty well, without too much promotion on the program itself. I'm less comfortable with “Barney,” because I think it has a much more commercial approach. Fred Rogers and I really had the same attitude: if it came from the program, had value, and stood by itself, then that was okay. These things exist in today's world, and that's legitimate. We get into trouble, when, as you said, some of these started as products; then a television show was created around them—just to sell and promote that product. That's a real problem for me. Others start as television programs but heavily promote their own merchandise; that bothers me, also. But you know, even Disney does it and some of their products are terrific.

What responsibility do marketers or advertisers have? For example, products labeled “educational” (which may have no educational value whatsoever) may target well-meaning parents. What about companies who use such terms—or even no labeling—to sell a product?

Words like “educational” are so generic that we really can't exert much control. You just have to leave it to parents' judgment and hope they learn about a product before they buy it. We've had terrible problems in the area of video games where parents just don't understand their content. I did a press conference with Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut a year and a half ago; he was outraged at some video games which had no information on the box and no rating system. Parents had no way of judging a product's appropriateness. One particular game specified no age limit, so any child might bring it home and parents were unsuspecting. In this game, scantily clad coeds in a college dorm were set upon by monstrous creatures wielding chainsaws that actually cut the girls. Blood squirted out, organs were flying, and all sorts of things. It was the most bizarre game you could think of, yet every child had access to it. Recently, we've required industries to be self-censoring. Video-game producers now put age levels and content information on product covers. But there's a real problem with video games: every child wants to be a winner; and with many of these games, the only way to win is to use violence. If you don't use violence, you're going to lose; and nobody wants to be a loser. Again, we're teaching violence to impressionable young people.

Are television and the media in general helping to create generations of ever-more greedy and materialistic children?

It's hard to pinpoint. Materialism is pervasive in our society. And which came first, the chicken or the egg? Why do parents buy things? Many affluent parents who buy and buy are buying their kids off—and assuaging their own guilt for not spending more time with them. Then some parents just like buying things—clothes, automobiles, whatever. That buying culture and the attitude of “You've got to have the latest, neatest, greatest, most to be happy” reaches down to kids. Peer pressure also comes into play. Now did television engender this? Probably a lot of it. But it wasn't just television. Maybe television responded to peoples' feelings about possessions.

What was the secret of Captain Kangaroo's success? Your show wasn't sophisticated, wasn't slick or glitzy, and it didn't have a fancy set; yet it lasted so long and you're still popular with fans.

I have no idea. I think there are several factors, including honesty. My relationship with the audience was always honest. I never really trifled with their emotions or their intellect, and I respected them as intelligent human beings of at least potentially good taste. My audience turned over completely every four or five years. Ed Sullivan never had that advantage because his audience just grew older. He added some people with younger ones coming in, but that wasn't enough to stop the show's inevitable demise. I don't really know the answer.

Were your appeal and humor strictly American in nature?

We were very colloquial. I don't know how American it was, but we celebrated days—Groundhog Day and Arbor Day, and so on—that aren't generally celebrated around the world. We never packaged the program for distribution to different countries—Latin America, Germany, France, or whatever—because we were so busy. But with the technologies available today, we would have been able to edit like crazy and dub different languages to adapt it to any culture.

Even so, much of what you promoted, such as values and standards, was universal. You've also been a great advocate of reading. In fact, one of the most popular features of Captain Kangaroo was “Reading Stories,” a daily segment where you read to children. Today, your Books to Grow By is a wonderful guide to help parents. What do you say to naysayers who believe that technology will make reading obsolete and that people don't read anymore?

Gutenberg would be shocked at the state of technology today; but we've always made advances in technology—much of it based on the written word. If you're going to use a computer and browse the Internet, you must be literate. And you have to be able to read and spell, regardless of subject matter, whether you're looking up something in the encyclopedia on a bookshelf or in a CD encyclopedia on your computer. Personally, I don't think we'll ever replace books. There's absolutely nothing like curling up with a good book. But we'll be producing books differently and technology will certainly have an effect.

As your new book Good Morning, Captain: 50 Wonderful Years with Bob Keeshan illustrates, your show spanned five decades and nine U.S. Presidents, and was watched by more than 200 million viewers. Do you have any message for those now-grown-up children who were and are your fans?

As I tell them all the time, I just hope they understand the value of parenting and what great influence they can have on children. By giving minimal time, they can influence a human being to be a powerful force in this world—and bring themselves a great deal of happiness.

“Today, wherever he goes, men and women old enough to have children and grandchildren of their own come up to Bob with great big smiles on their faces just to shake his hand and thank him for doing what he has done and for being what he has been.”

—Charles Osgood
Good Morning, Captain: 50 Wonderful Years
with Bob Keeshan, TV's Captain Kangaroo

Good Morning, Captain: 50 Wonderful Years with Bob Keeshan, TV's Captain Kangaroo (foreword by Charles Osgood, host of “CBS Sunday Morning”) is a fall 1996 publication of Fairview Press, Minneapolis MN.

Keeshan photos by Chris D. Minnick.