Heartwood USA

Via Cynopsis:

The Muppets of Plaza Sesamo and Mexican celebrities are addressing the new flu emergency in a series of pubic service announcements (PSA) aimed at kids.  Sesame Workshop and Mexico’s Grupo Televisa have produced four PSAs featuring the Plaza Sesamo Muppet’s Pancho and Lola as well as celebrities Lucero, Jorge Poza and Adrian Uribe, which empower kids with things they can do during this period.  The PSAs, which have already begun airing on Televisa, encourage kids to tell a parent if you feel sick, and if you are sick don’t go to school or outside, cover your mouth with a tissue or arm if you sneeze or cough and throw away that tissue in a covered trash can, and of course, wash your hands with soap and water several times a day for at least 20 second.  Plaza Sesamo’s Education and Research team worked with Mexico’s Ministry of Health to develop the PSA scripts.  The PSAs are being offered to several government organizations to extend the message in Mexico including the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the Government Workers ‘ Social Security and Services Institute (el ISSSTE) and Mexico City’s public transit system.

This is pretty cool on a couple of levels. Plenty of kids are freaked about the swine flu (my 10 year old couldn’t get to sleep last night) and using their favorite characters to help explain and reassure is a no brainer. And I’m impressed at how quickly they were able to turn this around. 

Got some hate mail today (though due to the vagaries of Google Alerts, it took a while to get to me).  A climate change  skeptic/denier forum found Heartwood USA and took it to task:

“This stuff is just sickening.”

“…overall I give it 10 puke-chunks out of 5 for absolutely sickening”

“The pilot can be viewed here. Don’t puke on yourself….”

“I couldn’t make it past the 30 second mark, it was too preachy and extolled so many lies about being green, that I had to shut it off.”

I think the thing I love most about the comments are how the commenters go out of their way to mis-hear the message. It reminds me of the recent Ohio State study of Colbert Report viewers. Conservatives don’t know he’s joking. Like…

“…now come the environmentalists saying that the dairy industry is bad. I just don’t get it anymore, we can now no longer keep our health because it is bad for the environment to drink milk.”

Um, no. We environmentalists got nothing against drinking milk. We just happen to think CAFO dairy has some, um, problems with it. 

“You don’t keep cows in a metal barn on conveyor belts…they live outside…on grass”

Source: EPA home page on CAFO beef feedlots

Yeah, ok.  And anyway:  http://www.nodowners.org/

And my favorite:

“Greenhouse gases moderate our temperature to keep us out of an iceage and are thus IMPORTANT”

Oh lordy, I give up.

Our house grew hushed this past Friday night at 8pm.  Nyssa, Lily, Charlotte and I settled in for the 2009 Kids Choice Awards. Who would win kids tv show of the year? How would Dwayne Johnson do as host? Would the Jonas Brothers sweep? What sexually innapropriate innanity would we endure from the Pussycat Dolls? (Who are these people?) (And what age are the KCAs fdor?)

Me? I was more interested in Nick’s Big Green Help award.  Leo:

Right now, our mother — our mother — all of our mothers, Mother Earth is hurting. And she needs a generation of thoughtful, caring and active kids like all of you to protect her for the future. You can help us win the battle to clean up our air, our water, our land, to protect our forests, our oceans and our wildlife. 

Quote via Ecorazzi.

If PBS Kids going green is to be expected, this one is not:

According to Fox, changes to the production of 24 will make it the first carbon neutral television series. Fox…

hired consultants to measure the carbon-dioxide output from the production, started using 20 percent biodiesel fuel in trucks and generators, installed motion monitors in bathrooms and kitchens to make the lights more efficient and paid the higher fees that help California utilities buy wind and solar power.

For car crashes, the production settled on carbon offsets so they could continue to blow s**t up in situ. Ok.

via the New York  Times.

No real surprises here but worth noting:

PBS Kids and PBS Kids Go! celebrate Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22, with the fourth annual PBS Kids Share the Earth Day and a new web-based Earth Day Channel on pbskidsgo.org . The on-air event features premiere episodes Cyberchase, Curious George and Arthur, and themed episodes of Super Why!, Sid the Science Kid among others. Eco-centric content and activities will be featured online at pbskidsgo.org , pbskids.org , PBS Parentsand PBS Teachers. Additionally, the new PBS Kids Go! video player will host an Earth Day channel with themed content from Arthur, Design Squad, and Maya & Miguel, as well as web-exclusive sites such as Eekoworld, where kids can create and monitor their own creatures in the wild, and The Greens, a web-based series about the Green family and sustainability/ecology/environment/being green.

Via Cynopsis Kids

This is pretty cool:

Teens can shoot & submit their own stories

Red Willow Films is moving forward on Eco Company, its new half-hour environment focused series. Set to launch in fall 2009, Eco Company is a FCC friendly Educational and Informational (FCC E/I) series with clearances from station groups including Tribune Broadcasting, Cox Communications, Granite Broadcasting, Local TV, Newport Television, and the Journal Broadcast Group among others. Hosted by a group of teens, the live-action series explores the importance of making ‘green’ choices and understanding how our actions impact the planet. The series will be supported by the interactive website www.eco-company.tv, where teens will be invited to submit their ideas and upload their videos, which will be displayed on the site.

Pretty cool for teens and for the conversation.  And significantly, pretty cool to have such significant backers.

Via Cynopsis Kids