I recently got back into the 90s Disney cartoon Gargoyles in a big way, and it made me sad for my sister’s generation.  She’s twelve going on thirty or thirteen, depending on whether or not the menagerie of animals she keeps in her room woke her up too early.  We’re just over a generation apart, and the kids’ television landscape couldn’t be more different.  I watched Ren & Stimpy, Roundhouse, Rugrats, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Clarissa Explains It All.   None of them starred a tweener who was obsessed with fame.  None of them were about being the most popular kids in school.  Those statements are a lot harder to make about any four shows on Nick or Disney right now, and you can add Cartoon Network to the list when you’re talking about shows geared toward young girls.

Out of all the shows airing new episodes on the Disney channel, only three don’t have anything to do with being rich or famous.  One of those three, Wizards of Waverly Place, almost doesn’t count because the Disney channel is ardently launching the actress playing the main character’s (Selena Gomez) singing career.  Then there’s Nickelodeon, where both of its new live action shows are about teenagers becoming pop stars, VicTORIous, a pop star’s younger sister Tori goes to a performing art school where she feels like she doesn’t fit in,  and Big Time Rush, a boy band that moves from Minnesota or Montana or Kansas or somewhere to Hollywood.  Both networks still have a few animated series’ free of autotune, but not nearly as many as they did in the mid 90s.

It’s not that there’s something inherently wrong with a television show about a girl who’s a performer, but besides Big Time Rush, all the shows centered around guys aren’t about singing, dancing, acting, or fashion (see True Jackson VP on Nickelodean).   Boys still get to watch shows about super heroes, secret societies, and regular boys who have comic misadventures while growing up.  Having recently worked on a video game aimed at girls my sister’s age, almost all of the entertainment out there for that demographic was about designing clothes or becoming a superstar.

When I was my sister’s age, I put on shows in the backyward with my friends where we all sang off key and destroyed a number of jeans trying to “design” them, but it wasn’t all boys, make-up, and popularity all the time.  There were television shows that showed girls liking pretty clothes and wanting to win talent shows, but when I was tired of that stuff, there were other options for me on television.  When my sister is sick of overly styled tweens who are incredibly pretty and talented but somehow still relatable, her only resort is to turn to TLC and hope for a Cake Boss marathon (although Cake Boss is awesome, go DVR it post haste) and that sucks.

Gender issues aside, the shows not populated by tweens with record deals on the side are few and far between and many of them are based on franchises, for example,  The Penguins of Madagascar, Car Toons featuring Mater, the most annoying Pixar creation ever, and Shaun the Sheep from the beloved creators of Wallace and Gromit.  These shows aren’t all bad, but they don’t make for a whole lot of variation on the kids’ entertainment landscape.  Where are the shows about adventurous toddlers, absurd mammals with anger issues, super scary stories — some of those episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? gave me nightmares for weeks — or Gargoyles that protected humans while being hated and feared by them!?*  That was some seriously entertaining stuff!  Does everything need an album or successful movie attatched to it for networks to be convinced that kids will tune in?

Maybe the kids today get iPhones, way better internet, and online MMOs that they can populate with their very own stuffed animals, but I still wish they had disgusting lovable monsters and tiny Australian dogs on their television screens instead.

*If there are any amazing, absurd cartoons out their airing new episodes that I missed because I lived under a rock on an isolated island on the frozen east coast of Canada, let me know in the comments.