This past Saturday was the last morning that any of the three major broadcast networks aired programming for kids. Once upon a time, all three did. ABC, NBC and CBS each gave us several hours per Saturday and young'uns would get up that morn and sit there for the duration, watching cereal and toy ads interspersed with shows and occasional "educational" content. I was on both ends of that wonderment: For years I watched it and for later years, much of my income came from writing such shows.

Why did it have to end? There were about eleven reasons and they were all money. A lot of them had to do with the rise of alternatives for viewers in that age bracket. In its heyday, Saturday morning was darn near the only time kids could turn on the TV and see shows for them — or at least, anything new.

Then at some point, you had Fox and the WB programming on weekday afternoons. You had the rise of cable channels like USA Network and Nickelodeon and eventually Cartoon Network offering cartoons and live-action shows targeted for that audience. You had other weekday syndicated fare, most of it driven by toy companies that underwrote shows that would promote their products. You had competition for the kids' attention in the form of videogames and home video…

It all started to make Saturday Morning seem like not as special a time.

One of the big changes was in the financing of shows. Once upon a time if you wanted to do a show for children, you went to one of those three networks and tried to sell it. If they thought it would draw the proper ratings, they might buy it — that is, if you were the kind of entity (like, say, Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng or Filmation) that could be counted on to deliver a professional-looking product and to deliver it on time.

A lot of other companies tried to crack the marketplace and over the years, a few managed it: Ruby-Spears, Warner Brothers, Disney, DIC, a few others. And in a non-animated vein, there'd often be a program from Sid and Marty Krofft. Many firms tried but did not become players because they could not convince the networks that they could get shows done on time and up to minimum broadcast standards.

But let's say you could convince them to trust you and they wanted the show you pitched. Back then, they would offer you a license fee — a sum of cash in exchange for which, you'd make the show and allow them to air it. The deals varied in structure but a not-uncommon one was simply X dollars per episode for 13 episodes, each to run four times over a year, plus there'd be options for more episodes (and to rerun all or some of those already produced) in subsequent years with a slight annual bump in the license fee.

The license fee was an interesting number. It was high enough that you could, conceivably, deliver the show for that amount and make a nice profit. A lot of studios did that. They'd pocket 10% to maybe 30% of the license fee and then tell the folks who actually had to go produce the thing, "Okay, do the best you can on what's left." Sometimes, if you had a good premise, sharp writing, great voice work and a couple of terrific artists who knew how to design for cheap animation, that was enough.

Often though, it was not…and what you wound up with was a show that ran one or two seasons, then went away. Which meant you might make only 13 or 21 episodes.

(Why 21? Eight new ones was a frequent second-season order to save money. The new entries "freshened" the library and in Season #2, episodes could be rerun every 21st week instead of every 13th. This for a time put Hanna-Barbera in a position that Max Bialystock would have envied.

In the days when they furnished most of what was seen on all three networks' schedules, they could more or less count on a canceled Hanna-Barbera show being replaced by a new Hanna-Barbera show. Ergo, if a given program ran two years, H-B produced and got paid for 21 episodes. If it was canceled after one season and replaced by something else from H-B, they did 26. You could, in the immortal words of Leo Bloom, make more money with a flop than with a hit.)

13 or 21 episodes was, in a way, a flop. You didn't have enough of 'em to get great deals for off-network or foreign syndication. Also, the bigger the hit, the more merchandising — toys, comic books, wearables — you were likely to generate. So some studios decided it was a sound investment to not do every series as cheaply as possible. Instead, they'd incur some risk and aim for greater success. They would not pocket any of the license fee. They'd probably even deficit-finance a little: Spend $300,000 per episode on a show when CBS was only paying $250,000.

That was often cost-effective and deficit-financing became even more the norm for syndicated shows. Toy companies found it paid off to underwrite the cost of a series that promoted their products. A Mattel or Hasbro could easily sink a few million up front into a show about characters they were marketing to make those characters more famous. Not every time but often enough, having the show out there, five days a week in syndication, would boost toy sales enough to make that a good investment.

With such shows siphoning viewers away from networks, the networks did the logical thing: They stopped paying high license fees for Saturday morning programming. Thereafter, if you wanted to get your production on in one of those time slots on a broadcast network, you had to give it to them for a very low price and make up the rest of your costs elsewhere. Selling it cheap usually meant doing it cheap and there was a change in priorities.

No longer was it all about doing a show that would be a hit on Saturday morning because that alone was no longer enough to make a profit. It was just a way to pay part of the cost of production. You had to have your eye on foreign sales and merchandising. I wasn't approached a lot to work on such shows because, well, I wasn't the cheapest talent available. But the times I was asked, the producers made it clear they didn't care that much if a show drew an audience on Saturday morning. That was no longer where the game was.

And of course, since airing cartoons on Saturday mornings became a lot less lucrative, one by one the networks stopped doing it. Which got us to where they are today: They don't do it at all anymore.

There were, of course, other factors besides this that changed the landscape of TV animation. I don't mean to discount that a lot of kids would simply rather play Xbox or watch their cartoons on DVDs. Technology and new platforms have had a lot to do with making the old business models and platforms obsolete. Kids today don't see why they should only be able to watch their favorite characters on Saturday morning at 10:30 AM. The way we got our cartoons on Saturday morning is incompatible with a generation that wants what they want when they want it.

These days, almost no one does a cartoon show that will succeed or fail just as a cartoon show. What we have now are programs that succeed or fail as part of a massive marketing campaign for the property. Worldwide sales are a much greater concern than they used to be. Merchandise sales are a much greater concern, too. Well, of course. That's where the money is…and I'm not suggesting this is all for the worse. Some real good shows that will be rerun forever have emerged from this new system. Getting the control of TV animation away from the Big Three TV networks has brought much more freedom for the creative folks.

As a kid, I loved watching cartoons on the networks on Saturday morning…but I don't think it was because of the networks or the day. It's just that I loved cartoons and that's where they were. Now, they're everywhere. That is not a bad thing for those of us who love animation.

As an alleged adult writing cartoons, there was something to be said for working in the network Saturday morning marketplace. There was something nice about doing a show when the only real concern was not the attendant marketing campaign and whether the show would get picked up in Rangoon. All we cared about really was doing a show that kids would watch over and over.

A better time? On the whole, I don't think so…because when it was just ABC, NBC and CBS, we were too often under ridiculous restrictions both in terms of "broadcast standards" (censorship) and the very limited ideas you encountered as to what made for a good show. I retain my nostalgic fondness for the experience of watching cartoons on Saturday morning on those networks. But I think I'm glad animation broke out of that.

And really: You can buy DVDs of just about any cartoon that ever existed or record them, whenever they air, on your D.V.R. If you miss the idea of cartoons on Saturday morning, there's nothing stopping you from watching them then.

Be on the lookout for a bronze statue of Ed Sullivan…

There'll be minimal blogging in these parts today…though even this is more than most one-blogger blogs give you per day. I have music to play, places to go, people to see…everything for you and me. For instance, I need to proofread several upcoming issues of Groo and add in mistakes.

Coming up in a day or so on this blog will be a long post on the demise of Saturday Morning Cartoons on networks. They're gone now, you know…and there are probably eight thousand reasons why. I'll mention what I think are one or two of them. You may be shocked to learn that they're kind of about money.

We have had a few brief outages on this blog lately for technical reasons and are working to solve that. They only seem to last five or ten minutes but we'd still like them not to happen.

So a few nights ago, I was walking home from a nearby restaurant wherein I'd just dined with my friends Paul Dini and Misty Lee. I came to a street corner and there was a woman there who looked like she'd answered a casting call for White Trash. She was screaming racial epithets at anyone and everything, yelling about the blacks and the Hispanics — though she didn't use those nouns — and causing a lot of people to hurry past her with grimaces on their faces.

She was using every insulting word you can imagine for any minority group you can name and then, as I was well past her and could barely hear the sound of her in the distance, I'm very sure she said the following: "…and they have the nerve to call me a racist!"

Back later.

The first car I ever owned had an identity crisis. It looked like a Buick Skylark and it said "Buick Skylark" on the chassis. Ah, but under the hood, it was a Buick Wildcat — so you got a lot of pep when its engine was installed in the lighter Skylark model. It was a great automobile and even when it got shabby and dented and looked like the Official Car of The Grapes of Wrath, I kept driving it. It simply ran too well to abandon.

It had been my father's. When it came time to trade up to a new (used) car, he gave that one to me instead of trading it in. Like a lot of dependable cars though, when things started to go wrong with it, they really went wrong. One day in 1977, everything went kablooey at once and my trusted mechanic — the great and honest Jack Heyler — told me that even at his low rates, it wasn't worth fixing. "A dealer will give you a couple hundred for it if you're buying a new car from him," he said. Fine with me, as I'd been thinking it was time to ditch the schizophrenic Buick and buy a new car…and not a new used car but a new new car.

Fine with my father, too. He was actually excited. He'd had lots of cars but he'd never purchased a brand-new model, fresh off the showroom floor. He was delighted that his son could afford one. He probably could have too, but he was always worrying about saving for that proverbial rainy day and possible future emergencies. By that point, he was retired and on a fixed pension with no real way to ever up his income.

So he was elated at the prospect of helping me check out all the possibilities, test-drive some, comparison shop, haggle, etc. He loved that kind of thing and would have let it go on for months if he could. First thing, he ran out and bought Consumer Reports and other publications he thought might be helpful. He began casing dealerships, casing the joints and establishing relationships with the sellers. He would have visited every one between here and Detroit to get me, as he put it, "The Deal of the Century."

Trouble was, I couldn't wait for The Deal of the Century and the way it was going, I was starting to wonder which century he had in mind. I had a staff job on a TV show then and had to commute to work each day. The Buick, may it rest in peace, was getting to be like one of those clown cars that goes three feet and the front fender falls off, then it goes three more feet and the back fender falls off, then it goes another foot and the hood flies off and a radiator hose sprays the driver in the face through a hole in the windshield, etc. I should have started the search process six months earlier.

I needed a new set of wheels, A.S.A.P. and I had this mental image: My father's still shopping, still trying to find me the right car for fifty cents less…and I'm sitting motionless in a bucket seat in the number two lane of the Santa Monica Freeway at rush hour holding an unattached steering wheel. Because that's about all that would soon be left of the Skylark/Wildcat.

Finally and politely, I gave him a deadline: We find a car his way by Saturday or I'll just go out and buy one without him. He revved up his little game of pitting dealer against dealer and by close of business Saturday, I had a brand-new Mercury Zephyr…a pretty nice car. It was black with an orange Landau top. It was the 1978 model, the first year Mercury made Zephyrs and not long before the last year they made Zephyrs. I don't know why they stopped. It was a good car, at least for me, at least for a while.

Around 1985 though, I got to think about trading up. Car phones were becoming affordable and plentiful. They were big and clunky and impractical compared to today's cellular miracles that even homeless people seem to have but in '85, they seemed quite magical. One time when I had the Zephyr in for servicing at Beverly Hills Lincoln-Mercury — same place I bought it — I asked a trusted supervisor about installing a phone in it.

He advised against it. The only phone that would fit wasn't a great one and installing it disfigured the car greatly. "Wait a few years until you're ready to get a new car," he counseled. "The ones they're designing now are more phone-friendly." I followed his advice and waited, though I was tempted. Every so often, there'd be an incident where I'd think, "Gee, if I had a phone in the car, I could have saved myself an hour's drive" or something of the sort.

Now comes what may seem like a jarring change of subject…

In 1986, I found myself a semi-involved spectator in a lawsuit. My friend, the eminent author Harlan Ellison, had made some comments in a Comics Journal interview about a prominent comic book writer. The writer took umbrage and sued both Harlan and the Journal. It looked to me like a frivolous suit, the kind a judge should have tossed outta court…but a judge didn't. I never doubted Harlan and the Journal would triumph but it still seemed likely to cost them a nice piece o' change to defend against it. So I helped out with some fund-raising activities and in other, minor ways.

The case went to trial in New York. Early on, one of the witnesses for the plaintiff dragged me deeper into it. As you may know, I moderate a lot of panels at Comic-Con in San Diego. At one years earlier, the writer's name (the writer suing, that is) had been mentioned. The witness testified the discussions on that panel proved that "the industry" (i.e., a few writers) was taking Harlan's comments seriously and the vilifying of the writer was spreading.

Harlan's lawyer, who also happened to be my lawyer, phoned me from Manhattan. By this point, he was 98% certain they would win but, you know, there's always that 2%. You just can't ignore the ominous possibility of that 2%.

So just in case, he wanted me to fly back to New York in a few days and take the stand in rebuttal. Harlan phoned too and I said yes. They needed me so they could introduce into evidence, a transcript of that panel. It would show what was actually said on it, as opposed to the witness's paraphrase. We would also show that what was said could not possibly have been a result of the interview in question because the panel occurred many months before the interview had been published.

I wasn't wild about jetting back to N.Y. just then. It was inconvenient and I'd probably wind up paying the whole cost of it — flight and lodging — myself…but some things in life, you just have to do. I called Brenda the Travel Agent and she found me the cheapest deal, which on such short notice was not all that cheap and not much of a deal. I may have the days wrong here but as I recall, they wanted me to fly back on Tuesday to testify on Wednesday morning. The hearing started at 9 AM and they needed me there an hour earlier so they could make sure my tie was straight and also remind me not to say anything too stupid.

The only flight Brenda could get me on left L.A.X. at 5 PM, which meant I'd arrive at JFK Airport at 1:15 AM, which meant I'd be at my hotel after 2. It was possible but not a lot of fun and if my flight was delayed…well, I decided not to think about that.

Departing at 5 meant I needed to be at the airport here by about 3:30, which meant leaving my house at 2:45. I decided to further complicate my Tuesday by not canceling an important meeting I had out in Encino at Noon. I figured it would last an hour, maybe an hour and a half at most. If I left there at 1:30, it would take me 45 minutes to an hour to get home, grab my suitcase and head for L.A.X. Again, risky but doable.

The meeting was one of several I had with a well-known super-superstar. I will not mention his name here except to say that he was then at about the height of his popularity, having come a long way since he sang with his brothers in The Jackson 5. Oh, heck. I'll give you one more hint: It was not Tito. The folks who programmed Saturday morning cartoons on CBS prevailed on me to develop a cartoon series starring the super-superstar. This was not easy since he'd agreed to it, then had second thoughts and now was not so sure. Eventually, he would decide that it was wrong for his image to be Hanna-Barberized at his age and station in life…but by the time the show was called off, I was outta there. I had long since moonwalked off the project.

I met that day with him and his many associates and somehow, I didn't get out of there until about 1:45. I hopped in the Zephyr and sped home, still narrowly within the confines of my timetable. I was sure I could make it but, of course, I had neglected to consult with my right rear tire. It had other ideas.

I was heading east on the Ventura Freeway, just passing Coldwater when I noticed smoke coming up from the rear of my car. Some motorists honked to tell me I was in trouble just as the Zephyr took a jolt and I figured out what was happening. Other drivers generously cleared a path so I could take the Laurel Canyon off-ramp — which was the off-ramp I was going to take anyway.

I got down to the bottom of it, turned the corner and parked just as my right rear tire — what little was left of it — totally collapsed. The tire was so shredded, it looked like black twine wrapped loosely around the wheel rim. One more minute and I'd have been in far, far greater trouble.

Once before in my life had I changed a tire. I recalled how long it took and what I did to my hands and decided to instead let the Auto Club do what the Auto Club was born to do. The trouble was there was no phone there or anywhere within view. I thought, "Gee, I wish I had a car with a phone in it." Then I walked about five blocks until I found a booth in which Superman was not undressing and called Triple-A.

By the time I got home, it was 4:20. Given the traffic at that hour, it was pert near impossible that I could make that 5 PM flight. Frantic, I called Brenda and told her to rebook. I'd take anything (anything!) but I had to be at the Courthouse in New York City by 9 AM the next morning, preferably 8. She said she'd do what she could but that was after warning me there might not be much she could do.

Fifteen minutes later, she called back. I don't recall now what she'd arranged but the following is not an exaggeration of complexity and inconvenience. I would have to drive down to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, leave my car there and get on a flight to Chicago. Getting there in time would mean two hours on the freeway but it was possible. The Chicago flight would take me to Midway Airport there and then my suitcase (thankfully, a carry-on) and I would grab a cab for O'Hare, catch a flight from there to Nashville, lay over two hours in Nashville, then get on a one-stop flight that was terminating in Newark, New Jersey at 7:35 AM.

If all went well, I would taxi straight from Newark to the Manhattan Courthouse — no place to sleep, no place to shower or change clothes — and arrive there just before 9:00. She added that things might not go well because there were storms all across the mid-west and eastern seaboard and something somewhere would surely be delayed.

Well, you can imagine how delighted I was about all this.

I was just about to begin driving to Orange County on a spare tire when my phone rang. It was not the governor calling with a last minute stay of execution but it was close. It was my lawyer phoning urgently from New York.

"Mark? Mark, you didn't get on the plane, did you?" Obviously, I hadn't but five minutes later, I would have left and he might have had no way of reaching me until I showed up, sleepless and probably dripping wet on the courthouse steps, three thousand miles and twelve hours later. "Thank God I caught you in time," he continued. "The judge is disallowing your testimony!"

It had officially to do with my name not being entered in time on some witness list. "We're going to appeal his decision in tomorrow's session. If we can get him to change his mind, we'll need you to catch a flight tomorrow and testify on Thursday." Later, my attorney decided that it unofficially had to do with something else. The judge, a wizened interpreter of jurists' body language, had realized the case was over, the plaintiff had lost and the jury was eager to vote that way and go home. He was not denying anyone due process but any time he had a decision which could go either way, he was choosing the option that would shorten the trial. Disallowing me shortened the trial.

In any case, at that moment I let out a deep exhale. I called Brenda and told her to cancel the obstacle course she'd booked me on for that evening and to instead give me a flight for the next afternoon leaving around 1 PM. The plan was that the lawyer in New York would have a final decision next morning as to whether the judge would let me take the stand. He'd phone me when they recessed for lunch — between 9 AM and about 9:30, my time — and I would proceed accordingly…either to New York or back to bed.

The next morning, I woke up about 9:05 and decided to just lay there until the phone rang and I found out if I had to go get on a plane. At 9:15, the phone rang. I did not have to go get on a plane.

That meant I could just lay there and decide what to do with this entire day I'd cleared. Well, one thing I knew: I had to go out and buy a new tire for the Mercury Zephyr. Then I decided to redecide what I'd just decided: "No," I actually said to myself out loud. "I'm going to go out and trade in the Mercury Zephyr for a car with a phone in it!" Which is precisely what I did.

I knew my father would be a bit upset that I didn't let him spend months pricing and investigating my next car but that would have meant driving the Zephyr all that time. I didn't want to spring for a new tire on a car I was going to be trading-in before long. Also, the day before had given me two great examples of why it's a good idea to have a phone in one's car. I just wanted to get one and be done with it.

Back I went to Beverly Hills Lincoln-Mercury where they'd taken good care of me and my Zephyr. I test-drove a few vehicles and picked out one I liked. It had, like my old Buick Something, an identity crisis. At the time, the Ford company made two cars that were nearly identical — the Mercury Sable and the Ford Taurus. Same look, same body, pretty much the same interiors. The Sable I test-drove had one intriguing defect in it. On the left rear side of the trunk, they'd affixed a MERCURY logo and on the right rear side, there was a TAURUS logo. So it said it was a Mercury Taurus — perhaps the only one in existence.

After a fast consultation with Consumer Reports, I made an offer with the promise of writing a check for the full price on the spot. The salesguy consulted that mysterious boss-person salesguys always consult, then came back with a counter-offer, $300 higher. I headed for the door. The salesguy stopped me, offered to up the credit for my trade-in by $300 so I'd be paying what I wanted to pay. We shook on it and I wrote a check.

They said it would take about an hour to prep the car and install the phone I wanted. I said I'd be across the street in the International House of Pancakes chug-a-lugging syrup until it was ready and asked the Mercury guys to please not correct the name on the back. But they did. They said, "We were afraid the owner would get upset if you were driving around town with our dealership name on the license plate frame and such a stupid mistake right above it."

Twenty minutes after I drove it off the lot, the phone rang at my parents' house. My mother was out but my father was home and he answered. I broke it to him gently that I'd purchased a new car without him. Disappointed, he said, "Well, okay. When can I see it?" I said, "Right now. I'm parked in front of your house!"

He couldn't believe it. "You have a car with a telephone in it?"

Whatever sadness he had about not being involved in the acquisition dissipated when he came out, got in and I took him for a ride. I even let him call my mother at work. "Guess where I'm calling from," he gleefully told her.

Then I let him call three or four of his other friends so he could brag to them that his son just bought a brand-new car…"And get this! It's got a phone in it! That's right. I'm talking to you from the car! I'm in the car right now and we're driving by the May Company!" That sounds like nothing today but in 1986, it was like I'd bought one of those flying Jetsons cars we all thought would be commonplace by the 21st Century.

That was one happy ending to this story. Another came a few days later when the case involving Harlan Ellison and the Comics Journal went to the jury and they quickly came to the right decision.

Two days after I got the Mercury Taurus Sable, I was driving it out in Reseda when I witnessed a terrible auto accident. Just awful. It involved two pedestrians and four cars, one of which flipped over and another in which two people were instantly killed. I pulled over, grabbed the phone and that resulted in an ambulance and the police arriving there probably five minutes sooner than if I hadn't been able to do that. Then I let some of the victims in the accident — those who didn't need major medical attention — use the phone to call friends or family to let them know or to get assistance. I started thinking, "Everyone should have a phone in their car."

Today, of course, almost everyone does — in their pocket or purse if not in their auto. I could tell you a hundred stories about how cell phones have saved me time or needless trips or enabled me to reach someone or for them to reach me when it was important. But I don't have to because you probably have a thousand of your own. Ain't progress wonderful? And yeah, it was Michael Jackson. You probably figured that out.

I haven't had great luck with products that are As Seen On TV but every so often on a whim, I try another. The other night in a CVS Pharmacy, I spotted the Easy Eggwich, a device that's supposed to let you cook a perfectly round egg — one that would fit right on a bagel or English Muffin — in sixty seconds. "Why not?" asked I.

Well, one possible reason not was that it's $9.95 for a box of two Easy Eggwich cookers, each of which looks like it cost about eight cents to make…and I realized too late that I probably own a dozen Microwave-safe Rubbermaid containers that could do the same thing. But hey, if it works, maybe it's still worth it.

And it does work. You crack an egg into the thing, put on the lid, place it in the ol' microwave for sixty seconds and — Presto! Change-o! — a round, microwaved egg! You can get fancy and add in some cheese or onions or bacon or, as I did this morning, diced ham. But yeah, it's a fast, easy way to make an egg sandwich. I'm currently experimenting with egg whites from a container and that seems to work fine, too.

It enables me to make something that is darn near impossible to find these days: A breakfast sandwich without cheese on it. For some reason, chefs think Americans will not consume an omelet without cheese or a sandwich without cheese. I have had times when I ask, clearly and politely, for no cheese and they think, "Hmm…this guy wants extra cheese." I am fine with cheese on pizza or in lasagna. I even like a good grilled cheese sandwich now and then. But I don't like it on everything.

So my Easy Eggwich cookers are proving useful enough that I can overlook the price. It's been a while since anything As Seen On TV has worked…and that includes at least a dozen actors I know.

Here's an embed of the entirety of Sweeney Todd on PBS, which runs a bit under two-and-a-half hours. As I said, it was very good…

Oh, wait. I think I figured it out for myself. Audra McDonald played the Beggarwoman in the "today" scenes and the other actress played her in the flashbacks. That dawned on me five minutes after I posted my puzzlement.

I should also mention that I fear it's indicative of how Republicans in Congress are gunning for PBS that it was deemed necessary to bleep the word "shit" the few times it was uttered. Not long ago on another Live From Lincoln Center broadcast, Beth Behrs from the 2 Broke Girls sitcom performed "Tits and Ass" from A Chorus Line…only she didn't. They made a joke out of her having to substitute other rhyming words for the "t" word. (Yes, I know: The song is actually called "Dance, Ten; Looks, Three." But what I called it is what everyone calls it.)

Also, before anyone writes in, I'm well aware that it wasn't a question of Stephen Sondheim buying his own tickets to the performance. I'm sure they gave him his for half-price.

…and greatly enjoyed the Live From Lincoln Center telecast last night of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Very strong performances all around. The opening, where the cast tossed away their scripts and trashed the stage, was very clever and a nice way of setting the stage for a stripped-down production.

I seem to have missed something, though. I did recognize Audra McDonald in the "surprise" role of the Beggarwoman…but I noted in the end credits, she was listed for the part along with Bryonna Marie Parham. Did two people play the role and I didn't notice? This is probably something very obvious…

And you'd think Sondheim could have sprung for a better seat.

As you might know from this blog, I'm the Supervising Producer of The Garfield Show, which is seen (last I heard) in 110 countries around the globe. I also write and voice-direct and it's a show that's an enormous pleasure to work on. We're presently on hiatus, having done four full seasons plus one special, and the fourth season easily has the best episodes…with some of the best animation I've ever seen done for television.

I keep getting e-mailed questions from Americans who ask when it'll be on. Cartoon Network has the right to run them here or to air them on its sister network, Boomerang. Despite what I'm told are solid, consistent ratings, it comes and goes from both in different time slots. At the moment — and for at least the next month or two — it's airing for three hours a day Monday through Friday and two hours a day on the weekend. That's a lot of Garfield.

But they're still only running the first three seasons. They've had the fourth season episodes for a year or more and have yet to broadcast them. What are they waiting for? How should I know? I'm only the Supervising Producer.

You probably saw John Oliver's Last Week Tonight last week. But just in case you didn't, here's the terrific segment they did on the Miss America pageant…

• Sweeney Todd on PBS is such a sick individual that his singing even has bleeps in it.

• If Obama wants G.O.P. Senators to confirm Eric Holder's replacement quickly, it's easy: Have Holder start prosecuting Wall St. criminals.

In a speech the other day, Sarah Palin referred to the White House as "1400 Pennsylvania Avenue" and way too much is being made of it. This is one of my beefs with political discourse these days. It's the folks who lie in wait for The Opposition to misspeak or have a momentary brain fart, and then try to sell it as proof that the person is stupid, addled or otherwise not to be taken seriously. Ms. Palin says plenty of things intentionally I believe are wrong or disingenuous. This kind of "gaffe" is like a writer hitting the wrong keys on a keyboard and spelling a word wrong.

I felt the same way about some of George W. Bush's clumsier phrasing or Barack Obama saying he'd visited 57 states or the time Jimmy Carter referred to Hubert Horatio Humphrey as Hubert Horatio Hornblower or…

Well, they all do it at one time or another and to exploit it as more than an amusing blooper is real schoolyard. How about if we hold people responsible for what they meant, rather than their verbal slip-ups?

Shelly Goldstein, Beatles fan/expert supreme, found this: How to make Beatles pancakes. For some reason, I feel like Ringo should be a waffle…

The last few days, the crevices of the Internet that deal with comic books have seen a flurry of essays on the question, "Is it worth it for professionals to attend comic book conventions?" The flurry seems to have been kicked off by this essay by Denise Dorman, who's the wife of artist Dave Dorman.

She says that balancing what it costs them to attend a con against what they gross in sales, it doesn't pay. Her piece spawned many replies including those from Corey Blake, Ryan L. Schrodt and Thom Zahler. There are others if you want to search.

Obviously, anyone's experience is valid to some extent for them. If you go to make money and you don't make money…well, maybe you shouldn't go. Whether it's because of some specific trend like the incursion of media stars and/or the cosplayers is more arguable…though at the Phoenix Comic Con, I did hear one dealer loudly cursing out the cosplayers. There were an awful lot of them there and his complaints were (a) they constitute a large part of the attendance but they don't buy stuff and (b) they were always blocking the aisles, limiting others' access to his display.

I do have a problem with cosplayers at conventions and it's not that they're there. Most are quite ingenious with their costuming and they add to the overall fun and color of cons. No, my problem is that when you dress up as a super-hero or a Wookie or a Conan wanna-be and someone asks, "Can I take your picture?", it too often makes you oblivious to the discourtesies and dangers of blocking aisles or swinging your plastic sword in the vicinity of someone's face. (And no, it's not everyone…but it's enough to create some genuine problems. Any con now, someone's going to be genuinely injured in a way that will demand serious regulation of cosplayers.)

But let's leave that aside now. I don't know the Dormans at all, except to admire Dave's work from afar, so let's leave them out of this, too. Let's just ask, "Is something wrong with a comic convention where professional guests can't make enough dough to make it worth their time to go?" My answer: I don't think so. Is there something wrong with a strip-mall where every store can't turn a profit?

All a convention can do for exhibitors is to bring in a crowd that has some money on them. If they're not interested in what you're offering or if they are and don't like the price you've placed on it, you won't sell anything. The long waiting list to get a table at the Comic-Con in San Diego is proof that someone is making money down there. Not everyone can.

I'll tell you who really can't make money selling at conventions: Me. But then, I've never tried; not once in my 44 (!) years of going to comic book conventions and a few science-fiction ones, have I set up a table and tried to sell anything. I mean no criticism of anyone who enjoys it or depends on it when I say I personally choose not to do that. At most, if a publisher or merchant is selling my new book, I'll sit at their table for an hour or so and sign to help them move some product.

I have begun turning down most invites to guest at cons because, basically, they offer me nothing but the chance to sell stuff I bring. I do go to WonderCon and Comic-Con International because I usually enjoy every minute I spend at those cons. Apart from the eighty quadrillion panels I do at each, there are tons of people to see and other programming to enjoy. There are also business-type meetings relating to my work.

(I do not, by the way, recommend going to any con — except just maybe one in your own zip code — in the belief that the time and expense are a good investment because you'll score a great, well-paying job. That usually doesn't happen and it's a good way to eliminate any possible other enjoyment or benefits you might derive from that trip. But if you want to work in comics or animation or gaming or any other industry that a particular con embraces, there may be some value to mingling with and listening to folks actively working in that area. If nothing else, it could be educational. I'm a big believer in trying to really understand the business in which you want to be.)

So is going to conventions to sell things a bad investment for professionals? For some, certainly…just as opening a sushi bar down at the corner may be a terrible investment. I'm just going to suggest that some of my friends and colleagues consider that there might be other reasons, besides sitting at a table hawking your output, to attend certain conventions. And in some cases, there might well be no reason whatsoever.