Rebirth of a Signature Show
PBS Kids Sprout Finds New Host for 'Good Night Show’
By Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 11/5/2006 7:00:00 PM
Paulsboro, N.J. — Paulsboro, N.J.— Michele Lepe, a 31-year-old bilingual actress from Miami, Fla., will replace the popular but controversial Melanie Martinez — fired after videos with sexually explicit language that she’d acted in appeared on the Internet — as permanent host of The Good Night Show when it “relaunches” Dec. 18 on PBS Kids Sprout.
Lepe, who was in the cast of Telemundo miniseries Los Teens — and has hosted several radio and TV shows in her career, but never a kids’ show — will act as the new permanent “Good Night Guide” on a show aimed at helping parents and caregivers wind down the day for their preschool-age kids.
In an interview last Wednesday, during a break between shooting segments that will air on future Good Night shows, Lepe said after being cast as Nina last month her reaction was “this is like winning the lottery.”
“You go out on auditions and you look for work, and it’s so nice when you can find a job and it’s something that you really want to do,” she said. “I couldn’t be happier.”
Sandy Wax, president of the joint-venture owned PBS Kids Sprout, said auditions for the new host were held in New York and Miami, where Lepe’s performance was the one that prompted network programming chief Andrew Beecham to proclaim, “I’ve found her!”
| Network Snapshot |
|---|
| PBS Kids Sprout |
|
SOURCE: PBS Kids Sprout |
| What it is: A 24-hour programming service aimed at children ages 2 to 5 and their parents and caregivers, with online and video-on-demand components and two to three minutes of commercials per hour. |
| Key executives: Sandy Wax, president; Andrew Beecham, senior vice president, programming; Frank Ciancio, senior VP, advertising sales; Eileen Diskin, VP, marketing. |
| When it launched: Oct. 26, 2005. |
| Owners: Comcast, children’s programmer HIT Entertainment, the Public Broadcasting Service and Sesame Workshop. |
| Key distributors: Comcast, DirecTV, Cox Communications, Insight Communications, RCN. |
| Distribution: approximately 20 million households get the 24-hour channel. |
| Library programming: Includes Sesame Street, Bob the Builder, Barney & Friends, Thomas & Friends, Angelina Ballerina, Sagwa: The Chinese Siamese Cat, Caillou, The Berenstain Bears, Jay Jay the Jet Plane, Teletubbies, Dragon Tales, Pingu, Make Way for Noddy and Jakers! The Adventure of Piggley Winks. |
| Original programming: The Good Night Show, nightly from 6-9 p.m.; The Birthday Show, with a live host (Kevin), featuring party ideas and daily readings of homemade birthday cards submitted by viewers; Sprout Diner, an animated show that encourages eating healthy foods and The Many Adventures of Mr. Mailman, also animated, which teaches concepts of travel and geography. |
| Video on demand: Fifty hours of English-language programming and 10 hours of Spanish-language programming, refreshed every eight weeks. |
| Key advertisers: Huggies Pull-Ups, Universal Studios, Sony Home Video, Honda. |
“We cast wide, and what we really looked for was someone who can connect with our audience and be relatable and sweet and fun, but someone you would be happy spending time with every night,” Wax said. “That’s a hard mix, because you really don’t want somebody overly sweet.”
She said channel officials never wavered in their commitment to the show despite the host controversy.
“This is our signature show,” she said. “It’s our signature because it’s distinctive.”
Sesame Street and Barney & Friends are signature shows, Wax continued. “But this is the [show] that’s unique to Sprout. And also takes into account our philosophy of the parent-child interaction, creating a world of Sprout. It’s not just about Nina, it’s not just about Dragon Tales — it’s about everything coming together in one place.”
Sprout research showed early on that Good Night Show resonated with Sprout viewers and was “a big part of our personality.”
After Martinez was yanked from the show in July, Lepe’s hiring could bring a welcome dose of stability to the show as it heads into a third season.
MARTINEZ CONTROVERSY
In July, a faux commercial Martinez had acted in before she was cast on Good Night Show showed up on video-sharing services and on a Web site called Technicalvirgin.com.
A parody of teenage-behavior public-service ads, aimed at adults, Martinez was shown in a schoolgirl outfit, saying she was going to avoid getting pregnant by engaging only in anal sex.
That was deemed unacceptable to a programming network aimed at young children, and Sprout officials fired Martinez.
Sprout’s audience is not measured by Nielsen Media Research, so the channel doesn’t have any hard evidence of a falloff in the Good Night Show audience, Wax said. But she said overall indicators — such as the number of children sending in homemade birthday cards for a different original Sprout program, The Birthday Show — were that the network didn’t suffer a viewing decline.
Good Night Show stayed on the schedule even after Martinez’s firing, a key fixture at 6 to 9 p.m. on a 24-hour cable channel that wants to grow its base from about 20 million cable and satellite-TV homes.
For seven weeks, the show only consisted of the animated programming shown during the block — such as Thomas & Friends, Bob the Builder or Angelina Ballerina — without a host to introduce the shows or interact with the audience between shows.
Then, in September, an interim “special guest host” was hired: Noel MacNeal, whose voice is familiar to parents of preschoolers as that of Bear of Disney Channel’s Bear in the Big Blue House. As Leo, he acted in the interstitial segments shown between animated “stories” on Good Night Show, such as easy-to-do crafts and drawings.
Leo’s on-set co-host was Star, an animated pillow performed by puppeteer Stacia Newcomb. Wax said Star’s role is “representing the child,” an element that was deemed missing from Good Night’s earliest episodes that only featured host Melanie. Star was a pillow on the show’s set that came to life last summer.
Leo the Gardner will still be around in this third season of the show, appearing in scenes filmed earlier, officials said. So will Star and Lucy the puppet firefly, also added to the cast after the show began.
Those supporting players will be working with Lepe’s Nina, doing craft projects and yoga exercises and other quiet activities.
| PROFILE: Sandy Wax |
|---|
| President and general manager, PBS Kids Sprout |
| Age: 45 |
| Responsibilities: Oversee Sprout’s overall cross-platform programming strategy, Web-site development and expansion, marketing and new media initiatives. |
| Experience: Seven years at Disney-ABC Cable Networks, lastly as the SoapNet channel’s senior VP of programming. Before that, seven years as VP of corporate and new business research at Discovery Communications. |
| Personal: Bachelor of science in biology and master’s of business administration, Loyola College, Baltimore. Married with two children. Resides in Philadelphia area. |
PUBLICITY CRISIS
Wax said network officials learned much from the publicity crisis that afflicted an important show partway through its second season.
Media reports quoted parents who were upset at the situation because they and their kids liked Melanie (as Martinez was called on the show). Weblog commentary seemed mostly to be against the move, because the videos had been shot before she was cast on the show and because preschoolers were considered unlikely to see the “Technical Virgin” spoof ads. Sprout officials said the feedback was mixed overall, with arguments for and against the move.
In one of the spoof ads, Martinez, dressed in a school uniform, said into the camera that her future was too important to her to risk getting pregnant. “That’s why I choose anal sex,” she says in part. An announcer’s voiceover concludes: “Anal sex: the smart choice for your future.”
Wax said when they learned the language used in the video, there was no choice but to replace Martinez. “It was an extremely tough call, because we liked the show, we liked the person.” But Wax said, “what she disclosed to us, and what we were surprised with, we just thought was inappropriate with the role of a preschool children’s show host.”
PARTNERS AGREED
All of the venture’s partners agreed on that course, Wax said, and brought different perspectives to the decision: the Public Broadcasting System, Sesame Workshop and HIT Entertainment from a programming and children’s programming background and Comcast from overall business knowledge.
The three finalists for The Good Night Show’s new permanent host were vetted as thoroughly as possible, Wax said. She said officials researched hiring practices at other preschool networks and put together a process that was as complete as any this time around.
“We just can’t have any surprises, and there’s a higher standard when you’re dealing with little kids,” Wax said. “We have to be extra careful about our audience, to protect them.”
To research reaction to the three finalists for the job, Sprout officials played their tryout videos for preschool-age children, including at a children’s museum in Philadelphia.
“We just watched to see if they watched,” Wax said. “Of all the finalists, Michele was the only one their eyes just consistently turned to. And they understood and paid attention.”
Sprout also tested the finalists among parents of pre-school-age children. The parents viewed video online, and again Lepe’s results stood out.
Wax, a former research official at Disney-ABC Cable Networks, called this one of the unusual times when research supports casting the same person the executives preferred all along.
Lepe’s assignment last Wednesday was to act out, alongside Star, craft segments on the Good Night Show set, such as drawing the outlines of a leaf on a cut-up paper bag and cutting out segments of a paper-towel roll to make napkin rings.
The segments are short, a few minutes long, and end with Nina and Star introducing a Thomas the Tank Engine episode or other five- to 10-minute feature.
Lepe spent part of the morning’s production doing some segments over again, in Spanish.
Wax, watching with a reporter in a corner of the Hill Studio soundstage, pointed out that one-third of U.S. homes with preschool children have parents of Hispanic origin and that Spanish-language content is very much in the Sprout mix.
Sprout’s on-demand offering on Comcast and other distributors includes 50 hours of English language content and 10 hours of Spanish-language fare. Sprout has also said it plans to make a three-hour block of The Good Night Show taped in Spanish available exclusively on-demand.
| PROFILE: Michele Lepe |
|---|
| Host, 'The Good Night Show,' PBS Kids Sprout |
| Responsibilities: Act as “Good Night Guide,” demonstrating craft work and other activities, including yoga exercises, in interstitial programming during nightly three-hour block. |
| Experience: Acting credits include Telemundo’s Los Teens miniseries in 2000, national commercials for brands such as Sony and Robitussin, several radio and television show-hosting roles. |
| Personal: Fluent in Spanish and English. Raised in San Antonio. Bachelor’s of business administration, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio. Hobbies include yoga, scuba diving and painting. Married. Lives in Miami. |
“She’s very protective of her crafts,” Wax pointed out, after watching Lepe appear a bit frustrated when a production assistant handed over a finished version of the leaf-on-bag drawing in order to speed up the shot. “I think we have to send her some construction paper to her hotel room so she can get it out of her system.”
BETTER THAN BEFORE?
The relaunched show will benefit from changes made along the way. “I think we’re able to relaunch with a better show. There’s more of an ensemble. Lucy the firefly is in. Star has a real important role, representing the child,” Wax said. “And we’re still going to have Leo out in the land of Sprout.”
The set itself saw some improvements, too, including ones to make it easier for Newcomb as Star and Lepe to interact, Wax said.
Principal shooting by Philadelphia’s Center City Film & Video for season three is expected to wrap this week after about two and a half weeks of production. PBS Kids Sprout ordered 30 episodes this time, up from previous 26-episode orders.
“We think that a couple of months from now, we’ll be well back on track,” Wax said.
With Lepe on board, Sprout’s marketing plans will include a lot of affiliate activities, such as attending community events in markets where the 24-hour channel hopes to launch on cable systems. Wax called Time Warner Cable, EchoStar Communications’ Dish Network, Charter and Cablevision Systems the network’s top prospects for distribution gains.
Wax said she’s hoping to announce a deal with one distributor on that list before the end of the year. And, she said, the network hit both its distribution and ad sales targets its first year, without disclosing what those financial goals were.
Lepe should help with Sprout’s efforts beyond the screen, as well, Wax said. Sprout expects their new host will attend public events that are arranged with potential affiliates. That’s a key attribute to having live hosts, instead of strictly animated characters, Wax said. The experience with Martinez, by contrast, illustrates the risk kids’ networks take in promoting actors as key characters, she said.
Lepe spent much of her childhood in San Antonio, Texas, which happens to be a key Time Warner Cable market, where Wax said she could easily envision bring Lepe around to community events, assuming a deal gets done with that big cable operator.
Lepe — whose yoga skills also will be put to use during Good Night Show segments — said her acting experience did include hosting a show on safety tips aimed at parents and children. While unfamiliar, the role of a kids’ show host has proven to be “exciting” so far, she said. “It gives me a chance to step away and be free to create whatever I want Nina to be. It’s liberating like that.
“It’s so much fun to be with Star the puppet and step onto the stage,” Lepe said. “It’s like a magical place. You walk on and, all of a sudden, you’re in this little Sprout world, with puppets that talk and fireflies that light up.”
-
Regardless of what we think, PBS will do what they feel is right for their network. Personally, my daughter loves Nina. She never really payed any attention to Melanie or Leo. She loves Star too. What is the big deal of a children''''s TV host getting inked up? It''''s not like its even visible so what is the big deal? Alot of parents have tattoos does that make them bad parents? No. So how is this any different!?
Andie - 8/8/2007 10:56:00 AM EDT -
I just found out Leo was is the voice of "bear" from "Bear and the big blue house". I am sure some kids and parents loved him. Good for them. Personally, I thought he was kinda creepy. I loved Melanie and I like Nina too. I think it is a bit weird that she could get a tattoo on Miami Ink and that was ok with the show. Not there is anything horribly wrong with getting a tattoo on national TV, but I think it might not coincide ith the squeaky-clean kids show host image that they are trying to project. Especially if they fired Melanie over a short comedic internet spoof about abstinence. It just doesn't add up. Again, I really like Nina and am not trying to knock her, I was just shocked when I was watching an episode with her getting a tattoo. It took me a second to recognize her, then I looked it up online. I wonder if the producers of the show know about it?
Julie - 5/21/2007 12:56:00 PM EDT -
Star is a horrible puppet with a voice that matches the cheap
craftsmanship. Nina is also no Melanie. She is stiff and a poor
replacement to host the show.
Greg Cardenes - 5/20/2007 4:40:00 PM EDT -
Please change or eliminate star. The childish, garbled voice can only serve to have children emulating it to the point of having their own speech issues. I have seen where children have imitated their tv icons to the point of affecting their own speech. They end up in remedial speech classes in school. Have the character speak as normally as a child of its purported age should. I know nothing in life is perfect but this character's voice is annoying.
Joe Kirk - 5/15/2007 6:59:00 PM EDT -
Question what is Nina''s name and what is her history age and here history with children and show''s
Shao Lopez - 4/23/2007 1:26:00 AM EDT
Preschool Net Sprouts More Time Warner Subs
02/08/2008Sprout Finds New Good Night Host
11/05/2006PBS Kids Sprout to Preschoolers: Let’s Go
05/07/2007
