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You Can't Do That on Television (abbreviated YCDTOTV) is a Canadian television program that first aired locally in 1979 before ultimately airing internationally in 1981. It primarily featured preteen and teenaged actors in a sketch comedy format in which they acted out skits based on a theme for that episode.

After production ended in 1990, the show continued in reruns on Nickelodeon through 1994.

History

Local television

You Can't Do That on Television debuted in 1979 on CJOH-TV in Ottawa as a low-budget variety program with some segments performed live. The show consisted of comedy skits, music videos (usually three per episode) and live phone-in contests in which the viewer could win a variety of prizes (transistor radios, record albums, model kits, etc.). The format also included performances by local disco dancers and special guests such as Ottawa-based cartoonist Jim Unger. Every week the show took its "Roving Camera" to hangouts around town, recording kids' jokes or complaints about life, which would be played on the following week's broadcast. The show's disco dance segments were emceed by Jim Johnson, a DJ on Ottawa's leading pop music radio station, CFGO (which at the time was co-owned with CJOH). Also, after a music video aired, Johnson would tell the viewers interesting facts about the artist featured in the video.

Veteran comedy actor Les Lye played numerous recurring characters and was initially the only adult to perform in the show's sketches, although actress Abby Hagyard later joined the show to become "the other grown-up" in the cast roster, and frequently played "Mom" opposite Lye's role as "Dad." Occasionally the older children in the cast (such as Christine McGlade or Cyndi Kennedy) played adult characters.

The show's trademark green slime dousing prank was introduced in 1979, as was the practice of using the phrase "I don't know" as a trigger for the prank.

The show was meant to offer a program for children on Saturday mornings. It made no attempt to be an educational program. The idea was successful. Only three full episodes from the first season are known to exist; the studio masters no longer exist. However, the episodes can now be downloaded and viewed via several websites.

National television in Canada

After a successful first season, a national network version of the program entitled Whatever Turns You On was produced for CTV and debuted in September 1979 (having already aired an hour-long pilot episode in May). The format was shortened to a half-hour, removed local content, added a laugh track and replaced music videos with live performances from popular Canadian artists at the time, including Trooper, Max Webster, Ian Thomas and disco singer Alma Faye Brooks. Ruth Buzzi joined the cast and the 22 children from the first season were whittled down to seven: Christine "Moose" McGlade, Lisa Ruddy, Jonothan Gebert, Kevin Somers, Kevin Schenk, Rodney Helal, and Marc Baillon (another first-season cast member, Elizabeth Mitchell, only appeared in the pilot episode). The show was placed in the 7 pm timeslot on Tuesday nights, and had poor ratings as a result. The show was canceled after one season.

Nickelodeon

In January 1981, production on YCDTOTV resumed, and a new batch of episodes aired locally on CJOH through May of that year. The format of the 1981 episodes as aired on CJOH was similar to that of the inaugural 1979 season, with the differences being that each show featured skits revolving around a certain topic (something that carried over from Whatever Turns You On) and that the disco dancers were replaced by video game competitions. The season proper ended in May, but cast members were asked to come back in May and June 1981 to film some additional scenes for the syndicated version of the show (including re-writes or re-shoots of already-filmed sketches to filter out Ottawa-centric or Canada-centric content). At the time the season ended, it was uncertain whether the show would continue. In the meantime, some YCDTOTV cast members continued to hone their on-camera skills through appearances in Bear Rapids, a Price/Darby pilot film that was never picked up, and Something Else, a local game show on CJOH with a format somewhat similar to the live and local episodes of YCDTOTV.

Peak years

Later in 1981, the new American youth-oriented cable network, Nickelodeon, took an interest in YCDTOTV. Nickelodeon originally aired a handful of episodes in edited half-hour form during 1981 as a test run, since producer Roger Price and director Geoffrey Darby had edited the entire 1981 season of You Can't Do That on Television episodes into a half-hour format similar to Whatever Turns You On for national and international syndication. Toward the beginning of 1982, Nickelodeon began airing the entire edited season and YCDTOTV quickly became their highest rated show.

Production on new episodes of YCDTOTV resumed full time in 1982, with all episodes from that point onward made in the half-hour all-comedy format. Also in 1982, Nickelodeon and CJOH had then became production partners on YCDTOTV. Over the next few years, the ratings gradually declined in Canada (by 1985, it was seen only once a week in a Saturday-morning time slot on CTV), but YCDTOTV continued to go strong in the U.S. on Nickelodeon, where it aired first five times a week and, eventually, every day.

In 1984, You Can't Do That on Television became Nickelodeon's highest-rated television program, lasting until mid-1986. Kids across America were making slime and water sounds with their mouths and sending in their own entries for the Slime-In, a contest hosted by Nickelodeon that flew the winner to the set of You Can't Do That On Television to be slimed (which was later replicated by Canada's YTV, with their version being called the Slime Light Sweepstakes).

Changing of the guard and controversies

By 1987, many of the "veteran" cast members such as Matt Godfrey, Doug Ptolemy, Vanessa Lindores, and Adam Reid had grown too old for the show. Longtime hostess Christine McGlade ("Moose") had departed the previous year, as had Alasdair Gillis (who had been promoted to co-host with Moose in 1985 before leaving towards the end of the 1986 season); Lisa Ruddy ("Motormouth"), Moose's longtime sidekick on the show, was also gone, having left at the end of the 1985 season. Only five episodes were filmed in this season, the shortest season of You Can't Do That on Television's 15-year span on the air, and one of the episodes (Adoption) proved so controversial that it was banned after being shown twice (a "DO NOT AIR" sticker was reportedly placed on the master tape at CJOH). (Adoption) is the only episode that was banned in the U.S, and the second one banned in Canada (Divorce) was the other one.

In addition, Nickelodeon had removed the half-hour edits of the 1981 episodes of You Can't Do That on Television from its daily time slot rotation, along with the 1982 "Cosmetics" episode. The 1981 episodes were supposed to air for the last time ever during a week-long promotion in 1985 called "Oldies But Moldies", which featured contests where Nickelodeon viewers could win prizes like "tasty, fresh chocolate syrup". However, the episodes continued to air until the end of 1987 but were not played very often. Reportedly, this was because Nickelodeon's five-year contract to air the 1981 season expired in 1987, and since Nickelodeon was beginning to aim for a younger demographic and many of the 1981 episodes dealt with topics more relevant to adolescents (such as smoking, drugs, sexual equality, and peer pressure); the network opted not to renew the contract. Allegedly, Nickelodeon removed the "Cosmetics" episode from rotation for the latter reason as well (although the "Addictions" episode from that same season was not dropped).

Final years

Roger Price moved to France in 1988. CJOH decided not to make new episodes without him due to lack of ideas, and production was suspended. When Price eventually returned to Canada, he wanted to resume production of You Can't Do That on Television from the city of Toronto, but was convinced by the cast and crew to return to Ottawa and CJOH.

You Can't Do That on Television resumed production in 1989, but the only child cast members to make the transition from 1987 to 1989 were Amyas Godfrey and Andrea Byrne, although a few minor cast members seen in 1986, including Rekha Shah and James Tung, returned for an episode or two.

Opinions on the 1989 and 1990 episodes of YCDTOTV are mixed among longtime fans of the show, particularly regarding the new episodes' increasing reliance on bathroom humor to attract a younger audience than the show had targeted in years past. In any case, the show did not completely sever ties to its past, as many former cast members reappeared during the 1989 season in cameo roles, most notably in the "Age" episode, which was hosted by Vanessa Lindores and also featured cameos by Doug Ptolemy, Alasdair Gillis, Christine McGlade, and Kevin Kubusheskie (who by that time had become a stage producer on the show). Gillis also appeared briefly in the "locker jokes" segment during the "Fantasies" episode, and Adam Reid, who by this time had become an official writer for YCDTOTV, also appeared (and was slimed) at the very end of the episode "Punishment."

The show's ratings declined throughout 1989 and 1990, ranking ranked fifth on Nickelodeon. The network's desire to produce more of its own shows at its new studios at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, coupled with the poor rating, cause the production of You Can't Do That on Television to officially end in 1990. Though ratings declined, Nickelodeon continued to air reruns until January 1994, at which point it was only being aired on weekends.

Reunion

In July 2004, a reunion special called Project 131 was produced at CJOH-TV starring five members of the original cast. These included Brodie Osome, Marjorie Silcoff, and Vanessa Lindores (pregnant at the time), with cameos by Justin Cammy and Alasdair Gillis. It was directed by David Dillehunt and executive produced by Josh Yawn.

In January 2007, the special was released on YouTube.

Cast

Over 100 child actors appeared on YCDTOTV between 1979 and 1990. Some of the most notable cast members included:

References

1. "You Can't Do That on Television - Project 131". Youtube. Retrieved 2010-05-21.

External links

• You Can't Do That on Television at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com show

• Canadian sketch comedy shows
• Canadian children's television series
• CTV network shows
• Nickelodeon shows
• Canadian variety television series
• 1979 Canadian television series debuts
• 1990 Canadian television series endings
• 1980s Nickelodeon shows
• Television series about television
• Television series produced in Ottawa
• Lists of television series episodes