Culture Notes

The other Disney of kids' programs

Those boycotting Disney might do well to pay attention to who else is raising America's TV-addled children. Haim Saban, an Israeli entrepreneur, is responsible for 21 percent of all children's TV programming. Disney only provides 18 percent, while the leader is Warner Brothers with 26 percent. Mr. Saban recently teamed with media tycoon Rupert Murdoch to buy evangelist Pat Robertson's Family Channel. The $1.9 billion deal positions Mr. Saban to become an even bigger player. Among his shows are the Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, BeetleBorgs Metallix, and Saban's Samurai Pizza Cats. Whereas Disney and Warner Brothers at least have significant creative departments, Mr. Saban takes more of a cut-rate approach. Buying up cheap Japanese programming, Mr. Saban dubs the cartoons into English. With live-action shows, such as the Power Rangers (shown here), he takes footage of costumed Japanese actors fighting martial-arts battles and inter-cuts shots of live American actors to play the heroes in their secret identities. His latest scheme is to buy up the rights to old programs-such as Caspar the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich-to update them and turn them into merchandising cash cows. Mr. Saban just bought the rights to the venerable Captain Kangaroo, despite the strenuous objections of the original Captain, Bob Keeshan. The All New Captain Kangaroo features tie-ins to Anheuser- Busch theme parks and is getting set for a huge merchandising blitz.