Visited relatives, their kids watched PBS kids in the morning, I was appalled with how frantic the majority of the shows were.
The idea seems to be if it's not non-stop yelling kids will tune out. Lso the voice actors were mostly pitching their voices much higher than actual childrens' voices.
A handful of gems exist, though I'm not aware of any being produced now. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was really something special. Still is. Long (incredibly long, sometimes) takes, slow tracking, few cuts, lots of Mister Rogers talking directly to the viewing kids in his special, amazing way. So was pre-Elmoization Sesame Street, for that matter.
I really miss good nonfiction channels. The History Channel, Discovery, National Geographic. TLC (it wasn't always house shows!). All gone to hell. It's a shame. I picked up a ton from those as a kid, even though I rarely got to watch them (we didn't have cable except for a couple years) but now they're all reality shows and ancient aliens and other sensationalized junk.
Incidentally, I'm kinda worried about what all the auto-tune's gonna do to kids' sense of what good singing is. Check out Daniel Tiger for what I'm talking about, but it's everywhere in kids' programming (among other places, obviously). I suppose it saves money, but it sucks.
The idea seems to be if it's not non-stop yelling kids will tune out. Lso the voice actors were mostly pitching their voices much higher than actual childrens' voices.