King Of The Hill (Fox Kids Version)
Jul 13, 2017 18:44:46 GMT
nodog, Happy Brian, and 1 more like this
Post by lostinspacelord on Jul 13, 2017 18:44:46 GMT
(Incoming wall of text warning)
I've come to a conclusion, after viewing the Lost Media Wiki article on the potentially lost Fox Kids version of King Of The Hill, as well as various other sources tied to the lost media (including two articles on the show featured in the Fox Kids Heads For The Hills bumper, Silver Surfer): a Fox Kids version of King Of The Hill most likely does not exist, and the show was merely featured within Fox Kids as promotion for the shows airings on Fox proper.
The first thing I did after reading the article was to look for information the show predominately featured within the two known advertisements: Silver Surfer, otherwise called Silver Surfer: The Animated Series. Doing that, I discovered two pieces of information.
The most key piece here is the air date window for new episodes of Silver Surfer. While it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a programming bumper to advertise a program that was not airing new episodes (but still had a key place on the network), it would be strange that Fox's new series for adults would be advertised alongside anything other than a new series on Fox Kids, which theoretically could explain why Silver Surfer was used predominately in at least one promo (the promo where Hank changes the Surfer's board to run on propane).
Now, with the airdates of Silver Surfer in mind, the next step was to find some sort of schedule or programming guide for Fox Kids in the timeframe where Silver Surfer was airing its first and only season. So, I googled "fox kids schedule", locating a Wordpress blog which had taken the time to collect all of the weekday and weekend airing schedules for Fox Kids during its entire run from 1991-2002. I navigated toward the 1997-1998 season, specifically the weekend schedules (this was the first season where King of The Hill aired, functioning as a mid-season replacement). I chose not to view the weekday schedules, as the other promo available on the wiki says that Fox Kids Heads For The Hills was to air "Next Saturday" (i.e. Whatever Saturday was to follow the airdate of that ad bumper, which does not have a date contained within it).
Returning to the schedules, I checked every airdate listed on the Wikipedia article for Silver Surfer for accuracy. What I noted was that, after airing its final episode ("The End of Eternity, Part 1"), Silver Surfer was rerun once in its 11:30 timeslot on Saturday, May 23rd, before disappearing from the weekend lineup of Fox Kids for the remainder of the block's run.
More notable, however, is that King Of The Hill is not included in the Fox Kids weekend schedule at any point during the run of Silver Surfer, or afterward. This led me to believe that the existence of King Of The Hill's Fox Kids variant was more than likely just an urban legend, but I still felt the need to seek out more information, which led me to the TV Tropes pages for King Of The Hill.
On there, the "Fox Kids Heads For The Hills" marathon is mentioned twice. The first is on a YMMV page under the heading "Misaimed Marketing", which reads as follows: "Very early in the show's run, they tried to cross-promote the show on Fox Kids with "Fox Kids Heads for the Hills", where special bumpers and promos showed the characters interacting with various FK characters- like Hank convincing the Silver Surfer to switch to propane power for his surfboard. Presumably, this was a misguided attempt to promote it based off the popularity of Beavis and Butt-head with young people. Also, this was one of the last times Fox's primetime lineup ever really interacted with the FK lineup- it was mainly untenable at this point." (It goes on to explain, in a footnote, "[...] half of Fox's affiliates in major markets- specifically, stations that had switched due to the Disaster Dominoes that ensued when Fox nabbed the NFL [...] not wanting to air the block, specifically the weekday lineup, because they didn't want cartoons leading into their newscasts. As a result, depending on where you lived in the 90s, Fox Kids wasn't likely to be on the Fox station- it'd be on a WB, UPN, or indie station. So cross-promotion became rarer as an aftereffect of that.)
The second mention, while much more brief, occurs on a trivia page for the show under the heading "Urban Legend of Zelda", which reads: "There is one that says that the show aired in the early mornings on Fox Kids at one point in time around the same time as the block's "Fox Kids Heads For The Hills" promotion."
Concluding, I feel as though there are 3 possible explanations for the existence of a Fox Kids variant for King Of The Hill. (I'm listing these in the order of most to least plausible, in my own view).
I know that this is a long post which contains a lot of information that is, in some cases, tenuous at best. Regardless, I feel that this is an interesting piece of animation, regardless of what the actual product was.
If anyone sees this and would be interested in seeing links to the sources I used, I can post them in a separate comment.
I've come to a conclusion, after viewing the Lost Media Wiki article on the potentially lost Fox Kids version of King Of The Hill, as well as various other sources tied to the lost media (including two articles on the show featured in the Fox Kids Heads For The Hills bumper, Silver Surfer): a Fox Kids version of King Of The Hill most likely does not exist, and the show was merely featured within Fox Kids as promotion for the shows airings on Fox proper.
The first thing I did after reading the article was to look for information the show predominately featured within the two known advertisements: Silver Surfer, otherwise called Silver Surfer: The Animated Series. Doing that, I discovered two pieces of information.
- Silver Surfer only aired one season, from February 7th of 1998 until May 16th of 1998.
- A second season had been planned but fell victim to legal disputes between Marvel and Saban Entertainment (this was confirmed by Larry David in an article on the website Tv Writer).
The most key piece here is the air date window for new episodes of Silver Surfer. While it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a programming bumper to advertise a program that was not airing new episodes (but still had a key place on the network), it would be strange that Fox's new series for adults would be advertised alongside anything other than a new series on Fox Kids, which theoretically could explain why Silver Surfer was used predominately in at least one promo (the promo where Hank changes the Surfer's board to run on propane).
Now, with the airdates of Silver Surfer in mind, the next step was to find some sort of schedule or programming guide for Fox Kids in the timeframe where Silver Surfer was airing its first and only season. So, I googled "fox kids schedule", locating a Wordpress blog which had taken the time to collect all of the weekday and weekend airing schedules for Fox Kids during its entire run from 1991-2002. I navigated toward the 1997-1998 season, specifically the weekend schedules (this was the first season where King of The Hill aired, functioning as a mid-season replacement). I chose not to view the weekday schedules, as the other promo available on the wiki says that Fox Kids Heads For The Hills was to air "Next Saturday" (i.e. Whatever Saturday was to follow the airdate of that ad bumper, which does not have a date contained within it).
Returning to the schedules, I checked every airdate listed on the Wikipedia article for Silver Surfer for accuracy. What I noted was that, after airing its final episode ("The End of Eternity, Part 1"), Silver Surfer was rerun once in its 11:30 timeslot on Saturday, May 23rd, before disappearing from the weekend lineup of Fox Kids for the remainder of the block's run.
More notable, however, is that King Of The Hill is not included in the Fox Kids weekend schedule at any point during the run of Silver Surfer, or afterward. This led me to believe that the existence of King Of The Hill's Fox Kids variant was more than likely just an urban legend, but I still felt the need to seek out more information, which led me to the TV Tropes pages for King Of The Hill.
On there, the "Fox Kids Heads For The Hills" marathon is mentioned twice. The first is on a YMMV page under the heading "Misaimed Marketing", which reads as follows: "Very early in the show's run, they tried to cross-promote the show on Fox Kids with "Fox Kids Heads for the Hills", where special bumpers and promos showed the characters interacting with various FK characters- like Hank convincing the Silver Surfer to switch to propane power for his surfboard. Presumably, this was a misguided attempt to promote it based off the popularity of Beavis and Butt-head with young people. Also, this was one of the last times Fox's primetime lineup ever really interacted with the FK lineup- it was mainly untenable at this point." (It goes on to explain, in a footnote, "[...] half of Fox's affiliates in major markets- specifically, stations that had switched due to the Disaster Dominoes that ensued when Fox nabbed the NFL [...] not wanting to air the block, specifically the weekday lineup, because they didn't want cartoons leading into their newscasts. As a result, depending on where you lived in the 90s, Fox Kids wasn't likely to be on the Fox station- it'd be on a WB, UPN, or indie station. So cross-promotion became rarer as an aftereffect of that.)
The second mention, while much more brief, occurs on a trivia page for the show under the heading "Urban Legend of Zelda", which reads: "There is one that says that the show aired in the early mornings on Fox Kids at one point in time around the same time as the block's "Fox Kids Heads For The Hills" promotion."
Concluding, I feel as though there are 3 possible explanations for the existence of a Fox Kids variant for King Of The Hill. (I'm listing these in the order of most to least plausible, in my own view).
- 1. It does not exist: Fox merely chose to cross-promote one of its new series on its children's block, assuming that the cross-promotion would boost ratings for the midseason replacement series (which, as stated before, King Of The Hill was during its 1st season on Fox).
- 2. Fox, in the early morning on Saturday, in between a late-night infomercial block and the start of the Fox Kids broadcast day, may have aired King Of The Hill reruns as a filler for time, causing some to misremember this as King Of The Hill being aired during Fox Kids because of the ad bumpers which occurred during the actual date of the block (which has not been ascertained as of this post).
- 3. Fox did, in some markets, actually air King Of The Hill, at some point, as a Fox Kids program. Of course, this means that, while evidence of the "Fox Kids Heads For The Hills" marathon is partially located, an edited version -if the show were indeed edited in this situation- would still be lost.
I know that this is a long post which contains a lot of information that is, in some cases, tenuous at best. Regardless, I feel that this is an interesting piece of animation, regardless of what the actual product was.
If anyone sees this and would be interested in seeing links to the sources I used, I can post them in a separate comment.