April Fool's Day is next week and while I don't like most practical jokes, I do love witty, harmless gags. I'm remembering the first April Fool's Day after I'd gotten a modem and begun calling computer bulletin boards. This was before Al Gore invented the Internet. I logged into a B.B.S. I called once a week or so and there, in its "announcements" section was a serious, deadpan notice that due to complaints from callers, three regular users of the system — two unfamiliar names plus mine — were being banned for being obnoxious and offensive. I did a double-take that would have been considered overacting in a Ben Turpin movie and began pondering what I'd posted that could have ticked people off. Took me about ten seconds to realize that I'd been had; that the system was configured so that everyone saw their name as one of the three in the bogus announcement.
One of my favorite April Fool's Day gags was perpetrated by the Cartoon Network back in 1997. Rather than describe it myself, I'm going to quote verbatim, a squib from the daily fax report that was issued that day by the newspaper, Electronic Media. Here it is…
The Cartoon Network pulled its regularly scheduled programming in lieu of an April Fools' Day stunt. Since 6 a.m., the network has been repeating a single seven-minute short (Screwball Squirrel's Happy-Go-Nutty), along with occasional on-screen notices claiming the animated character has taken over the control room in an effort to have April 1 declared a national holiday. All fooling aside, the channel plans to resume normal programming at 6 PM — after the cartoon has run more than 140 times.
The stunt was, I thought, hysterical — the same cartoon over and over and over. They did not even rotate the five classic cartoons that Tex Avery directed of Screwy (sometimes known as Screwball) Squirrel. They ran the same one over and over and over and over. Even after it was apparent what they were doing, I found myself tuning in to Cartoon Network throughout the day, making sure they were still at it, and checking out the little announcements about the Screwy Squirrel hostage crisis.
They left all the promotional announcements and bumpers intact as per the schedule, so they'd announce, "Coming up next — The Flintstones," and then they'd show Screwy Squirrel in Happy-Go-Nutty. Or they'd say, "We now return to Thundercats" and then they'd show Screwy Squirrel in Happy-Go-Nutty. For twelve hours straight. I found myself laughing, just at the sheer silliness of it all.
Someone at Cartoon Network has a great sense of humor and a hefty serving of guts. For the sake of a great gag, they ran the risk of outraging cable subscribers — and, indeed, judging from Internet postings, a few were incensed sufficiently to phone up the channel's headquarters in Atlanta. This did them no good, of course; all they got was a recorded announcement that said that they were doing their best to get Screwy out of the control room. Others called their local cable companies to report technical problems. At least one cable service out in the Valley began carrying the channel on the first of April. One wonders what those new viewers thought.
But I know what I thought: I thought it was brilliant. And, looking at the above report from Electronic Media, I wonder if Cartoon Network played a trick on them in a press release, or if no one at Electronic Media knows how to multiply. Even if you left out commercials and promo announcements — and they didn't — it would take a lot more than 12 hours to run a 7-minute cartoon 140 times. Either way, somewhere Tex was laughing his wings and/or ass off.