Strikes. Everybody's doing them.
And I for one think, that's pretty rad.
What if we all went on strike?
What if there was like a strike just in general?
Like generally we did a strike.
Like a general strike.
Because look, maybe in baseball strikes are bad
because you get three of them and you're out.
But strikes in bowling are great.
You get three of them there, that's a turkey.
And it's called a turkey because that used to be
a common prize they would give away
according to an article that I read
that misspelled the word ham.
What a ham.
Scientists are calling that an expertly crafted
transition to today's actual topic.
The time thousands of Scottish children went on strike
specifically to save Scooby-Doo
from disappearing off of TV forever.
Genuinely, if you like Scooby-Doo in any form
outside of its original series,
legend has it you owe a massive thanks
to a small army of actual, literal, meddling kids.
This video is sponsored by my streaming service Nebula
where I have recently made an entire class
on how I make my videos.
I'll talk more about that later.
There's a cat now.
What's up?
There he is.
Ay.
How are you doing you wonderful nerds?
Scott here and Scooby-Doo Where Are You
premiered in 1969 on CBS and was subsequently
licensed out to other networks in other countries
like the BBC in the UK.
But just two short years later,
Scooby-Doo ended its initial run of 24 episodes.
That's it.
Fun bonus fact, Scooby-Doo Where Are You
aired its final episode on October 31st of 1970.
Halloween.
So cool.
Remember that at this point in time,
Scooby-Doo wasn't a franchise.
It was just a single show with two dozen episodes total.
So there was no guarantee of a future
for Scoob and the gang outside of this show.
It could have easily met the same fate as Top Cat
or the Herculoids or Shazzan.
Not Shazam, Shazzan with two Zs and an N.
It had a camel named Kaboobie.
My point is CBS never renewed Scooby-Doo for a third season
and never had any plans to do so
or even to create future Scooby-Doo cartoons.
The only plans anyone had was to get rid of it and move on.
In 1971, it was months after Scooby-Doo Where Are You
aired its final episode, the BBC announced plans
to pull the show from their programming.
It wasn't meant to be a big deal.
There just weren't any new episodes.
Besides, England has a long history
of taking things from other countries
and then promptly forgetting they exist.
Like spices, for example.
What they weren't expecting was James Brown.
Mr. Dynamite, the Godfather of Soul?
Nah, he was just like a little white kid from Dundee.
Little Jimmy Brown was upset that the Beeb
was gonna get rid of the Scoob,
so he organized a protest demanding to save Scooby-Doo,
that ever-hungry hound.
We're gonna ignore the fact that someone definitely
forgot to put that Y in there until the very end.
Because these are kids, you know?
I went to a climate protest once with a sign that said,
"Clean air is a human rigt" because I forgot the H
and I'm a grown-ass genderless icon.
Once you've been writing in big, blocky letters
for long enough, it's an accomplishment
to finish with any kind of accuracy.
So I wanna read you a sentence from this Courier article
that recounted the protest because the word choice
is more powerful than anything I could come up with.
They're talking about Jimmy Brown here and they say,
quote, his children's army gathered in the city square,
then marched over the Tay Road Bridge,
waving banners and noisily shouting for Scooby's return.
I mean, just imagine an army of kids
marching across this bridge
toward the BBC Scotland headquarters
demanding that the stuffy adults in charge
walk back their seemingly innocuous decision
to remove a cartoon from the TV schedule.
And look, I know that I have a tendency
to hype up historical events
to make them sound more exciting,
but at least I'm not Chris fucking Ferguson who wrote,
"'Throughout the ages, principled protest
has been a hallmark of youth, a rite of passage for many.
Today, it is Greta Thunberg
and her army of teen climate activists
or extinction rebellion protesters who make headlines.
In the 1960s, it was the Vietnam War objectors
and campaign for nuclear disarmament believers
who set out their political agendas.
In later decades, young people swelled the ranks
of those demanding to end apartheid in South Africa.
They were at the barricades
as then PM Margaret Thatcher introduced the poll tax
and back out again to try to stop
the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Another generation too had the courage of its convictions.
In 1971, youngsters rose in anger
at a threat to remove cowardly canine Scooby-Doo
from their television screens."
Maybe I'm overthinking this,
but I cannot tell which way this joke is supposed to go.
Like my initial reaction is that
it's clearly making fun of itself.
Like this isn't that serious, but what if it,
what if we pretend like it is that serious?
But it also could be read as making fun of young people
for protesting anything.
Equating this, you know, Scooby strike as equally as silly
as protesting things like climate change
and apartheid and war,
which are definitely very silly things
to get worked up over.
How can you protest war
when you're literally an army of children?
But it wasn't just children, you know,
Scooby-Doo's all ages.
Jimmy Brown and his military force
of fledgling foot soldiers may have started the protest,
but it did inspire others to join as well.
According to one source,
steel workers also joined in threatening to withhold
the proposed $1 rise in the TV license fee
if Scooby didn't return to TV.
I said $1, I meant to say a pound.
God, I'm tragically American.
I mean, at the very least I did research
to find out what a TV license was.
Now I've read a couple of different newspaper articles
and online articles that summarize this whole event
and the exact number of people who were protesting
is kind of in the air a little bit.
Some say 3,000, some say 30,000, which would be a lot.
The protest did spread and there was even a written petition
that people could sign as well
that got a couple hundred signatures.
The exact number is hard to pin down,
but at least some thousand number of children
showed up to the Scottish BBC headquarters,
which is still genuinely impressive.
So how did the BBC respond?
Swiftly!
Jimmy Brown's adolescent infantry marched down
to the headquarters of the BBC
and sat down in the parking lot so no one could leave.
After the people inside the building
figured out what was going on,
probably with help of the signs, pretty big clue,
they did send someone out to the parking lot
to address the crowd.
And they basically said,
uh, hey, Scooby-Doo's gonna be on in like 30 minutes,
so maybe go home and watch it and let us leave, please.
Now that was just to immediately resolve
the current situation.
Obviously getting Scooby-Doo back on the air full time
was gonna take a little more effort and time.
It took a bit, but in April of 1971,
Jimmy Brown received a letter from the BBC
saying that at some point, Scooby-Doo is gonna return.
They were so vague about the details,
but they just, they wanted to make sure that Jimmy knew,
which is so funny to me.
It like reads like they were scared of Jimmy.
Scooby-Doo is coming back, okay, we promise.
We just need a little bit more time.
Please don't send your army of children to our doors again.
And honestly, good, they should be scared.
The BBC aired reruns of the original 24 episodes
of Scooby-Doo, but it didn't stop there.
Legend has it, news of this protest in Scotland
found its way to CBS executives in America.
And upon hearing this news,
those executives thought to themselves,
you know, maybe this talking dog that solves mysteries
is a good idea and we should do it, we should try it again.
Give him another chance.
1972 saw the premiere of the new Scooby-Doo movies,
a series that I think is arguably more iconic
than the original, even if its name isn't.
This was the series that featured real
and fictional celebrity guest stars
like Batman and Robin, Dick Van Dyke,
and of course, the Harlem Globetrotters.
I mean, this is even the formula
that Scooby-Doo and Guess Who recreated a few years back
with the most baffling selection
of celebrities you can think of.
Y'all, they got Morgan Freeman and Joey Chestnut.
I'll take two people who until now
have never been mentioned in the same breath before
for 500, Alex, who was also in the show, RIP.
One executive said that they never forgot
about this outpouring of love for Scooby-Doo,
and I believe them.
Take a look at this episode from 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo
that happened 15 years after this protest.
The long and short of it is,
Scooby-Doo gets so frightened by a ghost
that he not only quits the mystery gang,
but he also quits the TV show that he's on,
which leads to Flim Flam and the others
trying to recast Scooby-Doo.
The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, starring Bernie Gumpshire.
Mind us.
What?
Another ghostie?
Are you ready for action, Uncle Bernie?
No.
This leads to a short montage of children specifically
being upset that Scooby-Doo is not on their TV.
Scooby's not on anymore.
I can go go in my room and stare at the ceiling.
I don't know if this was intentional,
but it feels like there's some similar beats here.
Children across America have stopped going to school,
stopped eating, yes, they've even stopped
watching television.
That is until the real Scooby-Doo returns to action.
For my money, I think these kids saved Scooby-Doo.
I really do.
But why did they care so much
about this specific cartoon dog show?
Was it because the very first episode of Scooby-Doo
declares that a British archeologist
is innocent of any crimes whatsoever,
which is incredibly charitable of British archeologists?
Probably not.
One of the child protesters, who is now an adult,
thanks to the relentless passage of time, wrote.
There wasn't a lot on for kids in those days,
but Scooby-Doo was good because I had a bit of horror
about it.
There was always a ghost that was unmasked at the end
and it was some old bloke.
It felt more real than normal cartoons.
All the kids love Scooby-Doo.
It was exciting, it was funny, it was scary.
All those elements for a kid.
And that's a sentiment that is still echoed decades later.
It offered so much more than every other cartoon.
It was so ahead of its time.
It had a story.
They worked hard to figure it out.
And it wasn't gender specific.
It wasn't a boys cartoon or a girls cartoon
or any of those things.
It was a talking dog.
Good stuff, I agree.
I think it's also worth pointing out that Shaggy, Velma,
Daphne, and Fred are all teenagers.
They were young people going around,
righting wrongs that are usually committed by older adults.
If there was any cartoon that would inspire these youngsters
and let them know that their voices matter,
of course it would be the one with famously meddling kids.
♪ Papa's got a brand new bed. ♪
Also, strikes in baseball are just as good
as strikes in bowling.
They're only bad if you're the batter.
They're great if you're the pitcher.
Maybe strikes in general are great.
Maybe strikes generally are good.
Maybe like a general strike.
I feel like I have a million goofy little Scooby-Doo videos
planned for this month.
Like Emily woke me up in the middle of the night yesterday
to let me know that Krispy Kreme
has some Scooby-Doo donuts and we gotta review them.
Look at that tasty hole.
Now I rarely do reviews of anything, let alone food,
except for the one time when I did and then the other time.
But that's sort of my point.
I'm trying to embrace this sort of novelty
with my videos from now on,
and that's exactly what I cover in my Nebula class
on how I make my videos.
Look, it came out two months ago
and I haven't had a chance to promote it at all,
so just please bear with me.
Just indulge me a little bit.
Because it was a lot of fun to make
and I think it's also very insightful and informative.
So in this class, I take you from start to finish
on my thought process for coming up with topics for videos,
pre-production, some of the gear that I use,
and the decisions that I make when I'm editing.
And at the heart of it all,
I tried to put as many systems in place as I could
to manage my ADHD.
And so for me, that means navigating the balance
between this need for structure
and the tempting allure of novelty.
That's why my videos always look different from one another
and aren't visually consistent at all.
Sometimes I buy a cheap projector from a grocery store
for no other reason than I thought it would delight me,
and it did.
And in the last video I made,
I used an anamorphic lens to get cinematic B-roll
of Scooby-Doo fruit snacks.
I don't even remember if that made it
into the final cut of the video, but I still did it.
I just like trying new things.
It's not a class on the best way to make YouTube videos.
It's a class on how I do it,
as I've been doing it for over 10 years now,
which makes me feel very old, probably because I am.
It's really fun, and it sheds light on how and why
I do the things that I do.
And there are more Nebula classes from other creators
teaching you how they make their videos as well.
But I'm gonna talk about me,
because that's, because I like me.
Saturn, the power of self-respect.
Yeah.
And even if you're not interested in my class,
there is still a chance that the donut video I mentioned
just a minute ago will probably be a Nebula exclusive.
I just don't know if I'm gonna post that one on YouTube.
And that's simply because Nebula is a place where creators
like me feel free to actually be creative
and try different things that wouldn't fit
on our YouTube channels.
For example, do you know how hard it was to track down
these legitimate bowling alley animations
and just the amount of incredible work
that people have been doing to try and preserve these?
Well, if you want to know, you can learn about exactly that
in an exclusive bonus video that I have posted to Nebula.
They're like tie-ins, remember tie-ins?
It's like when I wore a tie and I would have a bonus video.
That's like that, it's on Nebula now.
And I talk about all these classes and this bonus content,
but also you are supporting me directly
when you sign up for Nebula
through the link in the description.
Like literally a portion of your subscription
goes directly to me when you use my link
so that I can continue to pay bills and make these videos.
And genuinely, it's so helpful
and it just, it means the world to me.
So thank you to everyone who has already signed up.
If you haven't yet, like I said,
you can do so using my link, nebula.tv/nerdsync.
It will be in the description below.
It supports me directly, as I said,
and you get Nebula and Nebula classes
for 40% off of your annual subscription.
That's like $2.50 per month.
And look, I know that I don't usually make the Nebula ads
as funny and entertaining as I make the other ads.
And this one is especially long as well,
but that's because I wanna drive home the point
that I really do believe in Nebula
as a creator-owned streaming service.
I think it's really important
and it has allowed me to survive
while also being able to do things
that are creatively fulfilling.
And if you are watching this far into the ad
or listening to it while your hands are full
and you can't skip to the next video,
I wanna encourage you to just check it out.
That's all.
Again, my link is nebula.tv/nerdsync.
It will be the very first link in the description below
and you will get both Nebula and Nebula Classes
for 40% off of your annual plan,
including all my wacky bonus videos
and of course an entire class that I made
on how I make my videos.
Please, it was so much fun to make.
Please watch it.
Okay, bye-bye.
Thank you so much for watching.
I have a ton of Scooby-Doo videos
that I wanna get done this month,
so subscribe if that is something
that you're interested in.
I wanna give a huge thanks to all my patrons as well.
All of them are meddling kids of my heart.
Sparta is still here behind me.
Hasn't moved.
I forgot he was there.
But once again, my name is Scott,
reminding you to explore your favorite art
through curiosity and vulnerability.
See ya.