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(Spun off from here because I thought we'd still get notified with E-mails containing the message -- something I'm going to miss. Mostly copy & paste from my previous post.)
For the longest time, the Muppet Babies page listed December 29, 1990 as the series' final air date, and "Episode 808: Eight Flags Over the Nursery" still reflects that.
In this edit from December 2014, Ramon changed it to November 2, 1991, and I don't know of it just went unchecked ever since. But as we now have different dates in different places (for example, our top menu lists the new date under The Muppets > Episodes > Muppet Babies (1984-1991)), I was wondering if some of our later episode pages are off, if the 1991 date is wrong, or wherein the problem lies exactly.
Any ideas? —Julian 
(talk) 11:30, September 1, 2020 (UTC)
- That's a good question. December 29, 1990 has been there since June 2006 when we originally filled out those guides. I want to say we were going by what tv.com was using, but I'm not sure. They still have that date.
- Ramon's edit summary explains that the copyright tag at the end of the episode is listed as 1991, but I don't know where he got November 2 from. It's possible he was going by a copy of the episode captured from syndication or possibly the version included on the "Let's Build" VHS release.
- Newspapers.com wasn't helpful (it's very uncommon to find episode titles there) and neither was henson.com which doesn't list any dates.
- I might have a document at home I can check, so I'll set a reminder for myself. —Scott (talk) 11:53, September 1, 2020 (UTC)
- CBS was still *airing* Muppet Babies as a slot for the 1991-1992 season. But the specific matching, and whether there were any episodes at all that season, are hard to determine, but the "one episode held over by a year" seems darn unlikely (and we've had to warn editors in the past to be careful with copyright date assumptions). One thing confirmed, it was back to a half hour slot (the previous season was still an hour) which makes rerun cycling even more likely and also could clarify the 1991 thing since as Scott and I have found, often that hour bundle meant joint credits. It could be either the VHS thing or even a 1991 copyright tag just because that's when it debuted as its own half hour. In fact, the season 6 and 7 half hours (and probably further back) *have* no copyright date, but all of the half hour season 8 credits have 1991 under... a changed Marvel Productions logo which previously said "A New World Company." Now it no longer says that and there's an MCXI Jim Henson Productions notice there (and not under the actual Jim Henson Productions logo that follows). So right now the best evidence is just that 1991 is when they changed the logo! -- Andrew
02:44, September 2, 2020 (UTC)
- CBS was still *airing* Muppet Babies as a slot for the 1991-1992 season. But the specific matching, and whether there were any episodes at all that season, are hard to determine, but the "one episode held over by a year" seems darn unlikely (and we've had to warn editors in the past to be careful with copyright date assumptions). One thing confirmed, it was back to a half hour slot (the previous season was still an hour) which makes rerun cycling even more likely and also could clarify the 1991 thing since as Scott and I have found, often that hour bundle meant joint credits. It could be either the VHS thing or even a 1991 copyright tag just because that's when it debuted as its own half hour. In fact, the season 6 and 7 half hours (and probably further back) *have* no copyright date, but all of the half hour season 8 credits have 1991 under... a changed Marvel Productions logo which previously said "A New World Company." Now it no longer says that and there's an MCXI Jim Henson Productions notice there (and not under the actual Jim Henson Productions logo that follows). So right now the best evidence is just that 1991 is when they changed the logo! -- Andrew
- For example, a circulating copy of stand alone "Eight Flags Over the Nursery" with CBS stuff attached has the voice-over where Garfield plugs his pal Grimmy as being next... which only applied to the Spring 1992 period when it replaced Riders in the Sky. So that one's a rerun regardless (we might have to try to hunt down mixed credits if they even exist for the later hour packages to narrow this down, but there's definitely no evidence I can find for November 2 1991). The hour slots typically mixed an older rerun, so those credits might actually be on an earlier episode instead. -- Andrew
02:54, September 2, 2020 (UTC)
- For example, a circulating copy of stand alone "Eight Flags Over the Nursery" with CBS stuff attached has the voice-over where Garfield plugs his pal Grimmy as being next... which only applied to the Spring 1992 period when it replaced Riders in the Sky. So that one's a rerun regardless (we might have to try to hunt down mixed credits if they even exist for the later hour packages to narrow this down, but there's definitely no evidence I can find for November 2 1991). The hour slots typically mixed an older rerun, so those credits might actually be on an earlier episode instead. -- Andrew
- And then again, our dates could be more off than we thought (and looking closer, I do see copyright dates on the title cards as well, 1990 for season 7, 1991 for season 8). When we renumbered long ago, I'm not sure we looked at any of the dates. But Episode 701: It's Only Pretendo is listed as debuting December 02, 1989... and the last episode of season 6, Episode 611: Goosetown Babies, airing the previous week. That doesn't make much sense for a network Saturday morning show of the time, that two seasons ran the same year? Even in an hour package. -- Andrew 03:08, September 2, 2020 (UTC)
- And then again, our dates could be more off than we thought (and looking closer, I do see copyright dates on the title cards as well, 1990 for season 7, 1991 for season 8). When we renumbered long ago, I'm not sure we looked at any of the dates. But Episode 701: It's Only Pretendo is listed as debuting December 02, 1989... and the last episode of season 6, Episode 611: Goosetown Babies, airing the previous week. That doesn't make much sense for a network Saturday morning show of the time, that two seasons ran the same year? Even in an hour package. -- Andrew
- As Julian pointed out, the top menu uses the 1991 date under The Muppets > Episodes > Muppet Babies (1984-1991)... perhaps we just drop the end date there (regardless of if we pin down the actual ending year). Elsewhere we just use the start date. We don't list them as "The Muppets (2015-2016)" or as "Muppet Babies (2018-2020)" or "Muppet Babies (2018-present)" on the same menu. -- Brad D. (talk) 13:56, September 2, 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Brad and Scott, yes, I was definitely hoping for the small navbar change. And Andrew, that is a lot of great detective work! Ultimately though, it all means that we've got nothing conclusive so far, and that the dates we provide are likely incorrect, correct? Should we asterisk that somewhere? And which specific episode dates are in question with certainty (can we pinpoint where we veered off)? Scott, were you able to look for said document yet? —Julian (talk) 23:18, September 14, 2020 (UTC)
- Heya. I was able to find the document, but it turns out it was only production numbers, which we've used here before. I'm afraid we'll have to keep looking for actual airdates. —Scott (talk) 00:00, September 15, 2020 (UTC)
- A decade ago I downloaded a torrent of tvrips and took note of the fact that every episode from "Nice to Have Gnome You" onward was taken from the half hour version of the show, while all the season 7 episodes from before that point were taken from the hour-long version, evident from the fact that they all had the alternate Go Bye-Bye segments that were altered to say "we'll be right back." This does seem to imply that 8 new episodes premiered during the 1991-92 season. Checking the U.S. copyright database for publication dates might help too, I remember the Alvin and the Chipmunks wiki used it to determine which of the Murakami-Wolf-Swenson episodes intended for first-run syndication premiered on NBC when production of the DiC episodes got delayed.FraggleFan (talk) 11:39, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
[1] Here is the copyright record for "Nice to Have Gnome You", which gives a publication date of 10-12-1991. Someone with more time on their hands should look through this database, but here's the record for "It's Only Pretendo" giving a publication date of 9-15-1990: [2] --FraggleFan (talk) 00:12, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Good work! "It's Only Pretendo" checks out, as the first of that season, since checking records of other CBS Saturday morning shows confirms that September 15, 1990 is when the new season premiered (and that makes more sense than somehow a new season happening in the middle). So that's one verified and thus suggests that the copyright records are indeed using the air dates as publication dates (for some things, it's just when somebody registered them). -- Andrew 23:15, 6 April 2021 (UTC)