The Friends of Kenny

Kenny Kidna's 'Good Night' is Too Short

The Complaint

It's been bugging me for too long. When Kenny Kidna sings good night to me from Channel 10 Perth, it's Just Not Right.

There used to be a cute song which described Kenny's friends and sent the kids off to bed properly. Nowadays, it's been cut short, so that it's just an afterthought before the news updates.

Kenny deserves better.

Lyrics:

Lyrics and Music; Ken Walther


(spoken)
Oh, no, Redmond!
Time for little 'kidnas to go to bed: Gotta go!

Goodnight, Emily and Wal!
(Goodnight, Kenny!)

(sung)
Goodnight Captain Possum, Kookaburra, Kangaroo   << This is the 'missing verse'
Goodnight Young Kenny
And Goodnight to You

Goodnight Patsy Possum
Christie, Connie and Kevin, too
Goodnight Young Kenny
And Goodnight to you

Gotta get to bed, rest my weary head
Gotta brush my teeth, and there's prayers to be said
Put away the toys in the old toy box
Bring in the cat, snap on the locks

(spoken)
The sun's going down in ten seconds!
One two three four five six seven eight nine... (yawn)

Now, this is all done from memory, so any help recreating the lyrics from the days before members of the 'Kangaroo Creek Gang' were inserted into the song would be appreciated. I remember that another significant change in the latest version was that the old version referred to 'putting *out* the cat'.

The problem is; there's a key change between the 'Captain Possum' and 'Patsy Possum' bit. Once you edit out the first part, the change just sounds odd.

Found a copy of Kenny's guest spot with The Notorious KCG : 'Kid-en-ya'. You can order it here, apparently.

UPDATE: 10:39 AM Saturday, 22 March 2008: Looks like the Kangaroo Creek Gang Website has pulled up the shutters. Not much going on there.

Updates

April 9, 2002

Caleb raised a significant point last night... while observing that Kenny was scurrying off to bed while the sun was going *down*, he asked why, seeing as echidnas are *nocturnal* (and should be going to bed when the sun comes *up*).

Horrified, I turned to the net.

Apparrently, britannica.com is charging for content these days; so no help there.

GeoZoo reports that echidnas are both nocturnal (out at night) and diurnal (out during the day).

Monotreme Extreme records that 'folklore' suggests that echidnas are nocturnal, but they are seen during the day; it depends on the amount of heat and treats.

Sydney Wildlife sums it up by observing that echidnas are 'mostly nocturnal'.

So, we've exposed the myth that echidnas never go to bed with the sun, but it poses the question; if Kenny is 'mostly' nocturnal, is he the best role model for getting children to go to bed at night?

April 9, 2002

An interesting sequence of events in play today; I thought I'd go through it chronologically, rather than interpret it in one big hit.

While doing my regular search for new content on Kenny on the Web, I realised that the Kangaroo Creek Gang website had been updated, and that there were a load of imposters on the site (you'll remember that Kenny names a few of the members of the Kangaroo Creek Gang as part of the 'newest' version of the Good Night song). But the imposters had the *same names* as the old characters - Emily, Wal, Christie, etc... It's a brand new change; 'Branko' had posted a message on the site this morning welcoming us all to their redesigned site. This is hot off the presses, folks! (a few pages are still in construction and there are a few broken graphics here and there... I guess Branko is still working on it)

Then, I noticed that Southern Star - the Media company - had a credit on the site. I remember that there was some talk about the KCG getting its own cartoon series on the old site, and sure enough, there's a link to an 'Episodes' page (still under construction). So, we can guess that the characters have been redesigned to make them more up-to-date for a new cartoon series. But heck; they're whole new creatures. (I think I like the new ones better, for what it's worth.) I guess they're trying to detach themselves from the old cartoons; certainly no kids will recognise them in the new series. It's sort of like re-casting 'The Bill' with the cast of 'Friends'.

Then it hit me; something *has* to happen to the Good Night Song. Kenny is cavorting with the members of the *old* Kangaroo Creek Gang. If they've all been updated, then the Good Night Song is going to look very dated, very quickly (let's pretend that it wasn't already looking like that).

The Channel Ten website (another new website updated in the last week) makes no mention of Kenny, so I decided to go to the source: call Channel Ten Perth. I spoke about the 'Friends of Kenny' effort with Paula in Publicity, who sounded a little surprised that anyone was interested in this sort of thing, especially seeing as I have nothing to do with the media these days (even though she did pick up from my voice that I used to be in radio). I told her about the new characters and what that might mean for the Good Night Song.

(Side Note: is it just me, or is there an inordinately high number of people called 'Paula' in Public Relations positions?)

Paula told me that there had been some 'discussions' about Kenny separately to this, so I guess there was something underway even before I called, but I guess the 'new gang' is going to force the issue a little. She told me that she'd pass on my concerns and the information to the General Manager.

To be fair, I had started the petition and the Friends of Kenny without contacting Channel Ten, so it was good to be 'out in the open' with the effort, and to see that Channel Ten was genuinely interested in doing something about it. I'd assumed Kenny was sort of a side issue these days, seeing as Channel Ten seems to be finding ways of moving its operations into the Eastern States, but there's still a local number, Kenny's still on at 7:30pm, and someone is happy to escalate issues about him to the General manager. Good on Channel Ten.

I hung up and did a little more surfing on the new KCG site, and noticed something new. *Channel Nine* now has a link on the left hand side. This makes things a little more interesting; Channel Ten has the old Gang, and now Channel Nine, thought its relationship with Southern Star, sounds like it'll be showing the new cartoon series. I assumed (correctly) that Paula would be interested to get a followup phonecall about this development.

So, if it weren't a pressing issue for Channel Ten to take a fresh look at the Kenny Good Night song now that the rest of the Gang have had plastic surgery, the fact that the Gang have moved over to a competitive TV station should make things a little more urgent. Looks like the petition might be irrelevant!

That's as much info as I have at the moment. I'll post as new info comes to hand.

April 11, 2002

I've found some interesting information about the new series on the Souther Star website (here); the series is pretty serious:

• There'll be 26 episodes of 12 minutes each
• It's $4 million worth
• 100 people working on it (40 Australians)
• Channel Nine has it
• Kris Noble has a hand in it (Nine's head of drama)
• Shanghai Animation Studios (China) will draw the pictures - (another Chinese/Australian co-production like Magic Mountain?)

January 17, 2003

It appears the old petition was deleted from the computer which was hosting it for me.