Trivia / The Jim Henson Hour

• Artist Disillusionment: The failure of this show, then the latest in a string of flops including The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, combined with the stress of managing his own production companies, keeping an eagle eye on quality control and issues in his personal life (he had separated from his wife a few years prior), left Jim Henson seriously burned out in its aftermath. The result was him nearly selling the Muppets franchise to Disney so he could focus solely on creating and performing, which only didn't go through because he died during the negotiations.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • Reference books on television shows (such as The Complete Directory of Prime Time and Cable TV Shows and Total Television) give the impression that all episodes had MuppeTelevision as the first half hour and The Storyteller as the second half, ignoring the fact that three episodes had a stand-alone special as the second half and some episodes were a single hour-long special.
  • The description in The Complete Directory of Prime Time and Cable TV Shows mentions Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear as if they are part of the main cast, when each only appear in a handful of episodes.
• Executive Meddling: Henson's original concept was a Wheel Program that would rotate each week through one of four different elements: The Storyteller; what eventually became MuppeTelevision; a series of storybook adaptations (in the vein of Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas ); then a wildcard series of one-off specials. NBC execs insisted people wouldn't have the attention span for this and made him put bits and pieces from everything in each episode, resulting in a chaotic mess that earned scorn from TV critics and brought in lower ratings every week.
• In Memoriam: The Sesame Street: 20 Years.....And Still Counting! episode is dedicated to the late Sesame Street composer, Joe Raposo.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: When The Walt Disney Company purchased the Muppets in 2004, it included the rights to the MuppeTelevision half-hours and the specials Miss Piggy's Hollywood and The Secrets of the Muppets, while The Jim Henson Company retains the rights to the rest of the show. A DVD release of the series as it originally aired is unlikely because of this (not helped by the fact that Miss Piggy's Hollywood features a segment set at Universal Studios Hollywood). However, bits and pieces of the Henson Company-owned material have made it to the home market: The Storyteller via Sony and The Song of the Cloud Forest and Dog City via Lionsgate.
• The Other Darrin: Jim Henson briefly replaced Steve Whitmire as Waldo C. Graphic in the episode "Secrets of the Muppets" for the purpose of demonstrating the technology used to create the character.
• Screwed by the Network: NBC first scheduled the show on Fridays at 8 p.m., against ABC's popular family sitcom block, and then moved it to Sundays at 7 p.m., against CBS's juggernaut 60 Minutes, which only made the ratings sink even further.
• What Could Have Been: The project began as 1987's Inner Tube, a show that would've been a parody of the No Budget content endemic to cable TV at the time; two technicians ran the Inner Tube satellite system from out of their electronics shop, and dealt with various issues, including a pre-Beakman's World Paul Zaloom as an anti-technology video pirate and a punk named Crasher who liked to crash through things, including people's TVs. The setup was also intended for a weekly guest star to get sucked into the Inner Tube system and find their way out by going through the various crappy shows (ala Amazon Women on the Moon). Nobody showed interest and the concept, redubbed "Lead-Free TV", became a part of the 1988 Jim Henson Hour pitch, and ultimately became the MuppeTelevision segments.

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