Talk:After school special

Not synonymous

"Afterschool Special" was a term specific to the ABC network's programming geared toward adolescents that was broadcast in the late afternoon, It's too much of a stretch to call the other networks' programs by ABC's name.

But the term has entered the public usage as a generic category of shows like this. As a result, it's probably best to note the generic term, while also making it clear that ABC originated it. Seeing as ABC isn't producing the shows anymore, I doubt they have a particularly strong claim to the word as a trademark. Gus andrews (talk) 22:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

This article may be necessary to discuss the generic term, but The ABC Afterschool Special is significant enough to warrant its own article. It ran for over 23 years with scores of episodes and hundreds of stars. I intend to work on a separate article as time permits. JimVC3 (talk) 04:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. There could be a specific ABC Afterschool Special article, with all relevant material from this article moved to the new one, and this one could simply be about the generic term. Keep us posted on what you're working on. Radiopathy (talk) 02:51, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've just created a separate page for the ABC series here. I agreed with your comment, Radiopathy, and titled it as you suggested. There are a number of issues with the new article, but I'll use that article's discussion page to comment. The next task will be to correct about 100 links and redirects that point here when they now should point to the specific ABC show. I'll work on that as well. I think this current article is now redundant, but editing it is my lowest priority. However, I've lowered the importance rating. JimVC3 (talk) 02:41, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Reconsideration and Proposed Changes

After spending the four days correcting links to the new ABC Afterschool Special article, I've changed my observation that the current article is redundant. A number of other articles on the web and in WP do in fact discuss the "after school special" as a social phenomenon. I've changed the importance rating back to mid-range. But this article could be improved to better present information. At minimum, I'd recommend the following changes:

• An opening paragraph that discusses the term more extensively.
• Developing one list of the shows that may fall in this category and then cleaning up the See Also section.
• Deleting the episode list. The ABC show alone had over 150 episodes, with little criteria for selecting which ones should be listed here.

If there are no objections, I will try to do some of this as time permits. JimVC3 (talk) 23:28, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Um, well, OK. You might want to discuss the generic term in this article. I still maintain that only ABC TV really has the rights to that term, but I understand its general usage and feel that it needs to be acknowledged. Radiopathy •talk• 00:51, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

This was not a good idea; I propose merging the contents of this article with the ABC Afterschool Special article and deleting this one. After School Special is ABCs term, and should not be used in a generic sense. Radiopathy •talk• 02:04, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Is this why the hatnote ("This article is about the genre of children's television programming") contradicts the body (a list of ABC specials)? —Tamfang (talk) 01:12, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

I noticed the same thing. I'm removing the list of ABC specials, as it is duplicated in the separate article about ABC specials. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:04, 28 June 2010 (UTC)