Treehouse and Vampires?

The other day I had my 5yr old and 6yr old home from school in the afternoon.  They had some lunch and I put on Treehouse for them to watch while I went upstairs to put the twins down for a nap.  Next thing you know, I hear my 6yr old son screaming at his brother to change the station.  My 6yr. Old has Aspergers and I knew the sound of his screams meant something was scary. Big time scary.

I quickly ran downstairs and asked them what was going on.  Zachary was hiding in the kitchen and kept screaming at Ryley to change the station.  I looked over at the TV and saw an interview happening with Donald Sutherland it then jumped to an interview with John Carpenter, we then saw clips from the movie “Lost Boys” – Vampires and all.  I figured Ryley had switched the station so I asked him to please put it back on Treehouse.  He looked at me confused. “It is on Treehouse mommy. Look.” He pointed to the corner of the TV where sure enough was the red Treehouse symbol.

WTH? Vampires on Treehouse? Well let me assure you this interview / clips of various horror flicks displaying blood, gore, and a joker at the end laughing a creepy laugh and saying “Ha, ha I’m gonna kill you!” continued for Ten minutes!  I tried calling the Network but got a voice message (of course) so I sent an email not really expecting any response.  This was unbelievable! I could not believe what I had just seen on Treehouse!  Although Zachary had run upstairs to his room, his rocking was my indicator that, even though he only saw a few minutes of it, he was terrified.  Ryley on the other hand pretended to be a big shot and claim it didn’t scare him, however he still keeps talking about the “scary joker.”

Later that night I opened my email and surprised to see a response from Treehouse.

Dear Mrs. K.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns regarding this afternoon’s broadcast.

Be assured that the segment you viewed was never intended to air on Treehouse TV. We recognize we have a responsibility to provide a safe television environment to our young viewers and remain committed to providing high-quality programming for Canadian preschoolers.

To this end and in response to a previous incident, we recently implemented two systems to protect against inappropriate content airing on Treehouse. From our preliminary investigation of this incident, it appears there was a human error and a recent system upgrade resulted in an automated safeguard being overridden. As a result, the content in question was not rejected for broadcast as it should have been.

Moving forward, in addition to the current protocols, we’ve implemented an additional safeguard as a precautionary measure and the Treehouse programming schedule will now be manually reviewed by two distinct departments before the signal goes to air.

We apologize for this error and can assure you that we are dedicated to improving our service and value your continued viewership.

Sincerely,

Treehouse Viewer Relations Department

Well what do you think of that?  Have you had a similar experience?

Until next time,

Chantel momof8crazymonkeys