William Jackson

A lot of industry groups have said they support a federal law. They don't want to have to deal with 50 different state laws.

The puppet characters were combinations of people I had known and to some degree aspects of my own personality. Weird was based on someone I knew in Chicago. Dirty Dragon was based on a good friend I had in Indianapolis.

I'm not up on today's television for children, because it's mostly cartoons that don't seem to interest me.

I pitched my last children's show presentation in the mid 1980's. The era of locally produced children's shows was over and the networks were not and are not interested in children's television.

The journalism school helped me develop writing skills, and I had been enjoying cartooning from a very young age. My interest in puppetry, however, came much later.

I would not have done much differently, but I would have loved to have done everything better. The truth is, I think I was just getting warmed up when the era ended.

I have no idea how to become successful in children's tv programming today other than to say that whereever you find that rare animal being pursued, insert yourself into its environment; get in the door in any position and work from within.