Paramount Takes Down Ninja Turtle Intros

So I hear that yesterday Nickelodeon announced that, probably to help promote their new Ninja Turtle movie, Mutant Mayhem, they were going to air the original cartoon…which I think will hurt them if anyone compares the original show to the released clips of Seth Rogan’s take on the Turtles showing more interest in talent shows than fighting evil ninja. Fine, whatever, it’s why I just started an article series going over the Ninja Turtle intros, to get in on the hype and draw out a few readers.

Well, with this news I decided to get the second installment of the Many, MANY Intros Of Ninja Turtles out, which will focus on the Japanese OVAs. That’s going to be a trip, folks. While looking back into the first article, partly because I wanted to add something to the part about the “red sky” years I forgot to mention, the new villain, when I see the video replaced with this notation:

Video unavailable

This video contains content from Paramount Global (PMN), who has blocked it in your country on copywrite grounds.

The odd thing is, as of this writing the UK version is still up. Now I was under the impression from the announcement I read that they were only licensing the original show. I’ve never seen it show up on the Pluto TV Turtles channel, though both of their shows and the 2003 series have made appearances. The original cartoon and Next Mutation have not appeared there, but it depends on what Mirage Studios owns that Nickelodeon purchased and of course their own shows, the CG series and Rise Of The TMNT. I could see blocking whole shows…but the intros? The hell?

Do they have the legal right to do so? Honestly I don’t know. Like I just said I haven’t seen it on Pluto TV and I don’t know who actually owns the original show. If not Eastman & Laird, and thus would be part of what they sold to Nickelodeon (Paramount is the parent company but it’s always said that Nickelodeon was the new owners of the Ninja Turtle franchise), then possibly whomever owns Fred Wolf Productions or maybe it was Playmates, since the show was meant to sell their toys rather than the comics.

It’s just weird that they would go after show intros. A full episode post or even clips I could understand. This would seem to be a bad time to block clips due to websites running to use them to discuss Nick airing the old show, thus adding to the promotion that it’s coming out, which is supposed to help the nostalgic to get excited for the movie despite previous Ninja Turtle movies. Even then, if they were going to put clips up on their official YouTube channel they might still be dumb enough to get them off everyone else’s channels, even if they aren’t going to use that clip.

Intros are another thing. Yes, if they have the full rights to the original show they have the authority to do that, but I can find shows from more litigious networks and movie studios who don’t go after show intros. The BBC still allows channels to use Doctor Who clips and intros. I haven’t heard of CBS (back when Viacom and Paramount were semi-separate companies and all the Star Trek licencing nonsens was going on) going after Star Trek show intros and they’ll go after fan productions and reviews. Just ask SF Debris or anyone that ever made a Star Trek fan film. I even wrote about their fight with fan films when Axanar went too far in CBS’s opinion. And yet I had no problem doing a “Many, MANY Intros Of Star Trek”, certainly not DAYS after posting the first installment!

This is extremely annoying and outside of the next installment, and I’m surprised JAPAN hasn’t blocked the intros I need because they’re worse than Paramount, I don’t know if I can trust anything staying up. I just re-did all the original show Turtle intros but if they do this again I’m going to have to find a WordPress-approved host who isn’t being hit by this so those posters kind enough to tweak our intro nostalgia aren’t getting their videos country-blocked or straight up pulled down. In this case it’s the former but I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter follows. So instead of an article discussing Ninja Turtles before their big movie I have to write this piece to tell them they’re idiots for shooting themselves in the foot. History has shown this doesn’t make the fans you’re presumably courting by airing the original series happy. Ask gamers about their game footage being pulled down by Nintendo, or how the Star Trek fandom reacted to CBS’s rules of making a fan film. It’s just the introduction, not a full episode, and these make people happy to relive. They’ll be used in articles promoting the old show airing on your network, thus boosting your ratings. Right now I’m not so inclined to link to your YouTube channel or discuss the series beyond the article you just made me spend time working on.

Go after full episode postings, even in parts, because its your right to do so and legal options already exist for the original show even without the Paramount+ and Nickelodeon postings. The clips I think you should leave alone but if you really must prepare for fallout from every nostalgia site and channel that uses them. Going after the intros, and maybe also the clips, is rather silly and will make it HARDER to promote your airing and reduce your ratings. If that’s what you want, fine. Ruin your own project. That’s on you. I’m going to find some way to finish this article series not for your sake but for those who are interested in the topic, which happens to include myself. I think you’re making a mistake, and hopefully you’ll fix it while the video is still up.

For any of you overseas readers, are you seeing anything here? I’m curious what countries aren’t being blocked or if they do indeed restore it. Next time…Japan!