Chicken kicks Barmey's butt, dino takes the case to court

Insight on the News, March 9, 1998 by K.L. Billingsley

Dinosaur vs. Bird is an unfair fight, according to the `Famous Chicken,' the sports mascot who in his ad parodies Barney the dinosaur. It seems the chicken takes the stuffing out of Barney on the field.

The creators of Barney the dinosaur are crying fowl play, suing the "Famous Chicken" (formerly known as the San Diego Chicken) for pummeling a Barneylike character at major sporting events across the nation.

Barney's handlers, the for-profit Lyons Partnership, are suing Ted Giannoulas, the man inside the chicken suit, seeking to stop his act and demanding $100,000 in damages each time he manhandles the purple dino.

"He has been assaulting the Barney look-alike characters and we asked him to stop," says Kelly Lane, a spokeswoman for the Lyons Partnership. "Barney is a peaceful character, loved by young children who were horrified to see him beaten up...They think it is Barney."

In a short routine, the Famous Chicken and Barney engage in a dance contest, which the dinosaur wins. The jealous chicken engages him in a slap fight, then tackles the big reptile. "When I first started doing it, it took me aback," says Giannoulas. "People stood and booed [Barney] when it made its appearance."

Giannoulas attributes the booing to the commercialism associated with Barney. The star of the long-running children's program on the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, has become a multimillion-dollar industry. "On the surface it's a nice idea, but it suddenly extrapolated into a high-pressure commercial venture with pajamas, bed sheets, wallpaper, toys," says Giannoulas.

The Lyons Partnership will not reveal revenue from Barney spinoffs (Lawrence Jarvik, author of PBS: Behind the Screen, estimated that Barney was worth $500 million in 1992), but the group claims to have suffered financial loss due to the Famous Chicken's act. Giannoulas hopes to force the company to open its books.

"This is a frivolous and unfortunate lawsuit," says Ken Fitzgerald, attorney for the chicken. "A little slapstick comedy has not hurt revenues of this company." Congressional critics of PBS also charge the purple dinosaur has become a cash cow for private owners who owe their profits to exposure on a network funded by taxpayers.

So far, Giannoulas has ignored letters from Lyons Partnership lawyers demanding that he stop the act, claiming the dispute is a First Amendment issue. "I see this as a struggle for parody, for freedom of speech," says Giannoulas, who was hit with the lawsuit last October. "Do I have the right to do this joke in this country? That's the issue."

Fitzgerald also argues that his client "has an absolute right, protected by the First Amendment, of parody and satire." But he also calls the legal action against the Famous Chicken "an ill-advised attempt to suppress his rights and livelihood by a company that doesn't seem to have a sense of humor."

Many other entertainers, including late-night TV talk-show host Conan O'Brien, the cast of Saturday Night Live and MTV cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-head have parodied Barney, but so far only the Famous Chicken has been the focus of a lawsuit. "We have a good sense of humor when it comes to spoofs, but much of the time for adult audiences," says Lane. "They have the right to parody our character. But Giannoulas' performance scares children. That's where the line is drawn for us."

The chicken has parodied late sportscaster Howard Cosell, the Energizer Bunny, Gumby, Inspector Clouseau and rapper Vanilla Ice as well as Barney. The mascot's defenders also like to point out that a movie, Barney's Great Adventure, is scheduled to open in April.