damn, that's honestly indistinguishable from a parody bit you'd see during adult swim or something. was interested enough to check its wikipedia page, and there's this very funny passage:

"Little Clowns was unsuccessful in boosting ABC's ratings. ABC children's programming vice president Squire Rushnell blamed the recently introduced people meter for the show's failure, noting that young children had neither the dexterity nor the interest to operate the device, and thus any program aimed at young children as Little Clowns was would be doomed to ratings failure."

yeah i'm sure that was the issue, buddy