Steve "Rizzo" Whitmire was already fired/"departed" from the company for being too vocal about the mistakes the Disney movies and the misfired ABC series were making in trying to appeal to an "edgy, adult" baby-boomer humor, and losing the innocence of their family appeal.
And while Frank's been away for a while, he still stays vocal about what the new owners are doing that the old owners knew enough not to do. When he says that the new producers don't get the, quote, "rebellion" of the old classic Muppets, he may be the only experienced vet still around to know what that means.
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One factor--coming from a strange enough place--that might reflect the mentality that went into Jason Segel's Disney-Muppet movie, and the whole "Swedish Chef sings Nirvana" YouTube promotion of pairing the Muppets with old culty pop-references, may have been explained if you've watched Netflix's recent "MST3K: the Return" revival: Classic 70's Muppet Show pop-cultural references are
all freakin' over the series, at least a dozen per episode.
Partly it may have to do with in-jokes about doing a "puppet show" in the 10's, but I think there's another factor at play--Ask Millennials to say what was wrong with 70's TV, and you'll hear dozens of kitschy references to "their parents' days" of Charlie's Angels or Fonzie jumping the shark, etc...But ask them what was
good about 70's TV, and they don't know enough to name Carol Burnett, or Mary Tyler Moore, or MASH, they name only
one thing. Kermit the Frog is no longer the symbol of a show or a franchise, he's become the symbol of a DECADE, on those rare occasions when you don't want to say anything bad about it. Apart from Star Wars, of course, or that one time the Star Wars characters showed up on the Muppet Show.
And why is the "one good show" of the decade remembered? Well, A) if you were alive in the 70's, it was the only thing you were probably old enough to remember watching besides cartoons, and B) if you
weren't alive in the 70's, you didn't grow up watching the Kojak Christmas Carol on DVD every year.
That's probably why half the jokes of Segel's first Disney-Muppet movie--that the ABC series took its lead from--were about the Muppets as "Glorious icons from the 70's!...They're coming BACK, so that we can enjoy them as ADULTS!"
And why most of the real former and current Muppet performers were not happy and very vocal about the original script treating the characters like kitschy cultural relics that had been on the skids for thirty years.
), and Disney has the character rights, if not the video rights--
)
