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The Disappearance of Saturday Morning
Ant writes "Saturday morning no longer means kids in front of TV sets across the country, glued to the latest in hip cartoons. Why? Gerard Raiti investigates the death of an era." As a former Saturday morning TV addict, this doesn't seem like a bad thing to me.
Children have more to do these days on a staurday mornng....like go look at porn on the internet...download illegal moveis off irc, ddos amazon.com...or the favoriate american passtime...crack cocaine!
Then agian, some kids just sleep in
Yeah, same here. FoxBox and WB Kids for me. Call me childish if you want, but enjoying cartoons will keep a part of me forever young. Too many people try to grow up too fast these days, throwing away their childhood in exchange of a stressed adulthood...sad isnt it?
I remember, as a child of the late 80s, every saturday morning watching Ghost Busters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, reruns of Transformers, Thundercats, even the old tapes of He-Man. It seems rather depressing that kids these days are not exposed to such entertaining shows. Although, when you look at the popular shows, maybe kids these days just don't have any taste. Who would rather watch Pokemon and Hey Arnold than Transformers or Voltron? I truly believe that my saturday morning cartoon experience shaped me in many ways, one of which being my love for artistic anime. I wonder how the shows nowadays that kids watch will shape them?
[...pre article reading rant...]
Maybe it was just the time I grew up in, but the good shows aren't on anymore.
(And by the good shows I mean Rocco's Modern Life, Garfield and Friends, and other such shows that were a satire of current popular and political views [hey, maybe I was an overly smart nerd as a young'un too].)
Nowadays, the stuff on TV just isn't attractive. Not on Saturday mornings, afternoons, or even nighttime (except for toonami midnight run, which is pretty old stuff anyway). It seems as though there is less and less of a reason to watch TV at all anymore. The only things recently that I've even remembered the show times for were 24 (the drama that takes place one hour per episode) and Trigun (toonami).
Maybe it's just me, but TV doesn't hold my attention enough for me to keep watching it.
[...reading atricle...]
Ok it says the internet is a major factor in the decline of TV viewing. They have me on that point (damn you slashdot). Also, I forgot to take into account the whole "job" thing with the working or sleeping through the mornings.
[...last attempt at being right the first time around...]
Meh, I still think if they put something on that captivated me enough I would make time to watch it.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
I wish I had something witty to say, or perhaps insightful, but I don't ...
Anyway, this really does seem like the end of an era to me. Admittedly I was a Saturday morning cartoon addict. I liked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Inspector Gadget, and all those other great cartoons of those days. What happened? This article attempts to explain what, but I just don't buy it. I don't think that there has been a lack of quality television programming these days. I just think that kids are getting involved in something more immersive - for better or worse - that is taking them away from cartoons and thus drying up the market.
What am I talking about? Videogames! In my youth the SNES was the coolest videogame system anyone I knew had. It was also very expensive. I remember how we all congregated at the house of the one kid in my neighborhood who owned it to play Street Fighter. But that wasn't Saturday morning - that was weekdays, after school.
Nowadays, however, videogame systems are cheap and prevalent. Heck, my SIX YEAR OLD nephew has a PlayStation and a GameBoy Advance. I would estimate he plays games at least two hours a day. That's time he probably would've spent watching TV anyway. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? All I know is, kids these days are getting exposed to videogames very early on in life.
I was babysitting my cousin recently. We were playing Gauntlet: Dark Legacy together on my PS2. I thought he would suck. I was wrong. He wasn't amazingly good, but he's better than my father. This, from a kid who can't really even read! The kids these days, they're just intuitively "getting" videogames. My dad sucks at action games. He's very good at strategy games though. And this new generation, for better or worse, is highly trained in electronics.
I suppose the electronizing of our nation's youth is a good thing. That's the way the future's headed. I just feel sad, though, that the closest thing they'll experience to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the cheap knock-off games for GameBoy whose sole good quality is the license they obtained. The cartoons, even though non-interactive, were at least better.
Any thoughts?
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
"As a former Saturday morning TV addict, this doesn't seem like a bad thing to me."
:)
:)
You're not a parent, are you?
Seriously. I never used the TV as a babysitter but the Glass Teat did have it's use on Saturday morning. After putting in an 80 hour, five day week an extra few hours to sleep on that one critical day was, well, critical. The Saturday morning cartoons were something for my little sweetie to do instead of prying my eyelids up and asking me to entertain her at six in the morning. And I didn't have to worry about what she might be watching because I *knew* what was on, on every channel ( we didn't have quite so many of them in those days).
In times when I wasn't working quite so hard, or at all, we'd watch Danger Mouse together every afternoon, then go out and play, and read books after dinner and most Saturday mornings would find us in the car going somewhere neat.
But in those times when I was working that hard Saturday morning cartoons were a gift from God and the only thing that kept me alive, and sane. Probably kept her alive too.
KFG
thats because what you said is so true
/me goes to search for another beer
cartoons nowadays are crap
unoriginal and just plain unentertaning.
truly, nothing beats the merry melodies of times gone by.
and what memories they are. sure they wre violent, but everyone laughed then, everyone knwe they were jokes.
no we have tv, movies, and NEWS conveying violence to kids that is just so much more believeable and true to life.
and people blame the games and cartoons.
have you turned on the tv lately? notice how much violence and gore is glorified? no wonder we have such fucked up kids today - we plaster the most dsiturbing incidents right on the front page.
go ahead, ask yourself hwo is truly to blame.
and damn did i get way off topic
I'm currently in the habbit of downloading politically incorrect cartoons off of Gnutella...
Most WWII ones have politically incorrect Japanese or German characters. In other words, they are damn funny, and P2P is really the only way to get them these days.
Unfortunately, it seems that banned-cartoon afficionados never heard of MPEG4, so most are 100+MB MPEG1/2 files and on slow hosts. The quality often leaves something to be desired.
Anyhow, classic cartoons are still aired on Cartoon Network... Not as much as I think they should be, but if you've got a Tivo, you could accumulate quite a few just setting it to record the Chuck Jones/Tex Avery 30min shows. Rip 'em to Divx and pass 'em around on CD and the Internet for the less fortunate.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Saturday morning used to rock when I was a kid. Now they suck. Cartoons are too PC these days. I miss the violence (Road Runner) and cigarette smoking (Bugs Bunny.) Not for the sake of those things alone, just the fact that they could make the shows the way they wanted without being scared to offend someone.
Several years ago? What the hell do you think G.I. Joe and Transformers were, if not an advertising campaign for toys? Johnny Quest and Roadrunner don't suck for the reason that they existed before the 1980s.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Basically, a few reasons: internet, soccer, declining profit incentive for networks.
(can't read other three pages:(
This is not necessarily a good thing, despite what timothy implies. One of the reasons cited for the decline is parents having to 'fill' the time. Why are they doing that? Divorce. Each parent is trying to make up for only having half time with their kids. For some reason, other parents feel that Johnny and Susie have to be in soccer (scouts, swimming, etc.) as well. Having overly complicated lives is something that adults can barely cope with without the use of alcohol, Prozac, and other drugs. Why should we expect 8 year olds to be able to cope?
Oh, they're going to learn socialization skills. Bull. Did everyone forget 'Lord of the Flies'? Those are the type of socialization skills kids learn when left to their own devices. What's wrong with a bit of leisure on the weekends, particularly for children? 'All work and no play...'
So let them play outside, whether it's ball, gardening (some kids dig it, no pun intended), or whatever. But why not wake up Saturday morning and decide what to do? That's fine, for the more temperate months. But in the depths of summer, hiding out in the basement is a good thing. In the winter, sitting in front of the fire isn't bad. But what to do?
Read? That's nice, but do you *always* feel like reading? No. Look at the number of people already who have lamented the loss of classic WB cartoons. There's something there. It's simple entertainment. What's wrong with that?
Internet? It's just as non-interactive as the TV.
Video Games? Not sure how this is a better use of time. Perhaps timothy can fill us in? (Note, I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's no better than TV.)
The death of Saturday morning cartoons is not something to necessarily cheer about. Look at the causes ('non-traditional' families, turning kids into little adults) and lament the occurence.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I hate to say it, since it'll date me as a crotchety old guy, but the Golden Age for me of Saturday morning cartoons was the short period (in 1978 or '79, not sure which) when the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show went for three hours (9:00am to noon). There have always been bad designed-for-Saturday-morning cartoons, but that was one time one of the major networks (CBS, in this case) seemed to admit it. The old Warner Bros. cartoons provided much more entertainment for me as a youngun than anything else that was on the time.
It doesn't seem a big surprise to see Saturday morning TV cartoons imploding, since 25 years ago the best things on were from 30 years before that, and not designed for TV.
The best cartoons were never taken seriously because they are the cartoons of a violent nature. And I'm talking about silly violence, not realistic violence. Arguably there is no such thing as realistic violence in a cartoon (none that I know of anyway)
things like bugs bunny and yosemite sam blowing holes in each other's hats, then running from each other and bugs beating the crap out of sam through various dirty tricks.
the late 1950s was the end of the great cartoon era. They were written for an adult audience, and often shown before movies to get folks' attention on the screen. Movie trailers now do this.
[offtopic]
I long for the days when there were still parts of one's life that were not saturated with advertisements. the only part of my life not saturated with ads is my dreams, and as soon as the technology exists to put ads in my dreams, they'll be there. I hope I'm dead.
[/offtopic]
When cartoons were not taken seriously, and considered entertainment only, is when cartoons were great. Nowadays cartoons like Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls are good cartoons, but they'll never be as good as the WWII and babyboom era Warner Bros cartoons.
I saw an interview once with some animators from that era of Warner animation studios' life, and they all said that they wrote and drew the cartoons that *they* wanted to see, not what someone else wanted to see. Nowadays executives decide what is written and drawn, in an attempt to please the most people possible, and keep their ad revenue up. it is my belief that all bad decisions are based on the desire for more money, and this is yet another example of that form of decision making.
Anyway, ranting off. The cartoons will get great again when they study what psychology made the old warner bros cartoons great, and reproduce it. talking rabbits, ducks, dogs, roosters, squirrels, etc, with jokes and situations written for adults and silly fake violence written for children. then they'll be great again. I would love to see one cartoon character jump into a freaking burning coal stove on a train and find a huge party inside just one more time. I would also love to see a good old fashioned shootout in a dusty old frontier town, between a talking, wise-ass rabbit that walks on two legs and a stupid gun-happy gold miner just one more time. "i dare you to step across this line" said 4,000 times until sam is led into walking off of a cliff. doesn't get much better than that.
oh, the good old fashioned crazyness will never be repeated!
Yes, actually, my father took the time to spend time with me while I watched my cartoons. He was a very good father. Although he didnt play with toys himself, he wasnt uptight and bothered to play with me now and then. I pity you kids or future kids if you dont have them or ever will, since obviously you wont bother to enjoy their childhood with them.
LOL. Thanks for reminding me of "Duck Season" "Rabbit Season". I agree that the Looney Toons and friends cartoons were funny when I was a kid, a teenager, and still now that I am an adult. They are very intelligent works.
Where things got stupid, IMO, is when the adults got stupid about cartoons. Everything started sliding when someone declared that Road Runner and Coyote cartoons were too violent. I'm quite certain that kids understand Coyote is his own worst enemy. I'm pretty certain it's clear that you can't push your brother off a cliff somewhere in a Southwestern desert, and expect him to live. The only people who have troubles with such distinctions are moronic do-gooding adults.
-Paul Komarek
Even better than the Warner Bros. releases, however, were the Fleischer Studios offerings. Betty Boop has become a global cultural icon in a way that Bugs Bunny and Company - let alone any of the current crop - simply can't touch. (And nobody but nobody could get away with naming a character "Bimbo" these days, unless you're a Mexican bakery.) Fleischer Studios did several musical numbers themselves, many starring the vocal talents of Cab Calloway. Max Fleischer and his brother also invented a piece of technology that's still in use for animation today - the rotoscope. It allowed them to capture real motion, which is why so much of their animation had a "surreally real" look and feel.
Personally, I think that the demise of Saturday Morning Television has less to do with the internet, cable, or "quality time" than with the fact that even 20 years ago, people gave kids more credit for intelligence and mental toughness. We are seeing the most rabid romanticism of childhood to occur since the Victorian era. On one hand, children are being painted as delicate little creatures with easily damaged psyches; and heaven forbid that they should be exposed to anything that could mold them in a disturbing way. On the other hand, you have advertisers who pander to the pre-pubescent smartass by portraying kids as being infinitely wittier and more intelligent than any of the adults around them (if you buy X product.) [aside] And people then wonder why their precious child pops off to Grandma. Why? because the commercials, obnoxious as they are, are more fun to watch than the PC pap that passes for a cartoon these days.[/aside] Kids should have things filtered, to an extent. But don't insult their intelligence. They're lots smarter than people think.
I watched all of those violent cartoons, and not once did I try to bicycle off of the roof, or drop an anvil from my perch in the tree onto my cousin's head. (Blocks and Nerf balls are another story.) Heck I even read my father's National Lampoons, although that might not be the best example to use if I intend to paint myself as a reasonably well-adapted adult.
In a nutshell, I am going to find as many of the old cartoons as I can. That way, when I do have kids, we can sit and watch them together. I'll get to re-live some darn good memories, and the munchkins will have an appreciation for what the good stuff looks like.
Another Merrie Melodies link.
And a very well done research book.
Further information about Max Fleischer's early work.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
I think you nailed it dead on. The demise of cartoons was when they started writing 'em not for adults, but rather for what they THINK appeals to kids. (Funny how this was concurrent with the big slide in the educational system, and the advent of toys that do the playing FOR the child, but that's another rant.)
This switch forgets that kids live in a world filled with adults, and tho they may not get all the complex jokes, they do recognise when they're being talked down to. And making cartoons "kid-level" takes away the kid's incentive to pay attention so he gets all the nuances. IOW, they become uninteresting, so the kid loses interest. Once that happens, you never get the kid back.
Kids aren't near as stupid as some adults think. Write a good clean cartoon with complex humour that an adult can appreciate, and it'll keep the kids' interest better too.
Survey question: What was your fave cartoon as a kid? and as an adult?
A: Bullwinkle, and A: Bullwinkle. Why? See above.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Right on. Kids readily understand the concept of being hoist by your own petard (aka Serves You Right), frex Wile E. Coyote's misadventures in pursuit of the Roadrunner.
Kids also generally understand what's fantasy and what's not, more than adults often realise. A few kids will believe cartoon physics are real, but a few adults believe impossible things too, so it's not just a kid thing.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I beg to differ.
Some of the older cartoons, particularly Warner Bros. cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. were targeted at all age groups. The writers were clever enough to include slapstick action for the kids and haughty real-world or old movie references that the adults could laugh at. There were frequent references to Casablanca, Mae West, Cary Grant, et al. There's really alot of depth and love crafted into those cartoons.
I just did some research and found this fascinating page. http://members.aol.com/EOCostello/ Read up on it and you'll discover alot of goodies packed into those old cartoons.
Just be careful. You may find yourself watching them again soon.
Spounge Bob Sqaure Pants?
I was actually surprised that Sponge Bob didn't get censored to oblivion. That show is COOL. IN fact, my wife watched it with my daughter once (back when we had a tv, and we actually had cable) and told me it was a bad show, too much violence and other crap. She's one of those mothers. Luckily, i don't put up with that crap. So I told her to put on Sponge Bob when it came back on and show me where she had problems with it. Would you know? She couldn't find any problems with it. Moreover, we both found it to be really really funny, and a lot of fun to watch with the kids.
Occasionally I think about getting cable again to watch that show, but then I get real again. Dammit, TV just plain sucks. What do my kids do on saturday morning? They go out with their mother while I sleep. :) Then they come home and play with me for awhile, then we all go outside and play together.
Like what I said? You might like my music
"Not a bad racket if you can pull it off... at least its legal."
Not very ethical however. Its a shame that these people represent believers in Jesus to so many people.
They are like the crackers of hackers. Crackers give hackers a bad name but they are a very small percentage of hackers. Same with greedy televangelists. They give Christianity a bad name, but are a very small percentage of Christians.
Jesus knocked over the tables of the "money changers" in the Temple. He definately does not approve of fraudulent televangelism.
I agree with your thesis, but not with some of your examples. The Flintstones were a cartoon version of The Honeymooners, with Fred mapping to Ralph Kramden and Barney to Ed Norton etc. It originally aired from 1960 to 1966, in prime time if I remember rightly. The Jetsons started in 1962.
Fundamentally, though, you're right. When you write for, bud don't pander to, children, the results are things such as Tom Sawyer, Watership Down, and A Wrinkle in Time. When you pander to children, you get Barney--the mind-sucking Purple Hellwyrm.
You're forgetting something important. A show that "keeps the kids' interest better" will be cancelled, unless it's also driving toy sales. Obviously, "keeping the kids' interest" is not the primary goal of the people who produce cartoons. Cartoons nowadays are basically just infomercials.
Exactly what I was getting at (with gods know what incoherency at that late hour :) Kids don't need things *simple*, but rather, *straightforward*. They'll understand complex relationships and actions (insofar as their life-experience allows), just not all the subtleties and sidelights. As adults with more life-experience, we'll see the subtle points, while still appreciating the complexities that made the same production interesting to us as kids.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I remember saturday mornings from the 70's and 80's. ABC, CBS, and NBC would all have cartoons from about 6am til noon (and then the "afterschool specials" would start.)
I won't pretend that it was all great and there were no marketting tie-ins. I don't remember which came first - He-man action figures or the cartoon. I remember the saturday morning supercade - which was Pacman, Q*bert, Dirk the Daring and other video game tie ins when that was hot. I remember several cartoons based around the video craze at the start of MTV.
But it seems that the commercialization/advertising started to come first. Where He-man/GI Joe could probably stand on it's own, now it seems that if there wasn't a product tie in, the show would have never existed.
I don't know why NBC, CBS, and ABC got out of it. Perhaps they figured they'd make more money selling ads to gillette than mattel. Perhaps with the competition from cable stations digging into other profits, funding these cartoons was no longer profitiable.
I do know that while the old stuff may not have been the greatest (THe Snorks anyone?) the new stuff seems to be even worse. The animation REALLY sucks (oh...I suppose it's just being artistic in a way I don't understand) and I really don't like my girls watching too much of the stuff on Cartoon Network. The disney channel has some good stuff on - though sometimes it does get a little to edutainment like. Rolie Polie Olie is probably one of the best shows on now that reminds me of the old stuff...decent animation, interesting stories (well...as interesting as a show aimed for 3-4 year olds can be)
Oh yeah...my daughters current favorite - The Challenge of the Superfriends DVD I found at Wal-mart, followed by Scooby and Tom and Jerry - guess the old stuff still stands the test of time.
Wow...I rambled...