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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.
I fought with my sister over whether to watch Garfield and Friends or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
though I enjoyed my fair share of carttons, I have to wonder who realy loses here. I don't think it's the 'viewers'
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
I never slept in on Saturday mornings and they were the best thing on TV from 9am-12pm. I recently checked that time slot on the channels I used to watch and there was very little kid-oriented in this time slot. It used to be kids Saturday morning and Christian Evangelists on Sunday morning... so at least one of the two days was ok.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
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
I don't know about anyone else, but I still wake up early every Saturday morning to watch cartoons.
Forget Saturday morning, what has bugged be for a long time is the disappearance of the classic Chuck Jones-style cartoons...
When was the last entertaining Bugs Bunny cartoon made? Around 1960 or so?
I can't help but wonder what happened. Sure, anime is good and all, but not as a replacement for classic cartoons. Why did it die out? They were infinitely more entertaining than anything recent. Did some Texans raise a stink about Yosemitie Sam, and PETA about talking animals being shot at all the time?
Come on... What happened?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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 know I'll sound old for even reminicing about this, but Saturday Morning Cartoons used to be great.
Now they are crap.
Gummi Bears. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Garfield. Pee Wee's Playhouse. Fraggle Rock....etc
Have you checked what's on TV on Saturday mornings now? - All I usually see are some Anime-esque shows, maybe a cartoon here or there, but nothing like the way it was back in the 80s and early 90s.
Anybody remember those computer-animated shows that were way ahead of their time? Must have taken months to render.
I have been scouring Kazaa, DC, etc for cartoons and shows, just so I have a record of them. They were so cool!
And yes, I am guilty of sitting down every now and then and watching some Fraggle Rock. Gotta love those Doozers - they are my favorite engineers.
I remember Saturday mornings .... I used to JUMP out of bed, grab the Cap N' Crunch and plop down and watch Saturday morning toons until I was ready for a nap.
These days, you're lucky if I get out of bed, much less JUMP out of bed. Breakfast no longer happens either. Eh, I guess I grew up.
The article lists "poor animation" as one of six reasons that kids are watching less cartoons, but in my opinion it's more basic than that. They suck. Several years ago the producers started concentrating more on marketing toys than entertaining the kids and when less kids watched (and bought toys) they just increased the marketing until they left out the fun. Several years ago I tried to watch some cartoons with my kids. Except for the classics like Road Runner and Johnny Quest they suck.
Oh how I miss Screech and the gang!
The college years starring that oaf Bob Golic weren't the same *sigh*
I am over here... now I am back over here!
My only gripe is now that things like cartoon network is available 24-7, the specialness of saturday morning cartoons is gone. Sure, kids don't sit glued to the television saturday morning, instead they sit glued to it 24-7.
I don't think cartoons are a bad thing, and I cherished my Saturday morning cartoon watching time. It taught me the value of patience, and the value of privledge. If I was bad during the week, then guess what, my cherished time of cartoon watching would be revoked.
Unlike today, I don't think parents tended to use the television as some kind of electronic babysitter. The television on the whole just wasn't entertaining to children most of the time, so instead of a crutch it was used as a reward tool. In this way, I think the Saturday morning cartoon era was much more valuable to the youth that experienced it than today's pacifier approach.
Don't want to deal with the kids? Turn on Cartoon Network. Yuck.
RFC2119
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
I'll always have fond memories of Saturday morning cartoons, right up until SOul Train came on, telling me it was time to go play video games.
Course, these days, I don't think I'veseen a Saturday morning in a few years, unles you count the time between Friday at midnight and when I crawl into bed.
Now I don't have to fight the kid for the remote so I can watch the Bugs Bunny Roadrunner Hour. (It is still on isn't it? I haven't won one of the battles since 1993)
"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
The truth is, they're sleeping a lot later due to being up playing CounterStrike all night.
I gave up hope on the saturday morning cartoon on the channels that they focused on... even when I was younger.
Myself, I like watching YTV on saturday mornings (it's a Canadian kids channel, for those who didn't know). The line up includes Transformers Armada, Transformers Beast Machines, He-man, Justice League, Jackie Chan Adventures and X-Men: Evolution. (a few others that I don't tend to watch much as well).
It's probably the most time I spend in front of a TV all week that little block.
But why would most kids want to spend saturday mornings watching cartoons? When I was younger, cartoons only happened in the early mornings, before school (forbidden to watch them by my parents at that time, or I'd miss the bus), a couple shows after school (normally the disney ones of the year) and saturday mornings.
Now, with 24/7 cartoon (or others with kid focused programming) networks, they can get their fix anytime, and plenty of households have multiple TV's, so parents and kids can each watch what they want. So there's nothing really special about saturday morning cartoons, at least to the average kid who watches cartoons (unless they realise that Saturday is when the new episodes come out... but there's always reruns, and multiple airings..)
1.) Bad cartoons. I loved Bugs Bunny, but I couldn't stand most of the new crap that the networks kept throwing at me. With the exception of Captain Planet. :oD
2.) Short runs. Those new cartoons usually had runs of one season or less (Remember 'Hypernauts'? Didn't think so). Not much room to get into it, and took no time for it to fade away. Its pretty hard to get interested in anything that way.
3.) The computer, the internet. Completely took over my mornings and days. I replaced one addiction with two more...and now I spend my Saturday mornings compiling custom kernels.
Whups, maybe I've said too much!
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.
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
The Saturday morning cartoon disappeared when the all-day cartoon networks reached cable and satellite TV, and indeed, when cable and satellite TV achieved dominant market penetration.
In the 80s, cable TV only had what, 30 channels? Nowadays the numbers are in the low hundreds and growing. Since there were so few channels to serve such a broad spectrum of interests, the 'Saturday morning' was born to cater to kids who'd be up early while their parents slept in. Later on in the day, they'd switch over to '100 Huntley Street' and all the boring 'grown-up' religion shows.
Nowadays, there is no need for this. There are several all-day cartoon networks, and dozens of kid-specific networks. On-demand Pay Per View kid movies help too. Cartoons are no longer limited to Saturday morning because there's more channels, more availability, and more kids watching all day long.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Id have to agree. I think a big part of the problem is a lot of censorship in cartoons these days. Part of what made great cartoons great was that they hit both children and adults on different levels. But with some of the censorship in the Bugs cartoons, the jokes are kind of lost on children, and most adults remember that something else was there that was cut and usually just get turned off.
The second thing I feel leads to their demise is just the lineup. When I was a kid the Sat. Morning Cartoons had a basic layout, the lame cartoons early, the "hip" cartoons, or whatever cartoons fit the trend, and finally you could round out the morning with the timeless cartoons such as Bugs Bunny. In my eyes, things got bad when some jack ass executive decided that they needed to take the classics and change them into kid versions of themselves, such as the Tom and Jerry Kids (although I will excuse Tiny Toons, but thats my opinion). These crappy cartoons just took up air time.... then the Power Rangers came out and to me, thats when I feel Sat. Morning lost its apeal.
Looking around my neighborhood and at my friends and their children, Id have to agree with the divorce notion on the demise of these cartoons. Most people I know who get the kids for the weekend make plans with their children, like going to the zoo or the pool, or camping. Its sad, I remember waking up in my PJs to watch cartoons, and those will always be some of my fonder memories.
Everyone loved Bugs Bunny and Road Runner. All the rest of the Warner Brothers characters had speeth impedimenths but we loved them anyway. "Oh, that makes me so aaaaaangry!"
Kids' shows featured casts of kids doing silly things. Nobody remembers what, but we all remember enjoying it just the same. Nobody ever figured out how to talk like the kids on Zoom did. We remember the other more useful things instead... Box 350, Boston Mass, oh-two-one-three-four.
Why can't my self-addressed, stamped envelope get me that fan stuff back the next day? ACME always gets the Coyote's packages delivered in seconds. Anyone that says today's television is more violent than it used to be has never seen what happens to the Coyote several times in any five minute stretch. I bet he's got a lot of 'frequent flier' miles built up, mostly vertical, down to be specific.
Popeye was cool, but never did persuade me to try spinish. Mickey Mouse and crew were probably the ideal cartoon, leaving out the violence and still keeping us smiling. Donald Duck had all sorts of issues. Taz wasn't cool yet.
We remember all those silly repititious cartoons that we never got tired of watching. Scooby Do, Space Ghost, Super Friends. I was always in awe at how the Mystery Machine crew spotted minor details I missed, detailed later in the show in a flashback... only later with repeats did I notice that they cheated us by not actually showing the minor detail in the earlier part of the show.
While I certainly don't blame any psychotic behavior on Road Runner, I would pose a few questions about how cartoons may have affected us. How many kids tried dog biscuits after watching Shaggy on Scooby Do? How many kids expected more of the Post Office after watching Wiley Coyote? How many of us thought you couldn't fall unless you made the mistake of looking down?
It's a shame these are very rare to see now on Saturday morning. Closest thing I've seen recently would be Animaniacs - characters being silly for sillyness' sake. Isn't that what being a kid is all about?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I think a lot of posters are missing out on something here. Cartoon Network isn't doing something astoundingly new by having cartoons on all day. Kid's oriented programming was around most of the time back in the 80s as well. Saturday mornings were still important though. I wanted to watch the new season and scoped out the various shows to find out what was good and worth my time and what wasn't. I watched almost every week despite Nickelodeon and afternoon cartoons (duh... He-man was a weekday cartoon, not a saturday one). Even as I got older I would watch X-Men and Spider-man and such while I was in middle school before it eventually got canceled.
We had Nickelodeon, we had Nintendo almost everything that exists now existed back then. The only real difference is the complete lack of cartoons (and the lack of major action figure lines as well... do kids not play with them anymore? What's the deal?!?). I think it's the networks trying to save money by not putting into shows that they state don't make a great deal of money. They ignored the cartoon departments and now they've just more of less given up on it and blamed cable as the reason.
I think a fair comparison would be a local theater. They got rid of student and military discounts a few years back in a small town (Manhattan, KS) that exists mainly due to Kansas State and nearby Ft. Riley. They jacked up adult prices at the same time. The cited reason for the lack of discounts was that dollar theaters covered this market. Ignoring that the same company then bought and quickly closed the only dollar theater in town they cite something vaguely related that doesn't compare (I want to see a first-run film, not something that I didn't want to see or already saw four months ago) as an excuse to make more money.
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.
When I was a kid the idea of a child being able to use a computer was so hard to believe people would suffer shock and denial when presented with proof of the exsistence of a 9 year old programmer.
The idea of BBSes and online shopping was such an amazing thing people couldn't believe it.
When Byte ran an artical about how computers would replace TVs eventually people were sceptical. The pet rock of the 80s or so they belived.
For kids today computers have already replaced TV. They probably don't even know what radio is. Music comes from MP3s and CD players. Books are PDF files.
Bugs Bunny has nothing on Neopets.com
Yugi and Pokemon... and while the cartoons exist as 30 min daily ads for the card games it seams more and more kids only watch them becouse of the card games.
Now a days the Yugi and Pokemon video games are ads for the TV shows and card games.
Willy Wonka candys advertises by having a website filled with games and runs ads on Neopets.com.
It's not just the kids. Thow they lead the way.
CNN Headline News already knows the future. CNN.com. FoxNews has it's website. and when NBC looks for a partnership it looks to Microsoft.
People complain less about the crap on TV... Not becouse there is less crap. All the good shows are going away or going to hell leaving nothing but crap. But it's the crap that people who won't go online like.
It's the digital age. I just gave a 7 year old a Knoppix CD and then the topic of upgrading ram came up... (The Bosses son.. His computer need more memory)
The next generation understands Rinkworks Computer Stupidities.
For them Google is the place to look up information not the public libary.
The idea of sitting around watching TV for 30 minuts seams.. alien.
My boss dosen't worry about her kids watching to much TV. She worrys about them playing to many video games.
I don't actually exist.
Don't tell Meatloaf or Richard O'Brian
njordThe 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!
In the 1980s, after the FCC officially deregulated most rules surrounding programming and advertising, the animation and toy businesses were able to partner up and create a new tradition of half-hour commercials to sell toys. He-Man kicked it off, followed by G.I. Joe and Transformers, MASK, Sectaurs, the list goes on. Before long, this became such a common and profitable practice that it was nearly impossible to get a show on the air that wasn't some sort of a tie-in.
Then along came the NES, which truly revolutionized the home gaming phenomenon and became as commonplace as toasters in many households. Kids started spending more and more time with their came consoles and less with their toys, and this phenomenon continues to the present day, when video games continue to take up a larger and larger portion of floor space at toy stores every year.
It's especially pronounced in Japan, where, through the 60s, 70s and 80s there were jillions of live action and cartoon shows produced to serve as vehicles for promoting superhero, monster, and robot toys. Nowadays, there are only a few core brands left that have any kind of sustainability, with very few newcomers to the fold. Some companies like Takara have tried crossover products like Web Diver Gradion, but they haven't caught on as much as they'd like. Kids there are just having more fun with their Playstations and Game Boys.
Of course, there is the occasional Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh that achieve breakthrough success, but one could argue that these are pretty heavily game-based properties as opposed to toy-based.
I remember the heyday of cartoons, when everything was a clearly delineated, toy tie-in. Well, okay, other than Looney Tunes, which was simply fantastic.
Cartoons were clearly tied to gender. There were boy cartoons (GI Joe, Transformers, Voltron, M.A.S.K., that one with the light gun plane where you shot at the screen, and so forth), and girl cartoons (Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, etc.). These were genuine, good quality shows that were obvious toy tie-ins, but kids loved them. See, toys provide something tangible, and the easiest way to generate toys is to not have character development. If I want to add a character to Spongebob, I have to have a meaningful purpose for that character, because said cartoon is primarily narrative and dialogue-driven. Transformers is also arguably narrative-driven, although the narrative consists primarily of Autobots vs. decepticons, so adding a flying plane or a dinosaur is trivial.
It seems a bit rambling, but I'm bringing it together here. I can remember watching kids play Power Rangers at the park. Power Rangers is easy to play. You choose your ranger, you go off and battle "evil". How the hell do a bunch of kids play Spongebob? What, you pretend to be some crab and exchange half-wit banter while simultaneously apppealing to an older demographic?
Basically, it's a lack of conflict. Every solid cartoon show revolved around the simplest of ideas, good vs. evil. It might've been that the evil was Decepticons, or the wicked Voltron queen, or Cobra, or that Rainbrow Brite villain who was only drawn in shades of gray. A dialogue-driven children's show is going to have to be pretty damned well-written to appeal to kids, and hiring good writers costs good money. Cartoons exist primarily because they're cheap to produce, so any gain from choosing the medium is eliminated when you have to gety talented writers on board. Maybe it's a reflection of our values as a society (or more particularyl, young parents' values) , or maybe it's Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, as other posts have mentioned, but something's just missing there.
Alternately, it could simply be that the plethora of cable networks broadcasting cartoons has taken the profitability away from the format.
The reason is really very simple - no Pinky and the Brain on saturday mornings. That was the best cartoon ever concieved of by the mind of man, no argument. They had megalomaniacal mice, for Pete's sake! It doesn't get better than that.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I remember anxiously awaiting the debut of "Hammerman", MC Hammer's animated masterpiece. I remember "The Ghostbusters", and "The Real Ghostbusters". I remember "Garfield & Friends", and I remember that duck who wore the innertube and the duck head on the inner tube always did exactly what the duck's head did. That was clever. I remember never getting up early enough to see "The Snorkles". I remember that one cartoon with Butter Bear. I remember the crazy crap they had on nickelodeon on saturday mornings too, "The Sun Beneathe The Sea" or something, that one with the Prince who catches comets in a net and flies from planet to planet and talks to the bitchy flower, and that one about the kid and the dog. I sadly remember "Bill & Ted's Excellent Cartoon", and the Pac-Man cartoon, and I vaguely recall a cartoon about the video game Pitfall. While we're talking video games.. I also vagely recall a Q-Bert cartoon. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, of course, and WWF Superstars. I particularly remember the episode where Andre the Giant (may he rest in peace) was going on a date, and he had to wear rubber tires as shoes. And I'm not too old to admit that I watched "Bill Nye the Science Guy" and "Beakman's World", neither of them hold a candle to Mr. Wizard though. Even though you had to get up at 4am to see Mr. Wizard, it was always worth it. The Chuck Jones genius of "The Bugs & Daffy Show" was always pleasant. I think "Ducktales" was an afternoon show, but I know "Tail Spin" was a saturday morning show. So was "Denver, The Last Dinosaur", and "Dennis The Mennace". "Dennis the Mennace" is hilarious to watch now as an adult. Dennis wasn't a mennace at all, Mr. Wilson is just an asshole. And do you recall that TMNT spin-off with the frogs? WTF was that? I think all Hanna-Barbera had to offer on Saturday mornings during my youth was "The Grape Ape", "Manilla Gorilla", and "The Flintstones Kids".
Perhaps I watched a little too much TV as a kid. Like Pavlov's dog, I flip the TV off every time I see "Meet The Press" cause that means the cartoons are over.
I was a TV kid; a real obsessive little dweeb. I watched far, far too much kiddie crap, and for too long. (Think Milhous van Houton.) But I was also an observant, skeptical, and curious little dweeb. (Good training for my career in QA!) I recognized before most kids the difference between first run and syndicated shows, film and video tape, and the value of different time slots.
Well, my point: There is a conservation of crappiness in Saturday Morning TV. Most of it has always been awful. Much of what we liked as kids was awful. It wouldn't hold up if you saw it now. At least, if you've grown up even a little.
The bright lights, then as now, were few, and usually died quickly. (There was a whole slew of live-action poetry-and-storytelling shows in the early 70s; well-meaning post-hippie artiness like "Animals, Animals, Animals." Anyone remember an early-90s FOX show called "Nightmare Ned?" Or the artsy, weird, "ZaZu U?")
If Saturday Morning dies, I can't feel too sad. Give the kids books, or video tapes, or shove them outside so they can build up their immune systems by rolling in the dirt.
Stefan
I do remember however getting up really early and watching the end of the color bars and then drudging through the national anthem to watch wonder dog at 5:30 because that was the only time it was on.
However I don't buy the quality time crap though, Kids probably don't watch too much TV because they are busy at the mall doing nothing, adn trying to be more adultish or something. Which is why I think kids now a days are trying to be adults faster or something because kids mimic that of adult ones, like the lizzie mcguire that was mentioned.
Finnally a slight OT rant about the advertising portion of the article.
<rant> However when it comes to advertising and targeted marketing, it still sucks even today. For example how on earth do you get pixie pocket or other strange girl toy commericals during DBZ ? (* Not that I watch DBZ :-) *)
</rant>
last but not least if i ever ever get an anime channel, adult swim probably won't be a thing on my TODO list either.
I guess I just replaced Transformers, MASK and TMNT with Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy.
Saturday mornings are crap nowadays. It used to be watch ABC's friday night lineup (family matters, step by step, some other crap and perfect strangers), go to bed, wake up, watch saturday morning cartoons, then sit around and play nintendo all day. Watch SNICK at night and then sunday was here. Ah the good ol' days.. now papers for school and this internet thing suck up all my time.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
While Saturday morning cartoons are definitely more or less dead, don't confuse that with all cartoons in general being dead. Cartoon Network airs a 7 hour block on Saturday night unofficially dubbed the "Saturday Video Entertainment System", an obvious throw back to the 80s. Looking at the current schedule, they have Pokemon, the new He-Man, Samurai Jack, Transformers: Armada, X-Men: Evolution, Yu-Gi-Oh, Jackie Chan Adventures, G Gundam, Dragon Ball, Samurai Jack(again), Hack/Sign, GI Joe, Batman: The Animated Series, and Superman on, in that order. Some of this stuff is obviously junk(Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh), and the anime stuff not everyone will go for, but in between that, you get gems like the new He-Man series, Transformers, and reruns of GI Joe and Batman. If you're feeling adventurous, Jackie Chan isn't too bad(it's Kung-Fu, you know someone's going to get hurt), and neither is the new X-Men series. A lot of people speak highly of Samurai Jack, so I'll leave it at that. Perhaps it's not correct to say that Saturday morning cartoons are dead, perhaps it's better to say that they've been shifted to Saturday nights?
Wow, they used to have 20 million viewers? Then why were the shows always so lousy? I'm not just talking about the stories, I mean the animation itself?
*Mighty Mouse was cancelled by the PMRC, because of a flower sniffing episode.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Now kids spend their Saturday mornings sleeping in as they usually have been out smoking bongs and having sex the night before.
Their role models - Eminem and Christina Aguilera, Brittney, Holly Valance etc. You get the picture.
It had nothing to do with cartoon quality, changing demographics or the alignment of Jupiter and Mars. The FCC used to require a minimum number of hours of children's programming. They stopped requiring it. Hooray for deregulation, sure glad I can watch golf and infomercials on Saturday morning now. I'm not sure which is more boring, btw.
What was the mystery again?
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
There is one thing that the article is not completely clear on, and that is whether or not there is a definite drop in the number of children watching cartoons at all. In other words, is it just that they can now watch cartoons anytime they want, or are they also watching less?
From other trends I have seen, it could very well be that the current generation of children are too busy doing other things to look at TV (something that the article does mention), at least not as extensively as the generation before them. But if this is true, think of this: Today's cartoon-watchers are tomorrow's primetime TV watchers. If they're not watching TV much now, will they suddenly turn around and start watching it when they get older? I think not.
So we could be seeing the beginning of the end of the era of television itself. It will be a very slow death, but it may come nevertheless. Even now primetime TV is starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for fresh ideas. I doubt the next generation of potential TV watchers will be satisfied with this.
This makes me think of a throwaway line of dialogue from an episode of the original Star Trek. I forget the name of the episode (it was the one where they get zapped back in time to 20th century Earth and accidentally beam the Air Force pilot on board). At one point Spock said something like (paraphrased) "Television died out as an entertainment medium sometime in the 21st century."
Life imitating art, perhaps?
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
I hate Grammar Nazi's
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...
The author missed one part about why children spend less time watching cartoons... Children today are being hurried through childhood, rushed into taking on adult tasks at a very early age.
Anxious parents overload their children, pushing them too hard, too soon. It is becoming increasingly common for parents to enroll their young children in after-school activities (sports, music, ballet). Here is an interesting quote from Time magazine: "Kids who once had childhoods now have curriculums; kids who ought to move with lunatic energy of youth now move with the high purpose of the worker bee."
I do not know what the author considers to be quality time, but taking kids to ballet school and driving together in the car is definitely not quality time.
Any article that starts out "there are six reasons" and lists five reasons is not worth the download entropy it expends.
Merrie Melodies:o dies/
http://www.toonzone.net/early-years/
http://www.bcdb.com/pages/Warner_Bros_/Merrie_Mel
The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartons at amazon.com:6 038325/103-1349286-7639828?vi=glance
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/081
Fleischer Studios and Max Fleischer biographical information:a tors/fleischer.htmld ios/
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/archive/innov
http://www.toonopedia.com/fleischr.htm
http://www.bcdb.com/pages/Paramount/Fleischer_Stu
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Reminds me of my old favorites, in no particular order:
The Adventures of Don Coyote and Sancho Panda
Fantastic Max
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Voltron
Gummy Bears
Midnight Patrol (does anyone else remember this one?)
Sonic the Hedgehog (That's Sonic SatAM, the cool and well animated one, not the crappy ones)
probably a bunch more I can't remember anymore
And possibly my worst favorite SatAM memory:
the death of Gargoyles...why did they ever move it out of the afternoon lineup? grr
It also is interesting to see some of the old classics (for me anyways...I know that's a relative term) being brought back, like the new He-Man cartoon (not to be confused with The New Heman, which sucked) and the new Turtles cartoon.
I think part of the problem nowadays is that kids shows are too 'kiddy.' With a renewed emphasis on parental involvement, there seems to be a bit more time spent together as a family. And since parents control the remote and are actively watching with their kids, are they going to want to watch mindless garbage like Hamtaro or Pokemon? I think not. In my mind, the best cartoons are the ones that can appeal to everyone. And I'm not just talking the classic classics: Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, et al. I'm also talking Animaniacs (loaded with political satire for adults and slapstick for everyone) and Batman (violence for the kiddies, anti-hero engaging plots for the adults).
Just my two cents. Gods bless the Cartoon Network for saving a lot of these shows.
first off, i'm 21, watched all those good old shows... we get nostalgic though, tons of junky shows too, we just don't remember. i have (much) younger siblings so i watched cartoons with them all the time and cartoon network is still my fav station (who wants to hear about the economy and iraq anyway?). first, i'd like to make a point... most of the shows now are MUCH better animated. go pull out the transformers classic DVD sets, still not as good looking as the new transformers, but still cooler (because that's what we watched) but my little siblings thought the stuff i watched was dumb. kids watch cartoons for a little entertainment... but also for social reasons. same as video games. not following me? let me explain... just look at this whole post, everyone is talking about their fav shows and the glory days. kids do the same thing now. i coach soccer, but when the kids are on the bench, know what they do? talk about cartoons, yu-gi-oh cards, and playing video games. (we did the same thing, and we still do the same thing) the kids that aren't allowed to partake in these forms of entertainment just sit quietly, completely out of the circle. odd how solitary events can affect our social events. sure, it would be better if kids socialized about a book or something, but get real, not gonna happen. so the next person that thinks "kids shouldn't play video games, they should socialize with other kids" should smack themself. what the heck are the kids gonna talk about?? kids socialize more than adults anyway, they have school and recess, not cubicles. cartoons are different today... whatever. they are a form of entertainment and a social topic. our parents thought we had no taste, why are you allowing your nostalgic bias to blind you to the fact that you're doing the same thing again. there are quite a few good cartoons out now anyway, powerpuff girls is cute in its own way (kinda violent for a flowery cartoon too) dexter's lab, hey arnold is funny at times, yu-gi-oh can get distracting at times... the whole dragonball thing is a cult thing... it's repetitive, but you HAVE to just watch for the sake of watching. plenty of other decent ones. i mean, voltron was cool because there was a big robot with a sword and it chopped stuff up (hmm sounds like animated power rangers) but the plot was awful. same with gi-joe, transformers, and a bunch of other goodies. i love them for what they are, my childhood entertainment, but they were far from some sort of "pinnacle" and if you don't believe me, go buy the DVDs of some of the series and try to watch them purely for entertainment and remove your nostalgic fondness... plot is cheesy, voices were wrong sometimes, some of the guys were colored wrong in certain frames (happened a lot in transformers) i mean, this is not a "high quality" cartoon. just cool :) and the messages haven't changed too much either... old ones focused on good guy and bad guy many times, value of friendship, blah blah. powerpuff girls... same baddies come back, girls work together to fight bad person, beat him up, share a good laugh and learn a (weak) lesson too. heck fraggle rock didn't really even have bad guys (just the big ogre things that would eat them if they left the rock) all about friendship and stuff. that seems pretty darned PC to me. anyway, bottom line... early cartoons were stupid but entertaining, 80's cartoons were stupid and entertaining, current cartoons are stupid and entertaining. some were dumber than others, but they were never meant to be great, they were cartoons! leave the kids alone, and leave the 'toons alone too!
I'm from India. Sunday mornings used to be kids time on television cos' many schools worked on Saturdays. Usually consisted of Disney cartoons (dubbed into Hindi) and mythological serials. (Where kids programs in the US show technologically advanced robots and gadgets, kids programs in India had all powerful gods and godessess with tantrically charged bows and arrows fighting against demons and beasts. :-))
Funny how everyone perceives the 'heyday of cartoons' simply as the time they themselves watched cartoons as a kid, with everything after that being crap. Different generations - different 'heydays'.
JP
Now that we all have flying cars and robot housekeepers, it's just not relevant any more.
I'm going to go back to work pushing this button now...
The latest Slashdot meme.
I noticed the downturn of Saturday morning even as I was growing up. When I was young it was great and as I got older it got worse and worse. For a while I thought it was me but then I noticed I still liked cartoons. With the coming of Cartoon Network and similar channels I knew that it definately wasn't be that'd changed. The cartoons they push at kids these days just tend to suck - especially the Saturday morning crap. Worst they've replaced most these time slots with news and religious shows. Sure the kids go to other channels and time slots to find cartoons but that is only because the Saturday morning as we know it has been flushed completely down the toilet.
I think network tv is missing the real market for Saturday morning cartoons - adults that grew up with it. I think a lot of us would tune in (with our own kids) to watch good cartoons. We could be spending a couple hours every Saturday morning with our kids just having a laugh. Some good cartoons like Looney Tunes. Toward the middle of the day fade the programming from animation into more grow up stuff. Bill Nye the Science Guy, Junkyard Wars, etc.. sort of educational things children and parents might watch together.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
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
> so most are 100+MB MPEG1/2 files
They might be in VCD format so you can burn and watch on a real television with the help of a DVD player.
Sure, an uber-hot divx formatted cartoon would be great and all, but I doubt these people have access to the originals and it would be a waste of effort to take low-quality television video (or more likely second or third generation VHS as these episodes are no longer broadcasted) and put it in huge high-quality divx-like formatting.
When it comes to television broadcast stuff, VCD is a good way to go. A simple burn and off to the TV you go. Yeah, you can take divx or whatever and reformat it or you might might own a nice videocard that does NTSC output, but my shared folders on P2P are usually for me first and others second.
Be glad you're able to get anything.
>Anyhow, classic cartoons are still aired on Cartoon Network.
True, but the WWII ones certainly are not getting played on CN.
or "When they came for the cartoons I did nothing because I wasn't a cartoon"
Weren't there some government hearings on cartoon violence a few years ago? Didn't the television folks agree to straighten up and fly right? It sounds like that's about the time cartoons started getting lame. Coincidence? I don't think so. I got curious about what happened and did some googling....
STEP 1. OMG! Marvin the Martian just blew up the Earth, and that's supposed to be funny?
from TRUCE - Teachers Resiting Unhealty Children's Entertainment
"Too much of what children see on television is violence as entertainment. It undermines lessons we teach at home and school about how people treat each other, and encourages the use of violence to solve problems and to have fun. We have seen the effects of this glamorized violence in such events as school shootings."
STEP 2. I am shocked and appalled and am going to do something about it.
from lionlamb.org
"The mission of The Lion & Lamb Project is to stop the marketing of violence to children. We do this by helping parents, industry and government officials recognize that violence is not child's play - and by galvanizing concerned adults to take action."
"Lion & Lamb works to reduce the marketing of violent toys, games and entertainment to children in two distinct ways. We work with parents and other concerned adults to reduce the demand for violent "entertainment" products, and with industry and government to reduce the supply of such products."
"We believe that attitudes about violence as "entertainment" can be changed over time. Just as attitudes about drunk driving and smoking have changed, we believe that Lion & Lamb can help forge a national consensus that violence is not child's play. Just as it has become "uncool" to pollute and to litter, we are working to change the tolerance level for violence as a "cool" theme for toys and other entertainment products for children."
STEP 3. Well, if you think about it, we can't do it ourselves, so we need the government to force everyone to do the right thing.
"Too often, both government and the entertainment industry place all responsibility for monitoring the games children play on the shoulders of their parents. Certainly, parents need to be vigilant and provide their kids with guidance. But in a culture where $1 billion a year is spent by industries of all sorts to advertise their products directly to children, parents can't stem the tide of "entertainment" violence on their own." - snippet from an article at LionLamb.org
STEP 4. The Government is only too happy to oblige. Who could vote against protecting children?
"Senator Paul Simon, speaking to a conference organized in Beverly Hills on August 2 by the National Council for Families and Television, told some 650 representatives of the broadcasting business who were present that he was giving them sixty days to come up with a plan to regulate themselves with respect to the portrayal of violence--or else they would face some sort of government regulation." - from newcriterion.com article archived from Sept. 1993
Step 5. Mission Accomplished
"Culminating a protracted campaign against TV violence, both Houses of Congress have passed legislation requiring that new televisions be equipped with the so-called v-chip -- a computerized chip capable of detecting program ratings and blocking adversely rated programs from view." - from an article in the ACLU Archive
Cartoons during the 80s anyway (when I was watching them) typically had very morally absolutist/dualistic themes permeating their storylines. You had a group that was identified as "good," another group that was identified as "bad," and the line between the two was very clearly defined. This of course was before the advent of postmodernism, which includes among other things the concept of moral relativism...ergo, the concept that there's no such thing as moral absolutes. The other thing that was different is that back then the entire concept of political correctness didn't exist either. Society now is so inundated with the clamouring cries of this or that minority group that it's virtually impossible to conceive of a storyline for just about anything without the risk of offending *someone*. I'm not sure why it's happened in the last 20 years, but before about 1990, people used to be nowhere near as easily offended as they are now. There's talk of releasing watered down versions of The Lord of The Rings, the Bible, and pretty much everything in between in order to make them bland and as inoffensive as possible.
The bottom line is that if you can't say something without having to worry that it's going to bring all sorts of crap down on your head because of possibly offending the gay movement or some other equally paranoid, emotive, and fanatical minority group, you most likely will end up not saying anything at all. To me, this has far more wide-ranging implications also than just the death of cartoons...we're talking about freedom of expression as a whole.
new scooby doo, there used to be a haunted house game from the 70's, but I can't find a link.
Care Bear Shoelaces - Click for a larger picture or to add to your basket
Care Bears
Strawberry Shortcake, I remember my sister collecting some of thease.
My Little Pony, I had to watch the film... ahhhh...
Rainbow Brite
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
My point is that Saturday morning cartoons mean something to some of us younger than twenty-five, despite what the article stated.
This sig was generated by a barrel of trained kittens for SeXy_Red (550409).
Yet the anime and manga industries thrive in Japan. While that industry and our cartoon industry have many differences, I'll bet we're talking about the same demographic.
Children may be evolving emotionally faster, but the blame can be placed directly on American cartoons' coefficient of crappiness. Emotionally mature adults gobble up anime all the time.
I think human beings are very quickly evolving (or adapting- whatever) to reach a state where they in part don't grow up, maintaining characteristics of children through adulthood.
Scientists (yes 'them') reckon that domesticated cats are like this- still in many ways kittens because their easy lifestyle in the homes of hu-mans allows them to.
Er, like, "Discuss!"
graspee
I don't let my kids watch cartoons at all in our house (except for certain, pre-selected "movie-type" videos). When they go to friends' houses, they watch them, but we really don't want them to. We would rather them go to their friends houses and play (non-video) games and build relationships with other human beings.
But, there are several reasons why we don't let them watch cartoons on TV:
1) They are a waste of time.
2) They are "mind-swill".
3) They are a primary means of marketing toys and teaching my kids rampant materialism. I want my kids to want a toy because they see it and think it is cool or useful, not because they were mesmerized by a commercial to buy it.
4) It is too passive. I'd rather have them playing with their toys together inside, or playing with their friends outside.
5) They can always read more books.
I've discussed these things with my kids, and they understand them, but they still want to watch the cartoons. When they do get a chance to watch them (like when they go to grandpa's house... he lives in Iowa, and TV watching doesn't seem to be such a looked-down on thing there), I usually let them get away with watching a few hours of them on a Saturday morning, hoping they will get it out of their systems.
I think my kids have become the better for it. I think they are better rounded than most kids their ages.
dochood
I can't believe all of the rants about how there are no good cartoons anymore because they quit making them for adults. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the most biting social commentary of our time is to be found on the current "classics", the Simpsons, King Of The Hill, and especially South Park. As political correctness ruled the air beginning in the 80's, people with something to say moved into animation. It's just less threatening to have a yellow, painted cartoon boy comment on the state of the education system, or race or whatever.
As for kids cartoons, there's plenty of great stuff out there, it's just all living on cable now. And there is way less of the mindless crap that so many here have tried to wax nostalgic over, like He-Man and Transformers. Woah! you want to know what killed Saturday morning? Look no further than that kind of "design the toy and then make up a show to market it" junk.
That's like a list about the debasement of the kid cartoon, not about the classics. You were on the cusp of the every-show-is-an-excuse-to-push-action-figures generation, but not quite there yet. Transformers was actually over the edge... Not that the production values were so bad, with Orson Welles in the movie and all, but that was well on the way to Pokemon.
"Classics" would be Wagner's Ring Cycle as done by Bugs and Elmer, not Voltron.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
TNN now owns the rights to the franchise and they are making NEW episodes. And get this. They got John Kricfalucci (sp?) to make them. He created those characters to begin with and if any of you remember, those were aduly oriented cartoons. I mean seriously adult. And yet, kids loved it too, mainly because they either ignored the "adult" things, or just didn't get them. Then Nickelodeon kicked Johnboy out and started writing "clean" Ren and Stimpy. And guess what happened then? The ratings dropped like a brick and they ended up selling the franchise. Hooray! Now we can get more of the great wackiness of the J.K. days and get those belly laughs like we used to. Just though you should know.
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
Cartoon network shows an hour-long block of Tom & Jerry on Saturday mornings. With a few exceptions, none of the currently-in-production cartoons can compare to T&J. I mean, these cartoons were what started the debates about violent cartoons!
There are also the "salute to WB legends" shows, like the Tex Avery and Chuck Jones shows. Those are fun to watch because they address the cartoons from an academic standpoint and you get to appreciate what was groundbreaking in particular episodes.
One problem I've seen with cartoons these days are the music. Look at cartoons from the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's and the music is all classical, or even somtimes jazz. The animation is made to work with the music, too. If you watch the current crop of cartoons, it all sounds like an afterthought - a cheap, uninspired afterthought. Oh, the cast is going to a tropical island? Let's play the show's crappy theme song with steel drums! The end result is a cartoon that hyperactive kids can tolerate, but the shows will be completely unwatchable in ten years. Do you think anybody in ten years is going to want to watch old episodes of 'Ed, Edd, and Eddy?' Old Disney, Warner Bros. and MGM cartoons can still make you laugh. Seems like everything today is just Hanna-Barbera - one or two good shows if you dig around, but it's probably not worth all that work.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
A lot of people rag on the cartoons of the 80's as being nothing more than thinly guised ads to sell product. You're right, they were. But the important element that you've left out of this is that the kids were more than happy to buy those products since it allowed for a level of interactivity with the show. For example, I watched a lot of Transformers / GI Joe / Thundercats in the 80's and I bought a lot of Transformers / GI Joe / Thundercats toys. So not only did I watch the stuff on TV, I interacted with the shows by recreating my own scenarios and tiny plots with the toys. A very early form of the fanfic, if you will.
Nowadays, however, cartoons are far more different. Sure there are product tie-ins but the toons are more dialogue driven and rarely focus on the overall conflict of good vs. evil. Likewise heroes often take a backseat to more identifiable characters with more realistic qualities. When I was a kid the Autobots used to save children from the evil Decepticons, Now as an adult, the children save the Autobots. I think that says a lot about what cartoons as a whole have evolved into.
But moreover it's that lack of interactivity with current toons that send kids flocking to video games and even in some ways to the Internet more so than the tube. I think kids are becoming conditioned to the fact that TV is a passive medium, you sit in front of it and it entertains you and you walk away. And really that's the entire problem in a nutshell. I mean I remember being a good consumer and buying those toys in the 80's, but I also remember spending hours coming up with my own stories, my own conflicts and my own characters through those toys. I don't think children have that now and it's a shame. Those shows in the 80's spawned interactivity (and creativity for that matter) and that element is gone now. Kids are tough customers, you lose their interest for a second and you've lost them forever.
DigiSquid Design.
As others have said, The Flinstones started in prime time. They became a syndicated afternoon cartoon after they stopped production.
What Hanna Barbara brought to modern cartoons was a way to speed up the process of animation so that they could come up with a weekly television series. Before that, you either had people making 10 minute shorts to display before the main feature of a movie, or you had Disney working years to make a full length animated movie. Either of these products had to appeal to a mass audience. Hanna Barbara is obviously cheaper quality, but they were the ones who learned where you can put the cheats. When Fred runs down a hallway, you know he is going to pass by the same potted plant a half-dozen times.
Now that people learned what sort of shortcuts were or weren't noticed, cartoons could be written in a way to
avoid too many expensive options, or techniques could be developed to mitigate them.
Comparing cartoons made for television against cartoons made for theaters is like comparing movie comedies against sitcoms. Its like trying to compare "National Lampoon's Vacation" to "King of Queens".
... looks a lot like Wednesday nights but for kids.
So long to real kid-oriented cartoons and hello to kid-versions of adult shows. I spent part of this past Saturday watching TV with my daughters (first graders) and what's big on the morning shows now? A kid version of Survivor. Complete with a dumbed down version of paper/scissors/rock that I supposed was intended to teach some sort of strategic thinking; educational only if one considers out-and-out guessing a kind of ``strategy''.
I wonder what the heck ever happened to real educational TV. When I was a kid there was the ``Discovery'' series (Discovery 67, Discovery 68, etc.), Mr. Wizard, etc. Later on there was another show you could catch on PBS (I think) called something like `Physical Universe' (started out as a lecture but had good illustrative CG graphics to demonstrate the principles being talked about). There was Bronoski's `Ascent of Man', Burke's `Connections', Sagan's `Cosmos', and others. True, those last few aren't exactly kid stuff but at least some kids would find that interesting and I can tell you that my two girls would have found much of them interesting. (Actually, they have seen `Connections' before and thought it was very interesting.) Somebody has already mentioned `Biil Nye the Science Guy' and `Beaker's World' which weren't bad but geared more toward the ADD afflicted to allow kids to really learn very much.
Nowadays, we have Disney hawking `Winnie the Pooh' as educational TV (OK, so they call it `illuminating television'; always good for a belly laugh) and, now, the Survivor clones. At least when I was a kid there were choices that included some educational content. It's gotten to where I think the most important thing that my kids will learn from television is how to turn it off.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
For every Schoolhouse Rock (did more to help me learn my times tables than my Dad and his flashcards ever did) and Bill Nye The Science Guy there were atrocities like Kid Power and Captain Planet. No, teachers meddling in the one place kids used to go to UNWIND from school only HURT SatAM. It didn't help.
If you want to see what SatAM cartoons would be if the fsckn child psychologists and the teachers took it over, watch PBS' SatAM programming. Or Noggin. Or the second wave (post-"Rugrats Movie") Rugrats. Boring, boring boring...
There is a reason why Japanese series have almost put the entirety of the animation industry in the United States out of business. Japanese TV doesn't mandate the kind of "educational" content rules that US TV does. I don't know how it survives in Canada, other than by the intervention of the Film Board of Canada and the "Canadian Content" regulations.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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...
Isn't the VCR part of the reason? Kids are quite happy to watch the same show many times. VHS and DVD make the network broadcast less valuable.
-Dave
the descent of american television quality into the realm of craptitude we see today is entirely due to the PTA and the AARP - the two most powerful organizations in the US other than the NRA, mostly because the NRA has guns. some of us in the underground plan to put guns in the hands of teachers and retirees and see what happens next...
since it was long ago discovered that kids that watch too much TV are less intelligent and less respectful of their elders than quiet kids that read books, the PTAARP quetly infiltrated the american television indistry, specifically the animation production companies, planting ever increasingly insipid, politically correct and above all boring show concepts into the project pipelines. high-level PTAARP sympathizers at the networks green-lit these projects, diluting the quality of child-oriented televised animation and quietly killing off the spirit of america's cartoon-watching youth.
not being the brightest of the teachers and retirees out there (that segment of the PTAARP already having been recruited by the government for thought-control experiments and school-lunch programs) the plan actually backfired somewhat. rather than turn off the TV and read books, or go outside and enjoy nature on saturday mornings, america's youth adapted to and came to accept the new, milquetoast offerings. rather than breeding a more intelligent, more fit generation of americans, the program instead has been turning out americans more and more accepting of establishment, and less likely to change their habits to conform with a changing enviroment.
some have said that the program was subverted from within by a splinter group of the Young Republicans to just this end
meanwhile, the writers of decent cartoons have abandoned the youth market and instead targeted adults, to the benefit of the growing adult cartoon market, a short-lived market segment, not only because these are the last generation of adults who grew up with quality youth-oriented cartoons, but also because they still spend their leisure time on a couch watching TV instead of exercizing.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Just looking at the UK schedule for the up and comming Saturday morning (we have 5 main channels).
BBC1 9am - 12pm = Cartoons and Music
ITV3 9am - 12pm = Cartoons and Music
Ch5 8am - 1pm = Cartoons (mostly CGI)
Sky1 7am - 1pm = Cartoons + WWE
Working on the family farm had purpose. Rushing to soccer/ballet has no purpose. There *is* a difference. (Spoken as someone who spent a little time on a farm, and had LOTS of friends who spent lots of time on a farm.)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I think the critical difference here is that it was YOUR choice to take all that on, NOT your parents decision that you need to do these things.
The same thing applies now. Saturday is my day to sleep in, but often I don't. That's fine as long as it's my choice when I get up and not my wife's or daughter's.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
True story:
Back in the mid to late 70's Dick Van Dyke did a public service announcement that ran during Saturday morning cartoons advising kids "if you ever catch on fire, remember to stop, drop, and roll!". Sure, it's a pretty bizzare topic for a PSA, but as a 7 year-old child I didn't give it a second thought. I also didn't realize that, like the "2 all-beef patty..." ingredients of the Big Mac, this esoteric little bit of information was etched into the hidden recesses of my brain. I never gave it a thought.
Fast forward to Christmas of `98 (IIRC). My wife and I were at a party with a bunch of friends. It was a renaissance-themed party, so we were all dressed in ren faire garb, there was period music and food, the house was lit with candles, etc.
My wife has beautiful hair, and it's very long. No, really. When it's down it's a few inches below her knees. It's simply amazing.
At one point we decided that a group photo was in order. My wife doesn't enjoy having her photo taken, so she volunteered to snap the picture. The rest of us piled onto or around the sofa and she stepped back to take the picture. Unable to get us all into the frame, she leaned back over a low table that was right behind her... and over a candle that was on the table.
From our perspective in front of her the only thing that looked odd was that little bits of light seemed to be appearing behind her, almost like an aura. She took the photo and felt something strange behind her. She turned around to see what was behind her and a collective gasp filled the room as the rest of us saw the surface of her hair on fire!
Time stopped. I have never in my life been more terrified than I was at the sight of the person dearest to me in the world- on fire. Everyone was frozen with panic, and I was incapable of conscious thought- except for that one little thought in the back of my brain.
"STOP DROP AND ROLL!!!" The words came out of my mouth before I realized that I was saying them. Thank God, this was the one (and thus far only) time she did what I said, immediately and without question.
Ladies and gentlemen, "stop drop and roll" works. Aside from her hair she was completely unharmed, and because she reacted so quickly only the surface of her hair was burned (hard to describe). We brushed it out, put a bottle of leave-in conditioner in, shared a good cry, and continued with the evening. The stench of burnt hair lasted for days, but after it was washed and combed the damage was hardly noticeable (except to her, of course). Now, years later, the damage has completely grown out.
I tried to find Mr. Van Dyke's e-mail address so I could send him a personal thank-you for saving her hair, and possibly her life, but never did locate one. I was never a big fan of his movies or TV shows, but I do feel indebted to him.
Oh, the picture came out terribly.
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!