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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).
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
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
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
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.
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.
"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.
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
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!
8:30? Hell no! Gotta catch Adult Swim! =P
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.
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.
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...
I'm surprised this thread is not modded higher - until very recently, I got up ay 7 am (or before!) on Saturdays to whatch cartoons with my kid, who is now 7. I know a hell of a lot of people don't dig it, for the both oft-maligned and praised factor in this thread - toy tie-ins - but we watched the freaking hell out of the first three seasons of Digimon. Totally kickass. Then you had in the last couple years these crazy cartoons like Fighting Foodons - not only was that hella f***ed up but also pretty damn funny.
Now, Digimon got re-angled at a younger audience, but the risky cartoons (not risqué, risky - too weird to get popular) have all been cancelled and there's just nothing there. Makes me really sad - I LOVE saturday morning for cartoons, just any cartoons. Spoon up some sugar bombs with the kid before mom wakes up - hell, maybe even wake and bake before I wake the boy up - and watch the hell out of four hours of cartoons.
Also, I agree with other posters that toy tie-ins are totally important! Yes, it's a scam to take your money as a parent, but it rocks to connect with both the cartoon and the kids by having the digivices, the action figures, etc. - it gives you a whole mythology to explore early creativity, etc. I guess in the new family-values world that mythology is provided by religion, but not in my house, bub.
F*** sunday and church, my son and I want cartoons back on track.
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.
There is also a "wide, yawning gulf between a father who takes an interest in his child's life in order to be a part of it" and one who wouldnt be caught dead having anythign to do with it and considering it something meaningless, stupid or pathetic. You sound to me like the later.
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.
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
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
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.
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...
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!