The Era of Saturday Morning Cartoons Is Dead

An anonymous reader writes Gizmodo published an article on Saturday pointing out that, with The CW having aired its last episodes of Vortexx cartoons last weekend, this is the first weekend in the United States with no Saturday morning cartoons playing on national broadcast stations. NBC stopped airing Saturday morning cartoons in 1992, CBS stopped shortly after, and ABC followed suit in 2004. Gizmodo failed to take into account the Public Broadcast Station (PBS), but during an age of instant online media access...and cable...the oversight is understandable because everyone has already moved on. TV is dead. Long live the Internet.

Comments

not quite

[jaymz666]

billions still watch TV. Not quite dead yet

Re:not quite

[reanjr]

But those people are typically too poor to have high speed internet. They don't spend money. That's why everything is reality TV now. Anything else is too expensive to produce because the ad dollars just aren't there.

What killed it?

[kuzb]

Simple. They made shit and kids didn't want to watch it. They butchered shows so badly and made so many rules that it was impossible to make anything other than shit.

Speaking for myself

[fyngyrz]

I don't think the Internet killed Saturday morning cartoons. I think corporate-inspired churn in pursuit of ever more income pushed out some very lovely and entertaining cartoons in favor of what was, quite frankly, awful junk. Poorly drawn, badly scored, badly scripted, and almost uniformly missing the hilarious innuendo and subtleties that were present in your typical 'toon from the nineteen-fifites and -sixties.

I would *still* be willing to sit down for a morning of road runner, bugs bunny and crew, daffy duck, foghorn leghorn, jetsons, flintstones, pepe le pew, and so on. I would have encouraged my kids to watch. But it all went away, I "encouraged" my kids to ignore the television entirely (with a lock and key), and that's part of the story of how broadcast television completely lost one family. Toons were definitely part of the problem. Between that, and the evolution of news from at least somewhat "this is what's happening" to almost entirely "this is what you should think", broadcast television became exceedingly unwelcome in my home. Cable went soon after.

Re:Speaking for myself

[epyT-R]

So what? Everything must be PC, sterile, and conflict free? This attitude is the reason TV, movies, (and probably games soon) are so goddamn boring. They all play out like soaps now.

Looney Tunes

[p51d007]

Looney Tunes, Bugs, Elmer Road Runner etc...THOSE were cartoons. What happened is the political correctness destroyed them. Speedy Gonzales, nope, making fun of Mexicans, Sylvester, Elmer, nope, makes fun of someone with a speech problem. Then you run into the whole "too violent" problem. Daffy walks into a shotgun blast from Elmer, the Coyote falls off a cliff, hits the ground and an Acme safe falls on him, too violent. Even the reruns the cartoon network use to show have been butchered. They show the coyote at the edge of a cliff, then on the ground a few seconds later. Oh yeah and the video games, crap on tv isn't violent? Political correctness destroyed the Saturday morning cartoon along with instant access streaming, and political correctness is destroying America and the rest of western civilization along with multiculturalism.

Re:Looney Tunes

[mlts]

There is also the fact that cartoons were not obviously just advertisements for products. Yes, there was merchandising... but a Bugs Bunny cartoon stood alone... it wasn't something made to sell a Bugs doll or an Elmer-Fudd styled blunderbuss.

There is also the quality difference. The 1950s backdrops that were painted by hand versus crap where the characters barely move when dialog happens. It is nice to see a mouth move, not a square or triangle flash when a character makes dialog. Mainstream animation is junk for the most part.

The sad thing, there are still quality artists out there. You just don't see their animation work on TV because their work isn't selling something or is part of a merchandising campaign to get kids whining to their parents for yet another made-in-China toy that ends up tossed in the trash in less than a few months.

Re:Looney Tunes

[vux984]

Looney Tunes, Bugs, Elmer Road Runner etc...THOSE were cartoons.

And flinstones and jetsons... but while the looney toons violence is timeless... the flintstones humor hasn't aged well.

And Rocket Robin Hood and Hercules were from the same era and were shit.

Point is not everything pre-1970 was good, even if it was the golden age.

But yeah, the 70s and 80s had some hits ... smurfs, transformers, tom and jerry etc... but sure the end of the 80s was pretty bad... Smoggies remains fixed in my mind as the pinnacle of PC schlock.

But it rebounded, those died off, as even kids wouldn't watch them. And lots of 90s cartoons are solid ... from Tiny Toons and Animaniacs to Talespin, Darkwing Duck, The Tick, Dexters Lab....

And there's lots of good shows on today. Gravity Falls, Adventure Time, Phineas and Ferb to name a few...

Political correctness destroyed the Saturday morning cartoon

In a word no. What destroyed the "Saturday Morning Cartoon" is quite simply that the majority of people who want to watch cartoons have cable or satellite with 24 hour cartoon networks. It wasn't the internet or political correctness or streaming.

When I was a kid, saturday morning was about the only block of cartoons I could watch we lived around them in a sense. My kids? Have cartoon network, and ytv... they aren't going to even think to switch it to NBC or something for a 4 hour block once a week...

The internet and streaming, sure just more nails in the coffin, but it was already dead.

And Political correctness? Sure it set cartoons back in the late 80s, but its been 20 years since; and there are cartoons out now that are better than ever.

Re:Looney Tunes

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also the quality difference. The 1950s backdrops that were painted by hand versus crap where the characters barely move when dialog happens.

Do you know what killed the quality animation?

Saturday morning cartoons.

The early cartoons were shown in movies. When they switched to TV, they needed so much more new cartoons that it just wasn't possible to have any quality in the animation anymore.

When you think of 1960s and 1970s Saturday morning cartoons, don't think about the Looney Tunes that were made in the 1940s for movies. Think about Top Cat, Snagglepuss, Lippy the Lion & Hardy Har Har, Magilla Gorilla, Atom Ant, and all the other mass-produced drock from Hanna-Barbera.

Re:Looney Tunes

[CrimsonAvenger]

Which has little to do with the Political Correctness Police in the USA.

If the PC crowd decided that Speedy ought to be offensive to Mexicans, then it WAS offensive to Mexicans (by definition, even if Mexicans enjoyed it thoroughly).....

Sad but good riddance

[Virtucon]

When I was growing up cartoons meant something. Like Daffy Duck getting his head blown off or the Rabbit outwitting the dumb hunter. Saturdays were filled with the Coyote and the limitless bounty afforded him by ACME for any device necessary to attempt at catching the Roadrunner. I always wondered who delivered out in the middle of the desert and why he got it so fast? Shit now most of what I've seen from the 70s and up were warmed over commercials that were more about marketing to kids than really having fun. Sure there were the "educational" shows that came along but those were few and far between; the rest being tripe not worth even the electricity used to watch them, much less the brain drain.

When I saw Daffy's head getting blown off "censored" now it made me sad really because you can't blow up a cartoon duck anymore? Where has my country gone. So goodbye Saturday Morning cartoons full of marketing shit and hello Hentai Anime.

Re:Well....

[JustOK]

Scrappy Doo had a paw in the downfall too.

Re:Rose Glasses

[mrbester]

So it was fine for you to watch and enjoy them as a child but not for a child today because you subscribe to the ridiculous "imitation" dogma? Are you a violent racist wife-beating asshole or just an asshole?

Re:Good.

[ultranova]

Let's face it, Saturday morning cartoons from the 60s to the 80s were 90% garbage.

90% of everything is garbage. It's just that the oceans of time wash it out, leaving only the gold nuggets. Of course, an actual ocean will also have the same effect, which is why anime became such a hit in the West.

Re:Space Dandy is Japanese though.

[Khyber]

"On the other hand, as a modern (japanese) equivalent of Space Quest,"

Nope. SD is pretty much Cowboy BeBop with Excel Saga mixed in.