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

An end of an era...

[SternisheFan]

I was born in '59, basically raised on TV. In fact I was my family's walking TV Guide. Cartoons then were mostly the repeats of what were shown in theaters. Heckle & Jeckle cartoons were strange, Bugs Bunny 'toons were un-uncensored, and U.S. militarily bent. Tom & Jerry's violence would never be shown today, too much violence in them. A lot of the gags when those cartoons were made then tried to entertain the kids and the adults, with double entendres that would never be allowed to be shown to today's kids. Somehow, we survived.

I can remember turning on the TV early Sunday morning, before anyone else in the house was awake, and after the early morning test pattern went by, Davey & Goliath would fill my mind with 'magical images' of a wondrous, magical, moral world. It was a very nice time to grow up in, at least until the grownups woke up, but I digress.

R.I.P., Saturday morning cartoons. I guess it's all real news for the kids of today...

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

[witherstaff]

I've been happy with Phineas and Ferb. Sure it's Disney, still it's just oddball enough to make it worth watching. The main characters are engineers finally something neater than Handy Smurf or the doozers.

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:not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. As someone with 12 years in the industry (why I am posting anonymously) it isn't that people aren't watching TV. People watch loads of TV, and if you want to watch cartoons on saturday morning you can. You can watch one type on Nick, another type on Disney, another type on Cartoon Network and... the issue is that the households with kids who decide not to get cable aren't large enough now to justify the expense vs profit.

There are two things going on here:

1. Profit-seeking.
This is cost/revenue stuff. If you can get $5 million for 10 million viewers with production costs of $4 million, you've just made $1 million. If you can get the same viewership while spending $1.5 million on cheaper programming, you've just made $3.5 million. And remember, these types of numbers aren't just about total viewers, you get much better ad prices for different demographics... an example might be The Office, which never had spectacular ratings yet the ratings it did have skewed towards affluent and younger. They could license cartoons instead of paying to have them made, but have decided they make more running other stuff.

2. Market fragmentation.

There will never be another Cheers, where 50-75% of the country watched the finale, or where everyone at work the next day had watched last night. They still watch boatloads of TV, they simply have 180+ channels to do it on hence why niche (and yes, cheaper) programming is a valid way to focus *unless* you are a network. Everyone wants as many viewers as possible, in the most desired-demos possible... but due to fragmentation, you can still win the night by targeting a specific niche, whether ethnicity or class or gender (gender, being 50/50, is often the better bet).

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: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: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).....