The Death of Saturday Morning Cartoons

4:30 AM.

At 4:30 AM, I would crawl out of bed at the mere age of 11, hop into the dining room where a TV was (there was one in my room and in the basement, but the dining room... well, it was just kinda cool). My grandma and my mom were asleep (sometimes not mom since she had trouble sleeping) and I would turn on NBC 3 (I think it was still 3 back then) and watch.... Dudley Do-Right!

The year is 1996, and I'm watching Saturday Morning cartoons as they start at 5AM. No, you didn't misread that: Five in the morning! It was Dudley Do-Right followed by Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales. So, in essence, the first hour the local affiliate would put on was left-over cartoons from 30 years ago. It didn't matter since they basically revived the entire Rocky & Bullwinkle thing not too earlier.

1996. My god... THAT was the golden year for me and animation!

When I was growing up, Saturday Morning was special, and I'm sure it was like that for millions of kids over a bunch of decades! Waking up, eating cereal, watching hours and hours of TV on end until noon, maybe even until 1PM if you were lucky (ABC would sometimes show an awesome little Saturday Matinee), then run around and have fun for the rest of the day. CBS, ABC, Fox Kids, Kids WB.... the only networks that didn't have stuff for you were NBC and UPN, but UPN came on on Sunday's, so it kinda made up for it.

What was the line-up back then? God, I couldn't tell you the full thing, but I do remember catching "The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat", "Project G.e.e.K.e.R.", and "Garfield" were on CBS. ABC... "The Bugs & Tweety Show", "ABC Weekend Special (Which was awesome because they made books into cartoons!)", and a bunch of shows that only lasted on season. Kids WB? WOW! "Animaniacs", "Pinky & The Brain", "Freakazoid!". And FOX? OH MAN I LOVED FOX KIDS! "Eek! the Cat", "The Tick", "X-Men", "Batman: The Animated Series"....

A lot of the shows back then didn't last. Project G.e.e.K.e.R. only made it for a season, which sucked because I loved how insane it was. A lot ohave been forgotten thanks to time and all that sugar rotting my brains, but it was a hell of a time to be an animated fan!

1996! My god, it's like the golden age of animation! Saturday Morning was packed with cartoons, and weekdays were just as great! Disney bought time on one of the UHF Stations and would show cartoons for 2 hours after school (Good Troop, Tale Spin, Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers), FOX Kids had a 2 hour block as well (Pretty much anything they could cram on there!). The Simpsons was still going strong, the world was introduced to King of the Hill, "Beavis & Butt-Head" were still going strong and the movie was being released at the end of the year... It was great! Toy Story had come out the previous year and was already effecting the way people did cartoons.

Meanwhile, MTV was giving a voice to animatiors the world over with shows like The Maxx, Liquid Television, Aeon Flux, and countless others. Duckman was born on USA, Cartoon Network was premering tons of cartoons! Oh, and Cool World was on HBO nearly once a day. That was awesome.

I think I watched more TV than anyone should, and I also read a lot. But you know what, I'm going away from the point of all of this.

Fox Kids has killed Saturday Morning Cartoons. Or, more acurately, Fox Killed Saturday Morning Cartoons. But I'll explain that in a munute.

From 1998 - 2001, animation peaked. There were dozens of new cartoons every month it seemed! There was a demand from networks like NBC to compete with The Simpsons. In return, David Spade got his own cartoon on NBC, another show called God, the Devil, and Bob premeried and proved to be a very adult cartoon that delt with amture themes, Clerks got an animated cartoon on ABC, and the Big 4 I mentioned earlier were still pumping out a ton of stuff. Unfortuantly, Clerks, God, the Devil, and Bob, and the David Spade cartoon I mentioned all had one thing in common: 2 weeks. As in, they aired for 2 weeks before getting cancelled.

The 1990's had seen something happen to animation that hadn't for years: Creators were in control. Thanks to the success of Disney, Nickeldeon Studios as well as Cartoon Network were able to roll the dice and create more and more original content. A market had been tapped that had existed, but due to the overt comemrcalism of 1980's cartoons, was restrained. John Kricfalusi, the man behind Ren & Stimpy , said it best; "The 80's was a dark time for cartoons because it was all about marketing. After I and a bunch of other guys left, we decided to make the cartoons WE loved. Nickelodeon was OK with it... eh, to a degree."

Animators were experimenting and growing during the 1990's! There was little, if any, restraint on what even the normally conservative studios would allow. Even Beavis & Butt-Head was rarely held back. Animators saw this as a chance to expand beyond what they thought was a "kids medium" and created things such as "Ren & Stimpy", "The Oblongs", "Aeon Flux", Batman: The Animated Series", among countless others. Animation variety shows popped up on MTV with Liquid Television and Cartoon Sushi, giving countless animators an outlet to express themselves.

Sadly, all things must end.

With 2001, a few things happened: We got a new president, we saw the birth and rise of the Internet, we faced 9/11, we saw the beginnings of an economic problem, and we saw the same thing that hampered development in the first place: Corporate control.

By the year 2000, a deal that gave exculsive broadcasting rights to Time/Warner media to broadcast Looney Toons was finally realized and Looney Toons went off the air on ABC, Nickelodeon, and soon even the WB. CBS began cutting back it's once legendary cartoon line-up, instead relying on Nickeldeon cartoons, and later Nick Jr. and other Viacom properties. In 2002, NBC also began showing cartoons on a block called "Discovery Kids". The block was basically them fufilling a federal requirement to have 2 hours of educational children broadcasting a week.

Countless others would follow suit.

ABC had been stripped of any and all original programming, replaced with simply replaying cartoons from The Disney Channel, which had begun cutting back on it's cartoons. Cartoon Network would soon begin breaking a promise of "All Cartoons, All the Time, Forever and ever, until the End of Time!" by airing live-action movies and producing live-action segments. Nickeldeon also began cutting back on it's animated programing, with Nicktoons being cut back and, by 2006, closing all operations in Orlando, FL, and leaving it entirely in California.

Fox Kids, lated The Fox Box and finally 4Kids TV, was almost the last man standing. By 2005, Kids WB! was still showing cartoons and introducing new shows that pushed kids imaginations while 4Kids TV did just the same. In 2006, the CW was born and in 2007 swallowed Kids WB. In 2008, 4Kids TV bought airtime on the CW, merging it's shows and productions with that of the former Kids WB.

In 2008, we are now left with, on network TV, the following:
CBS: KEWlopolis - A 3-Hour block of E/I-Friendly TV
ABC: ABC Kids - A 4-Hour block with 3 hours of E/I-Friendly TV and an hour of Power Rangers
NBC : Qubo - 3-Hour block of, you guessed it, E/I-Friendly TV
My Networks: Nothing, up to local affiliates to meet 3-hour E/I requirement
Fox: 4Kids TV - 4-5 Hours of cartoons
CW: 4Kids TV - 4-5 Hours of cartoons


Well, today, Fox did the unthinkable: THEY ARE ELIMINATING SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS FOR INFOMERCIALS!

God, that took forever for me to get to, didn't it? Well, I had to make sure you understood the history, how we got here, and.... well, what this means.

It mean's only the CW will show cartoons. REAL cartoons. Not this education crap! Not this, "Let's have a moderate amount of fun while learning how to be freinds!" CRAP! None of this weak cartoons in order to preach to our kids because we're too fucking lazy as parents to! NO! IT MEANS THERE'S ONLY ONE NETWORK WITH BALLS TO ACTUALLY FUCKING ENTERTAIN YOU! TO MAKE YOU LAUGH! TO MAKE YOU HAPPY!

Fox Kids meant something to me! It wasn't just cartoons, they actually had awesome contests, prizes, and got you involved! They had polls, fun things to do, and a lot more. It... it was just plain awesome! Even today I kinda envied kids because 4Kids TV actually did a lot to keep promoting this stuff and getting kids entertained and happy.

Cable television saved animation... until it destroyed it over the last 5-7 years.

Cartoon Network has only about 8-10 animated shows they air, Toon Disney and Nicktoons TV have both cut back on airing reruns of older and classic shows, and now we're down to, in essence, only one network showing original content. Boomerang even stopped showing Looney Toons last year and the greatness of such animators as Tex Avery are being lost.

We have a generation that is being deprived stuff like Daria and Futurama. We're taking away their chance to know how much fun there is in animation and that world of fantasy. We're taking away that joy of waking up on Saturday morning, eating cereal, and having fun. Some people have said cartoons today are too violent. So far, I'm not seeing it. The roughest shows I can think of are Ben 10: Alien Force, Clone Wars, and Total Drama Island, all of which are Y7 and are fairly tame (save Total Drama Islan, which carries a TV-PG ratining and... yeah, don't let your kids watch this).

It could be argued that kids today have the internet and and creating their own new traditions. We can also say that there are more options now, such as video games, DVD's, the internet, and countless other distractions. Kids are pressured to do a lot more now and participate in more events and activites.



As far as I'm concerned, the current economic crisis, along with the one in 2002-03, and the rise of Flash animation, killed the cartoon as we know it. In 2003 - 2006, it could be argued, successfuly, that Flash ccould actually save Animation, giving more and more artists a chance to do something interesting and neat. And, in fact, that has happened more times than I can count. But it has, thus far, been used to create very cheap and poor-looking animation for Boardcast networks and rarely get's to the same levels traditional hand-drawn animation ever had.


So, what can save Animation? What can save Saturday Morning Cartoons for a new generation? Anyone who goes out there and demands to create a great cartoon. Show you have a market, show you have drive, and show that you KNOW you can create something incredible! Disney, Viacom, Time/Warner... they may all be afraid right now of going back into the land of television and putting on shows, but you have to try.

To the animators of tomorrow, I urge you all to do one thing: Read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. He will show the way.


If you would like to learn more about Saturday Morning Cartoons and the E/I standard, please check out these links:
Saturday Morning Cartoons: A Short History
The E/I FCC Requirement
Weekday Morning Cartoons