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Saturday-morning cartoon

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A Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming which was typically scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the 1990s. This genre is often referred to by its critics as "illustrated radio" (a term coined by Chuck Jones), because of its focus on voice performances, music, and sound effects over animation and visual quality. [1] In the United States, the generally accepted times considered to be Saturday mornings are 8am-12pm Eastern. Most of the stations in Pacific Time generally follow the Central time schedule, which is one hour earlier than Eastern. In addition, until the late 1970s, American networks also had a schedule of children's programming on Sunday mornings, though most programs at this time were repeats of Saturday morning shows that were already cancelled and/or out of production.

In some markets, some shows were pre-empted in favor of syndicated or local programming such as Heathcliff or various programs.

Technique

An animated feature film may use 24 different drawings per second of finished film, sometimes even more, if several characters are on the screen simultaneously. Due to lower budgets, Saturday morning cartoons are often produced with a minimum amount of animation drawings, sometimes no more than 3 or 4 per second. In addition, the movements of the characters are often repeated, very limited, or even confined to mouths and eyes only.

Early Saturday morning cartoons

Although the Saturday morning timeslot had always featured a great deal of children's fare before, the idea of commissioning new animated series for broadcast on Saturday mornings really caught on in the mid-1960s, when the networks realized that they could concentrate kids' viewing on that one morning to appeal to advertisers. Furthermore, limited animation, such as that produced by such studios as Filmation Associates and Hanna-Barbera Productions, was economical enough to produce in sufficient quantity to fill the four hour time slot, as compared to live-action programming. The experiment proved successful, and the time slot was filled with profitable programming.

Watchgroup backlash

Parents' lobby groups like Action for Children's Television appeared in the late 1960s. They voiced concerns about the presentation of violence, anti-social attitudes and stereotypes in Saturday morning cartoons. By the 1970s, these groups exercised enough influence that the TV networks felt compelled to lay down more stringent content rules for the animation houses.

Critics have complained that this proceeded to the point where the very depiction of conflict and jeopardy and the basic elements of drama and suspense were severely restricted, and the artists were left with few avenues of expression. The prohibition against the depiction of anti-social elements often prompted conformist stories, such as in the Smurfs series, where almost any individual initiative often resulted in trouble for the group and therefore had to be avoided.

Saturday morning animation programming restricted itself to certain clearly-defined types of shows:

In a more constructive direction, the networks were encouraged to create educational spots that endeavoured to use animation for enriching content. Far and away the most successful effort was the Schoolhouse Rock series on ABC, which became a television classic.

Decline

The decline of the timeslot began in the mid 1980s for a variety of reasons, including:

  • increasing popularity of home video; this made quality animated productions (like the Walt Disney Company's classic animated features) easily accessible, which encouraged unfavourable comparisons with typical television animation.
  • the rise of cable TV channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network which provided appealing children's entertainment throughout the week during all hours, making Saturday morning timeslots far less important to viewers and advertisers.
  • the proliferation of the commercial toy or toyline-oriented animated program in the 1980s also led to advocacy group backlash and a decline in such programming. Many of these programs implemented public service messages at their conclusion to address these criticisms.
  • many of the same networks who often showed Saturday morning cartoons began airing similar programs in the afternoons during the weekdays, usually when most children were out of school already.
  • an increase in children's participation in Saturday activities outside of the home.

Current state of Saturday morning cartoons

While animated production is still present on most broadcast networks on Saturday mornings, it has been noticeably reduced. Because of FCC-mandated regulations that began in the mid-1990s, broadcast stations were forced to program a minimum of three hours of children's educational/informational ("E/I") programming.

To help their affiliates comply with the regulations, broadcast networks began to reorganize their efforts to adhere to the mandates, so its affiliates wouldn't bear the burden of scheduling the shows themselves on their own time. This almost always meant that the educational programming was placed during the Saturday morning cartoon block. NBC abandoned its Saturday morning cartoon lineup in 1992, replacing it with a Saturday morning edition of The Today Show and adding an all live-action teen-oriented block, TNBC, which featured Saved By The Bell, California Dreams, and other teen comedies. Even though the educational content was minimal to nonexistent, NBC labelled all the live-action shows with an E/I rating.

CBS followed NBC's example by producing a Saturday edition of The Early Show in the first two hours of its lineup and an all live-action block of children's programming. The experiment lasted a few months, and CBS brought back their animated CBS Storybreak series.

In 2004, ABC was the last of the broadcast networks to add a Saturday morning edition of their morning news program, Good Morning America in the first hour of its lineup. Prior to that, especially through the early 1990s, it was not uncommon for ABC affiliates to preempt part or all of ABC's cartoon lineup with local news programming.

Fox carried little or no E/I programming, leaving the responsibility of scheduling the E/I shows to the affiliates themselves. The WB was far more accommodating; for several years, they aired the history-themed Histeria! five days per week, leaving only a half-hour of E/I programs up to the local producers to program.

Units of larger entertainment companies

ABC

By the mid-1990s, broadcast networks were now becoming units of larger entertainment companies. ABC was bought by The Walt Disney Company, who began airing all Disney-made programming by 1997 and cancelled non-Disney made productions, most notably The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show. After being purchased by Disney in 1996, ABC began airing their Saturday morning cartoons in a programming block titled Disney's One Saturday Morning before switching to a block of live-action and animated programs titled ABC Kids. Many of the block's shows are produced by Disney and also air on The Disney Channel or Toon Disney.

CBS

CBS was purchased by Viacom in 1999 and began airing Nickelodeon-made programming from 1999 until 2006, a year after Viacom was split in two with Nickelodeon going to Viacom and CBS becoming a part of CBS Corporation. The two parties ended the Nick Jr.-branded block, which was be replaced by the DIC Entertainment-produced KOL's Saturday Morning Secret Slumber Party on CBS in fall 2006. A reimagining of the block, "KEWLopolis", with a greater amount of animation, premiered in fall 2007.

FOX Kids/4Kids TV

From 1990 until 2006, smaller networks like FOX aired child-friendly programming, former ones are FOX Kids and The FOX BOX, both animated and live-action, on weekday afternoons in the hours after most American children were let out of school (outcompeting the syndicated afternoon children's programming on the remaining unaffiliated channels in the process). Several animated series of note, such as Batman: The Animated Series, Eek! The Cat, Bobby's World, and Animaniacs, came out of these afternoon programming blocks, and some later appeared on their networks' Saturday morning programming blocks.

Kids' WB

Every weekday afternoon, and sometimes mornings, too, until 2001. During the era of weekday blocks, Histeria! was usually included to provide E/I content. Kids' WB moved, name intact, to The CW when The WB merged with UPN. Kids' WB airs Saturday mornings on The CW as it has since 2006, but will end its run on May 17 2008. A block of programming from 4Kids Entertainment, separate from the Fox series, will replace it on May 24 2008.

NBC and ION

NBC, which had a partnership with the Discovery Kids network to broadcast the channel's original programming, reentered the Saturday morning arena with new, original programming in September 2006 as part of the qubo "edutainment" partnership, which involves numerous parties, including parent company NBC Universal, ION Media Networks, Scholastic Press, Nelvana, and Classic Media, all of whom providing the programs for the Saturday morning block. qubo also airs on ION Television, which is part-owned by NBC. A Spanish version airs on NBC-owned Telemundo on weekends.

See also

References

  1. ^ Stephen Thompson (April 8th, 1998). "Chuck Jones". Onion Inc. Retrieved 2008-02-08. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

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