No more Saturday morning cartoons.

[Guy Gardener]

I'm trying to remember if there was a crossover period in the late 90s where I still cared about 7.00am reruns of the Muppet Show and my capacity to set my VCR timer competently?

 

[The Old Mixer]

This one holds a special place in my memory for coming on around 7:30, before the Saturday morning cartoon block proper really got started, so it kicked things off:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au5cUpUT2ig[/yt]

Other cartoons came and went in those years, but this one was always the main event for me:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANCjrzSJOsU[/yt]

In the great hall of the Justice League, there are assembled the world's three greatest heroes...and Aquaman.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

E
*Mario Brothers
*Captain N

I remember all those video game shows. Those are in the category of things that seem like the greatest thing in the world when you're 7 but when you watch them as an adult they are just really freaking stupid.

I wonder how Captain N would have dealt with the existence of FPSes. It's easy to make platformers not seem like violence, not so easy with FPSes.

 

[Admiral2]

As I noted in an earlier post, "The Herculoids" was probably my favorite of the 1960s sci-fantasy Hana Barbera cartoons. Even today, I think it has one of the coolest signature scores as you can hear...



That "wavering", Theremin-like, under melody (or whatever the proper musical term is) still sends nostalgic chills up and down my spine!

Say, do any of you (who remember this show) think it might have been HB's homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom and Venus stories? Something that would evoke a similar feeling of "first generation space opera" but a concept they could call their own and thus not have to deal with royalties? Meh, I'm probably reading too much into it.

Sincerely,

Bill

All of HB's adventure series are in one way or another children of Jonny Quest (which, I contend, is actually the best of their 60s sci-fi series). I don't think they thought that deeply about Burroughs or its space opera legacy. I think they just said "okay, the next one's on a planet with a Tarzan family and dinosaurs. Alex, you design it. Hoyt, you do the music."

 

[ManOnTheWave]

I watched anything and everything, but what I remember most was Scooby Doo, Where Are You? and whatever they were calling the Warner Brothers cartoons that season.

 

[Redfern]

As I noted in an earlier post, "The Herculoids" was probably my favorite of the 1960s sci-fantasy Hana Barbera cartoons. Even today, I think it has one of the coolest signature scores as you can hear...



That "wavering", Theremin-like, under melody (or whatever the proper musical term is) still sends nostalgic chills up and down my spine!

Say, do any of you (who remember this show) think it might have been HB's homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom and Venus stories? Something that would evoke a similar feeling of "first generation space opera" but a concept they could call their own and thus not have to deal with royalties? Meh, I'm probably reading too much into it.

Sincerely,

Bill

All of HB's adventure series are in one way or another children of Jonny Quest (which, I contend, is actually the best of their 60s sci-fi series). I don't think they thought that deeply about Burroughs or its space opera legacy. I think they just said "okay, the next one's on a planet with a Tarzan family and dinosaurs. Alex, you design it. Hoyt, you do the music."

Yeah, that's probably closer to the truth. "Tarzan with alien dinosaurs" pretty well sums it up.

Apropos of nothing, but I'd love to have a collection of all the Hanna Barbera "action" music and sci-fi sound effects (on separate tracks, of course, free of any dialog).

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Galileo7]

As a boy in the '70s, Saturday mornings watching ABC, NBC and CBS was the gateway to the weekend. We never complained about getting up on Saturday Mornings to watch the then new series: Ark II, Space Academy/Jason Of Star Command, Land Of The Lost, Return To The Planet Of The Apes(animated), Star Trek(animated), Flash Gordon(animated), Scooby-Doo and Super Friends.

 

[Mudang Harada]

i wish i would rember what shows i was watching.

 

[martok2112]

My Saturday mornings were comprised of

The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show
Fat Albert
Superfriends (in various incarnations)
Batman (the animated series that got Adam West and Burt Ward to reprise their live action roles.

Batman the 1966 series in reruns. (Usually ran in pairs, so that meant you caught parts one and two at once.)

Shazam

The Secrets of Isis. (Joanna Cameron was probably my first crush, and I was only five at the time....what was that funny sensation twixt me walking parts?)

Space Academy-- live action sci-fi kids show For a short time, my parents banned me from watching sci-fi shows because they thought I was overly obsessed with them. (Thankfully, a measure that did not last forever.)

Jason of Star Command-- between the two, easily my favorite. I still watch it on DVD to this day.


In my adult years (late 90's) I enjoyed X-Men and Wing Commander Academy (which featured voice actors from the live action segments of the video games Wing Commander III and IV-- Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys-Davies, Tom Wilson) , as well as (for guilty pleasure) Street Fighter.

 

[Vanyel]

As I was older, the Tick got me to watching Saturday mornings again. The Pirates of Dark Water got me hooked too.

 

[bbjeg]

^Not sure how I forgot to mention The Tick.

 

[publiusr]

Now there may yet be a reprise for broadcast cartoons. A lot of local broadcasters offer a second digital channel. It can be a weather radar, or ME TV and the like.

I might try one with all cartoons:

Wow. My Saturday morning fare consisted of things like:

Super Friends
Star Trek (animated)
Land of the Lost
Ark II
Space Academy
Jason of Star Command
Shazam/Isis

Definitely a mixture of cartoon and live action.

That's a good mix.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

A private board I often visit presented a similar thread. Here's what i stated there...

Forgive me if this news does not make me wage as nostalgic as some people think I should.

If the only visual communications medium we had were the three national broadcast networks we had as kids, then yeah, the loss of "Saturday morning cartoons" would hit me a bit harder. But that isn't the case. It hasn't been that way for a couple of decades, maybe three depending upon your parameters. The rise of cable, satellite, videotape (both Beta & VHS), either purchased or recorded off the air, DVD & Blu-Ray, and now the internet with a boatload of "streaming services" completely changed the playing field. One can, in theory, watch nothing but animation 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

During the 1950s through the 70s, we were at the "mercy" of broadcast television since that was the only choice we had. If they deemed to air cartoons exclusively upon Saturday mornings, well, we took what we could get. But with the advent of "playback" media and the development of cable television offering "niche" programming, the "Big 3" no longer held a monopoly. Probably the biggest "boon" was Ted Turner's aquisition of the Warner Bros. and MGM libraries. This gave enough material on hand that he could risk creating a channel that aired nothing BUT cartoons 'round the clock! Or, did the Disney Channel start first? I can't remember. But the point is, we now had entire networks devoted to younger audiences rather than a 4 to 5 hour block once a week.

these channels spawned others. Some were "sibling" channels, like Toon Disney and Cartoon Network's "Boomerang", but others independent of them appeared like Nickelodeon, which has since spawned its own "sibling" channels like NickToons.

With all that, how could the "classic" NBC, Cbs, ABC (and later FOX) compete? The intended audience numbers have dwindled for years. Better to focus upon a demographic who will actually tune in, see the ads, buy the products which will in turn motivate ad makers to "buy" air-time to showcase their products.

Now, with streaming services and portable devices, the landscape is changing again. For fear of sounding like an old fart, kids today don't realize how good they have it when it comes to animated fare. Then again, our parents (or grandparents in some cases) could have made similar claims. We as kids could kick back Saturday mornings in our 'jammies eating cereal as we watched cartoons, having a choice of 3 networks (depending upon reception, of course). When our parents (or grandparents) were young, they had to travel to the local movie theater to catch whatever shorts preceded the main feature. Some were cartoons, others live action. And those movie houses just had a single screen, so no equivalent of flipping channels. And I doubt the patrons would be allowed to enter if they were wearing pajamas. Yeah, in comparison, we as kids had it better than the prior generation(s); but in turn, kids today have far, FAR more selection than we did.

So, no, I don't really "weep" for the loss of the last children's block on network television. It was barely a drop in a large ocean of choices, anyway.

Sincerely,

Bill

THIS.

Also, with the Saturday morning blocks gone, animation in North America can grow up above and beyond the strictures that are constraining it.

With regards to Vortex; if the CW had put any effort into commissioning new animated series, it might have been worth it to tune in. But they didn't, and therefore, this was the inevitable result.

Fear not, Saturday morning is not completely gone on standard non-premium cable or standard non-cable/satellite TV, there are still blocks to watch:

PBS Kids, each weekday and weekend (United States and Canada)

TVO Kids (TVO stands for TV Ontario), each weekday and weekend, Ontario and Western New York state

Kids CBC, each weekday and weekend, Canada and the USA

For me, I remember most of the shows of the 70's, 80's, 90's and 2000's-way too many to list from each epoch.

 

[Admiral2]

As I noted in an earlier post, "The Herculoids" was probably my favorite of the 1960s sci-fantasy Hana Barbera cartoons. Even today, I think it has one of the coolest signature scores as you can hear...



That "wavering", Theremin-like, under melody (or whatever the proper musical term is) still sends nostalgic chills up and down my spine!

Say, do any of you (who remember this show) think it might have been HB's homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom and Venus stories? Something that would evoke a similar feeling of "first generation space opera" but a concept they could call their own and thus not have to deal with royalties? Meh, I'm probably reading too much into it.

Sincerely,

Bill

All of HB's adventure series are in one way or another children of Jonny Quest (which, I contend, is actually the best of their 60s sci-fi series). I don't think they thought that deeply about Burroughs or its space opera legacy. I think they just said "okay, the next one's on a planet with a Tarzan family and dinosaurs. Alex, you design it. Hoyt, you do the music."

Yeah, that's probably closer to the truth. "Tarzan with alien dinosaurs" pretty well sums it up.

Apropos of nothing, but I'd love to have a collection of all the Hanna Barbera "action" music and sci-fi sound effects (on separate tracks, of course, free of any dialog).

Sincerely,

Bill

You're not the only one. The way I hear it, the problem with collecting all that music stems from the fact that the guy who wrote all of it - Hoyt Curtin - never kept anything on paper and only used the music as needed during production, so only a few bits of the massive whole survived past the lives of their cartoons.

Of course, thank heaven for YouTube, where a bunch of stuff made it:
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhCpLSRuov4[/yt]

Also, with the Saturday morning blocks gone, animation in North America can grow up above and beyond the strictures that are constraining it.

Saturday Morning didn't put those strictures in place. America's first animators did.

If Walt Disney had animated a Shakespeare play or western epic when he first started out, animation would be treated like what it is, a technique that can be used to tell any kind of story for any kind of audience. But instead he started with a whistling mouse on a steamboat and Grimm's fairy tales, and the animators that came after him followed suit, so that the impression was implanted in the collective American conscious that cartoons are for kids and adults can dabble every once in a while. Saturday Morning is a symptom of that mindset. Getting rid of it doesn't change anything.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Fear not, Saturday morning is not completely gone on standard non-premium cable or standard non-cable/satellite TV, there are still blocks to watch:

PBS Kids, each weekday and weekend (United States and Canada)

TVO Kids (TVO stands for TV Ontario), each weekday and weekend, Ontario and Western New York state

Kids CBC, each weekday and weekend, Canada and the USA

For me, I remember most of the shows of the 70's, 80's, 90's and 2000's-way too many to list from each epoch

Don't know about the TV Ontario but the other two are entirely too vanilla and wholesome to substitute for good ol' Saturday Morning Junk Food.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Saturday Morning didn't put those strictures in place. America's first animators did.

If Walt Disney had animated a Shakespeare play or western epic when he first started out, animation would be treated like what it is, a technique that can be used to tell any kind of story for any kind of audience. But instead he started with a whistling mouse on a steamboat and Grimm's fairy tales, and the animators that came after him followed suit, so that the impression was implanted in the collective American conscious that cartoons are for kids and adults can dabble every once in a while. Saturday Morning is a symptom of that mindset. Getting rid of it doesn't change anything.

Noted. But at least the urge to do animation like that is gone on commercial TV without a venue for it.

Don't know about the TV Ontario but the other two are entirely too vanilla and wholesome to substitute for good ol' Saturday Morning Junk Food.

Many parents (and educators, who were the prime antagonists against the Saturday morning blocks) these days only want what's on those blocks now, so unfortunately what you and I might want doesn't matter.

Oh well, there's always these cable channels in the USA and Canada:

Cartoon Network

Boomerang

YTV

Teletoon

Teletoon Retro

Nickleodeon (U.S. and Canada)

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

I have most of my favorite cartoons from the 80s and 90s on DVD, so my kid will get to watch those and not bother with most of the modern shit kids programming. I'll throw in Adventure Time, too, since it's so friggin awesome.

Voltron
DuckTales
Tailspin
Transformers
GI Joe
Thudercats
The Real Ghostbusters
TMNT
Winnie the Pooh
Chip'n Dale Rescue Rangers
Legend of Zelda
Super Mario Bros Super Show
Dungeons & Dragons


Don't Have Yet
Babar
David the Gnome
X-Men
Gummy Bears
He-Man
Darkwing Duck
The Pirates of Dark Water
Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars
Batman: the Animated Series
Conan the Adventurer

Cartoons used to be cool, with like effort put into the art and voice acting. Sat morning and 12-4 were so great when I was little. Too many now look like a 5 year old put them together on an etch-a-sketch.

 

[Redfern]

Of course, thank heaven for YouTube, where a bunch of stuff made it:

Thanks for linking that clip! I probably spent close to two hours playing that particular member's JQ music clips.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Admiral2]

Thanks for linking that clip! I probably spent close to two hours playing that particular member's JQ music clips.

I know, right? It's impossible not to get caught up in them!

 

[scotpens]

If Walt Disney had animated a Shakespeare play or western epic when he first started out, animation would be treated like what it is, a technique that can be used to tell any kind of story for any kind of audience. But instead he started with a whistling mouse on a steamboat and Grimm's fairy tales, and the animators that came after him followed suit, so that the impression was implanted in the collective American conscious that cartoons are for kids and adults can dabble every once in a while. Saturday Morning is a symptom of that mindset. Getting rid of it doesn't change anything.

From the earliest days of animation, cartoons were shown in movie theaters and meant to entertain audiences of all ages. Look at some of the Fleischer Brothers' cartoons from the early 1930s, especially the early Betty Boops. Those were definitely not made just for children!

Rather than a symptom, I'd say that Saturday morning is the cause of the attitude that cartoons are "just for kids."

(And Disney didn't start with Mickey Mouse. The first cartoons he personally produced, directed and animated were the Alice Comedies, a series that blended animation and live action.)