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What happened to Saturday morning Cartoons?

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M

MuggerMD

Banned
This morning I turned on the tv to watch some Soccer(Football). My son (2 year old) was with me so I thought I'd browse for cartoons for him too. I looked threw NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, and PBS. And there where no cartoons!

It was 7:30am, I looked on the guide for the next couple hours and nothing but infomercials.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CARTOONS???????
 
G

Gucci Messiah

Banned
Ratings dipped, advertisers pulled, and they became unprofitable ventures. Original content costs millions to produce and licensing shows from other countries isn't cheap. With the explosion of online video streaming, I don't see Saturday morning cartoon blocks making a comeback anytime soon.

RIP Foxbox

Mrs. Manky said:
Cartoon Network.

Nickelodeon.

Disney Channel.

Cartoons moved to cable.
Click to expand...

Couleurs said:
Probably channels like Nick/Disney/Cartoon Network, I'm guessing.
Click to expand...

Cable has always had Saturday morning cartoon blocks, they have nothing to do with major networks (Fox, ABC, CBS, etc) choosing to abandon animated weekend programming aimed at kids.
 
J

JCX

Member
Cable and Netflix.

You could just make a custom block for your kid just from Netflix's selection.
 
G

Gucci Messiah

Banned
MuggerMD said:
Don't TV executives know it's a prime time to reach the youth?
Click to expand...

Kids don't wake up every Saturday morning to watch 4 hours of cartoons like I used to. Why the heck would you do that when you can hop on Hulu, Netflix, or any other online video streaming service and watch whatever you want, whenever you want? No viewers means no advertisers. No advertisers means no money. No money means no content. No content means no block.
 
J

JCX

Member
fluffydelusions said:
Nah there was cable back in the 80's but Saturday morning cartoons on regular TV was still the best ever.
Click to expand...

I guess I should have said "the rise of quality, original kids-oriented programming on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Disney Channel"

I grew up in the 90s, and I saw the fall of network blocks relative to Cable. They also started sharing some shows between cable and network blocks.
 
Z

Zantetsuken

Member
Used to love Saturday mornings; waking up to breakfast and cartoons. Whole day left to ride bikes around the neighborhood, play tag, video games, basketball. The fucking life.
 
M

MuggerMD

Banned
Ok, follow up question. If they aren't watching network TV Saturday. What do the 5-8 year olds talk about on Monday morning at school?
 
H

Hiltz

Member
I woke up and turned on the TV at 8AM. I noticed Pokemon X & Y was on and Gravity Falls was coming on later. on Cartoon Network. KTLA has shows air ng on the Vortexx programming block such as Justice League Unlimited, Gravity Falls, Digimon, Rescue Heroes, Spectacular Spider Man, Dragon Ball Z and Yugioh Disney XD had Ultimate Spider Man.

I don't watch Saturday morning cartoons any more. I still like them, but there's hardly anything on anymore.
 
D

Dishwalla

Banned
fluffydelusions said:
Nah there was cable back in the 80's but Saturday morning cartoons on regular TV was still the best ever.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but none of the cable channels had good original programming until the advent of the Nicktoons in 1991(prior to this Nick ran reruns of ancient stuff like Looney Tunes and Yogi Bear in the mornings), and by the mid to late 90s when Cartoon Network started producing original content the amount of Saturday morning shows on the broadcast networks was on the decline.

I guess it should be noted however that for the first few years NIcktoons held their premiers on Sunday mornings(with the exception of Ren and Stimpy, which held it's premiers on Snick after that block premiered in 1992), I don't think it was until shows like Hey Arnold and Spongebob that Nick shows premiered on Saturday mornings, and Cartoon Network shows premiered in prime time, usually on Fridays.
 
S

Sobriquet

Member
Because the government mandated a certain amount of educational programming be aired. The networks pulled the cartoons and put it on Saturday mornings.

edit: Missed entrement's post.
 
M

Manmademan

Member
UberTag said:
Cartoons now air 24 hours a day / 7 days a week.
Saturday mornings are no longer magical.
Click to expand...

This is the wrong answer.

Cartoons were doing this all through the 1980s.

There are DRASTICALLY LESS cartoons on now than there were right up until the early 90s.

entrement said:
Actually? Congress.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Television_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekday_cartoon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

Cable and much much later streaming came after Saturday Morning Cartoons were decimated on the networks. Steaming is non-factor why they were gone. This was way before streaming was a thing.
Click to expand...

THIS MAN gets the prize.
 
H

Hiltz

Member
MuggerMD said:
Ok, follow up question. If they aren't watching network TV Saturday. What do the 5-8 year olds talk about on Monday morning at school?
Click to expand...

I assume they're constantly engaged with their smartphones and tables for sending texts, updating their Facebook and Twitter accounts and playing mobile titles such as Candy Crush saga and Minecraft. I guess they watch some cartoons, of course.

As great as technology has become, I am glad I was born in the generation I was. Back when I was 8, I played video games (SNES), basketball, bowling, rode my bike around the neighborhood, played with remote controlled race cars, action figures and watched cartoons.
 
UberTag

UberTag

Member
MuggerMD said:
Ok, follow up question. If they aren't watching network TV Saturday. What do the 5-8 year olds talk about on Monday morning at school?
Click to expand...
Ariana Grande
Justin Bieber
What shit their favorite YouTuber just streamed
What happened on last night's episode of Game of Thrones / The Walking Dead
Raving about some perk they earned in Call of Duty over the weekend

Typical kid stuff.
 
M

Manmademan

Member
brian577 said:
Well anime certainly wasn't mainstream before Toonami came along.
Click to expand...

1387196569054.jpg
 
D

Dr.Acula

Banned
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/disappearance-saturday-morning

In brief, Saturday mornings were a time slot that adults didn't monopolize, and there wasn't any competition from cable yet. Because of that, children had this one block on Saturdays that advertisers could hit and hit hard. The money from the billions of dollars in toys was concentrated into a few hours one day a week across a handful of networks. So advertising money in, production money for cartoons out. When cable came up, dollars got diluted and the networks said fuck it, we'll just air morning news.

Congress passed legislation after the money left. If the networks were still getting p-a-y-e-d off Saturday mornings they would have lobbied these laws into the ground like it was net neutrality.
 
M

Manmademan

Member
Dr.Acula said:
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/disappearance-saturday-morning

In brief, Saturday mornings were a time slot that adults didn't monopolize, and there wasn't any competition from cable yet. Because of that, children had this one block on Saturdays that advertisers could hit and hit hard. The money from the billions of dollars in toys was concentrated into a few hours one day a week across a handful of networks. So advertising money in, production money for cartoons out. When cable came up, dollars got diluted and the networks said fuck it, we'll just air morning news.
Click to expand...

This is hilariously incorrect, but nice try anyway
 
D

Dr.Acula

Banned
Manmademan said:
This is hilariously incorrect, but nice try anyway
Click to expand...


Congress passed legislation after the money left. If the networks were still getting p-a-y-e-d off Saturday mornings they would have lobbied these laws into the ground like it was net neutrality.
 
M

m_shortpants

Member
I used to have a ritual - wake up at 7am (or earlier even) on Saturdays, sneak downstairs, and then watch cartoons on WB or wherever else while eating cookies.

Good times.
 
M

Manmademan

Member
Dr.Acula said:
Congress passed legislation after the money left. If the networks were still getting p-a-y-e-d off Saturday mornings they would have lobbied these laws into the ground like it was net neutrality.
Click to expand...

Nope.

The majority of cartoons during the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s were never on saturday morning in the first place.

Most of the cartoon product was SYNDICATED and ran every day of the week. Transformers? Thundercats? GI Joe? He-Man? Animaniacs? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (until late in their run), The entire Disney afternoon, including Ducktales/Talespin/Darkwing Duck/Bonkers/Goof Troop/etc? Never saw saturday morning. That was all syndication.

The legislation congress passed killed syndication stone dead, and saturday morning went right along with it (though it took a little longer to do so. fox kids and ABC's one saturday morning limped along for a while afterwards). Part of the reason Cable animation continued to thrive is because congress can't regulate cable as they can with broadcast.
 
M

mm04

Member
When I'm feeling nostalgic, I'll watch some Saturday morning preview shows from the 80's on Youtube. It was a big deal when you were a kid back then. It was basically our Fall preview show. My brother and I would make sure we'd watch CBS, ABC and NBC's preview shows and basically determine which cartoons we were going to follow that year.
 
D

Dishwalla

Banned
Manmademan said:
The entire Disney afternoon, including Ducktales/Talespin/Darkwing Duck/Bonkers/Goof Troop/etc? Never saw saturday morning. That was all syndication.
Click to expand...
Darkwing Duck was a SatAM cartoon on ABC, many episodes premiered on Saturday mornings(although like Tale Spin and Goof Troop the show originally premiered on The Disney Channel).
 
M

Manmademan

Member
Dishwalla said:
Darkwing Duck was a SatAM cartoon on ABC, many episodes premiered on Saturday mornings(although like Goof Troop the show originally premiered on The Disney Channel).
Click to expand...

Darkwing premiered on the Disney channel, but moved to syndication and then to saturday morning after that. Pretty sure Disney was still a PayTV channel like HBO at that time though, so it's in it's own special category. Season 1 of that show was 65 episodes, which is quite a bit more than is usually produced for saturday morning only.

Some syndicated cartoons moved to saturday morning after being successful elsewhere- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the one that immediately comes to mind there.
 
Z

Zombine

Banned
I think that us 20-something's and the current 18-19 year olds were the last ones to have a true Saturday morning line up. It's really a shame, because many of my good memories in my childhood are from waking up early Saturday and watching shows. My personal favorite was the Kids WB line up.
 
M

Manmademan

Member
Zombine said:
I think that us 20-something's and the current 18-19 year olds were the last ones to have a true Saturday morning line up. It's really a shame, because many of my good memories in my childhood are from waking up early Saturday and watching shows. My personal favorite was the Kids WB line up.
Click to expand...

true, but the current generation has it pretty good with streaming content via netflix. There's a ton of content there that can just be watched whenever, including a lot of the good stuff from my era.

There's a SHIT TON of stuff that's just lost to the ether and will never see DVD/Netflix/Streaming ever again though.
 
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