What Happened to Saturday Morning Cartoons?

On this episode of Our American Stories, Mark McCray is the author of The Best Saturdays of Our Lives. Here he is to tell us the story of Saturday morning cartoons... and answer the all-important question: what happened to them?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories and up next. Mark McCrae
from The Bronx, New York was a programmer at Cartoon Network.
He also was a part of a team that helped
launch another Cartoon Network channel, Boomerang. He's now a programmer
for another Cartoon Network channel, Adult Swim. Mark mcgraae is

(00:30):
the author of the Best Saturdays of Our Lives. Here
he is to tell the story of Saturday Morning cartoons
and answer the all important question, what happened to them?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Where are you now? I know that many of us
have memories of waking up on Saturday morning and with
a bowl of cereal and you know, watching our favorite cartoons.
Saturdayday Morning have been around for a long time, you know,
really at the beginning of the television age, and the

(01:08):
first official Saturday Morning cartoon dates all the way back
to December tenth, nineteen fifty five, with the Mighty Mouse Playhouse.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Hi, Boys and Girls, here we go, rocketing into a
fun filled, exciting cartoon show.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
So these were theatrical shorts featuring Mighty Mouse. CBS had
bought the library and repackaged all of these old Mighty
Mouse cartoons into a Saturday Morning show. But again, it
was nineteen fifty five and it wasn't a lot of strategy,
and the trend would continue through the nineteen sixties. You

(01:46):
had a lot of primetime cartoons like The Flintstones and
Top Cat and Alvin and the chip Monks. All right, now, boys,
how about a little dinner music. Some of those shows
were not as successful in primetime, and the networks would,

(02:07):
instead of just taking them off the air completely, would
move those shows to Saturday morning. So in the beginning,
Saturday morning sort of became like a dumping ground for
the networks. And once those shows were placed on Saturday morning,
guess what, they just became a huge, huge success. Fast

(02:28):
forward to the nineteen sixty six season and there is
a young executive at CBS named Fred Silverman who really
wants to make changes. However, you know, CBS is the
number one primetime network. They're number one in the daytime
where all the soap operas and game shows are airing,

(02:49):
and so the only thing that he was allowed to
really fiddle with was Saturday morning. And he knew that
the Batman series that was airing over on ABC featuring
Adam West was doing huge ratings and that there was
this huge superhero trend that was going on, and Fred

(03:12):
Silverman knew that creating any type of superhero series and
bringing that series to Saturday Morning would would definitely elevate
CBS's Saturday Morning schedule. So he worked with a fledgling
new company called Filmation Associates and they produced the New

(03:34):
Adventures of Superman during the nineteen sixty six sixty seventh season.
Also airing that same year was Hannah barbera Space ghost series,
as well as the Lone Ranger cartoon. The New Adventures
of Superman produced huge, huge ratings, bigger ratings than anyone

(03:56):
had ever seen previously on Saturday Morning. The year before,
there was a Beatles cartoon that was based on the
famous rock band that had the biggest ratings, but Superman's
ratings blew those ratings away and people were just amazed
by it. Not only did Superman do really well during

(04:17):
this time period, the series created what every network wants,
which is a halo effect. So that means that not
only did the kids stick around to watch Superman, they
watched Space Ghosts, they watched the Lone Ranger, and the
entire CBS Saturday Morning schedule, and the network went from
number three to number one, sort of upsetting the previous

(04:41):
year winner ABC because the ABC had the Beatles cartoon,
and so people started thinking, you know what, we can
actually start making big money on Saturday morning cartoons. And
so the following year you had the industry just grow
with Hannah Barbera producing like six new superhero shows and

(05:05):
ABC realizing that they lost to Superman. There was an
executive there. His name was Ed Vane, and Ed Vane
I'd give props to Ed Vain because Ed Vane immediately
commissioned Marvel shows Spider Man the Fantastic Four to go
up against DC inspired Superman, and in my opinion, that

(05:30):
was like the best counter programming move ever from the
nineteen sixty seventh season. And then of course, following all
of that, you know, the industry started to change, and
the next thing, you know, the Archies came in and
the Archiees, which was based on the Archie comic book series.
Those ratings outbeat Superman, and the next thing, you know,

(05:52):
everyone wanted to see teenagers and rock bands on Saturday morning.
And then Josie and the Pussycats and Scooby Doo came along,
and the Jackson five. Following that, even the Harlem Globetrotters
had music associated with Saturday Morning cartoons. And then in
nineteen seventy four you had your first live action superhero series, Shazam,

(06:17):
which really drew big ratings. And another company called Sidne
Marti Croft Productions, they got into the Saturday Morning game
with puppetry and live action producing shows such as hr
Puff and Stuff, Liddsville and the Land of the Loss
which was a huge hit for NBC Saturday Morning as well.

(06:40):
And so the sponsorships were there, There was scheduling, there
was ratings, there was programming strategy. Everything that Primetime already
had on television, everything that regular daytime already had, Saturday
Morning had finally joined the big time and it was
on full exciting and fun, and animators were being employed

(07:04):
and people were working in the industry and everything was
just growing and flowing. However, there was also a Saturday
Morning backlash that occurred. So with all of the superhero programming,
a lot of Christian groups and parent groups were concerned

(07:25):
that there was too much violence on television. You have
to remember, this is the age of Vietnam. The Vietnam
War was going on, and the Vietnam War was being
played on the six o'clock news every night, and people
were concerned that kids were seeing the news as well
as watching violent Saturday morning cartoons. And so when the

(07:50):
archies came in and demonstrated huge ratings, that was sort
of the logical answer that things need to be toned
down just a bit. This also sort of created a
little bit of censorship on Saturday Morning as well, because
a group that was created called Action for Children's Television,

(08:13):
they sort of became the Censorship group, a grassroots group
that lobbied in Washington to try to have certain laws
change regarding children's programming.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
And you've been listening to Mark McCrae talk about, well,
the advent and development of Saturday morning programming and Saturday
Morning cartoons. And by the way, we tell stories like
this all the time, especially art stories. All this creativity
often coming from a business environment and a business schemanic

(08:47):
we need to go catch viewers. And the next thing
he says, we have animators working. Business is humming and
this is the miracle of free enterprise, and that cuts
right to even our sports and entertainment worlds. And that's
why we tell stories about them, because well, without these
opportunities and freedoms, where do these animators get jobs? When
we come back, more of Mark McCrae's story about Saturday

(09:11):
morning cartoons and Saturday morning television. Here on our American Stories,

(09:39):
and we're back with our American stories and Mark McCrae
telling the story of Saturday Morning cartoons. He's also the
author of the Best Saturdays of Our Lives. Now back
to Mark with the rest of the story.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
A group that was created called Action for Children's Television.
They sort of became the Censorship Group, a grassroots group
that lobbied in Washington to try to have certain laws
change regarding children's programming, and for a long time they
wielded a lot of power over Saturday morning television. For example,

(10:20):
if a story was written for a Saturday Morning cartoon,
then they had the right to look over the story
and make changes. But for example, there was an episode
of Josie and the Pussycats where the villain is chasing
the Pussycats through the kitchen and the original scene called

(10:43):
for their mascot Sebastian to hide in a pot. And
when Action from Children's Television got a hold of that, story.
They decided, no, we can't show a cat hiding in
a pot, because some kid at home might actually try
to put their own pet cat in a pot. I

(11:08):
don't know if I necessarily agree with that assessment, but anyway,
the scene was changed so that when the villain ran
in the kitchen, all of the Josie the Pussycat's cast
was hiding and suddenly you see Sebastian jump out of
the pot and start to run because he the cat,

(11:28):
thinks it's going to be discovered. So that was the compromise.
The compromise was that Sebastian would already be in the
pot when the villain showed up in the kitchen looking
for the kids on that particular show. So a lot
of this went on for a long time through the
seventies and through the eighties, where you had a lot
of superhero shows which had a lot of action but

(11:51):
no one could actually throw a punch, and that trend
would really continue all the way through the nineteen nineties.
But anyway, not trying to jump ahead, but you know,
you had all this exciting programming in the seventies, and
then when you hit the nineteen eighties, things sort of change. Again,
there's sort of this deregulation during the Reagan era, and

(12:15):
the toy show is born. He Man in the Masses
of the Universe and Gi Joe become huge hits, and
you're getting first run syndication in the afternoon. The Smurfs
also show up on Saturday Morning, which was a successful
Belgian comic book as well as animated series in the past,

(12:38):
and they do huge ratings for NBCNS.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Hope you don't now as we have, and.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
The Smurfs actually create a halo effect for NBC Saturday
Morning after that network was in third place for a
long time, so you sort of have this cutesy era
happening in the eighties along with toy shows, along with
game shows like Hubert and Donkey Kong being brought to

(13:09):
Saturday Morning as well. Dungeons and Dragons was a huge,
huge hit for CBS that was made in the eighties
as well, and the trend pretty much continued through the
early digital age of the nineteen nineties. And so in
the fall of nineteen ninety two, NBC drops out of

(13:31):
the Saturday Morning game and they decided that they could
make more money through advertising and revenue by having a
Saturday morning version of the Today Show. This decision was
mainly done because there was a new law that was
passed called the Children's Television Act. And what this Act said,

(13:52):
it was an FCC ruling that said that all networks
had to have three hours of educational television running on
the air. The other ruling also said that the Television
Act reduced advertising on the weekend. So during the week

(14:16):
advertising could be like anywhere from twelve minutes, but on
the weekend advertising could only be ten minutes, and so
that meant that was reduced time for advertisers on the weekend,
and that also meant reduced revenue for the networks. So
there were a lot of changes and for the most part,

(14:37):
the networks just ignored the changes. And as NBC exited,
Fox Kids came into play by creating their own Saturday
morning block. The block was created by a woman named
Margaret Lesh and she created the X Men series that
premiered in nineteen ninety two, as well as Power Rangers.

(14:58):
And when those shows took off, the next thing you know,
Fox Kids is number one, and they are also creating
a halo effect and it sort of put CBS and
ABC on notice that they need to start readjusting their
schedules and getting shows and programming to compete with Fox.
So when Fox got into the game, they totally dominated

(15:21):
Saturday Morning and they created a real destination for kids again.
And so the nineties, in my opinion, was sort of
like the last hurrah for Saturday Morning. But because of
the rules that were imposed by the FCC, it became
increasingly harder for networks to compete on Saturday morning. Plus,

(15:42):
you know, you had the day. You know, Nickelodeon had
been around for a while with the twenty five hour
network that was very successful. In nineteen ninety two, Cartoon
Network launched and they had mostly the Hanna Barberia, MGM,
and Looney Tunes Library. So the competition was getting really

(16:03):
tight on the kid's side of the business, and networks
were increasingly being squeezed out of Saturday Morning. Because if
you're a kid and you can watch cartoons all day
every day, why would you wait just to watch on
Saturday morning. It's almost like the appeal of Saturday Morning

(16:25):
was sort of going away, and it was it was
becoming an old idea and the kids growing up in
the nineteen nineties and early two thousands, they were their
viewing habits started to change, and you know, so waiting
for a show to come on Saturday wasn't that big
of a deal, whereas you know, back in the day,

(16:47):
kids waited all week just to see their Saturday Morning cartoons.
So we start to roll around the night around the
two thousands, and Saturday Morning is still going. It's holding
on by a thread. And you have a new player
into the game, and it's the WB Network and the

(17:08):
WB Networks. They also start creating new shows like the
Legion of Superheroes. And after the WB's Saturday Morning went away,
there really hasn't been any Saturday Morning again. I mean,
I feel like the broadcasters threw in the towel and

(17:30):
that was the end. I mean, it was regulation from
the FCC with the Children's Television Act, less revenue that
can be made on the weekend, also a sort of
destroyed Saturday Morning, and the network's not being able to
compete with the cable networks that had kids programming on

(17:55):
twenty four hours a day. So I feel like those
are the three things that killed Saturday Morning programming. However,
the silver lining is that it wouldn't be a kid's
twenty four hour kid network unless Saturday Morning didn't prove
itself as a money making revenue driver strategy programming a

(18:21):
production on the networks every week for thirty to forty years.
So but these guys, these amazing men and women working
in the animation industry, still managed to inspire and entertain.
And that's why I always take my hat off to them,
because they were probably working under the you know, like

(18:46):
crazy conditions, you know, having to deliver a cartoon in
a week, you know, like during the theatrical days. So
like a Tom and Jerry back in the nineteen forties,
they had a boatload of money to make the car
caon and they had up to a year to make it.
These guys didn't have a year to make one cartoon,
and so there were a lot of things working against them.

(19:10):
And I feel like sometimes when you know you don't
necessarily have all the bells and whistles to make your
creative cartoon or animation, I feel like it makes you
work harder because you have to step up to the
challenge and find new ways to tell stories and animation
or live action.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
And great job as always to Greg Hangler and to
Mark McCrae for telling this story. And by the way,
you can go to his website. The initials are tbsool
dot com tb soo l dot com and his book
is The Best Saturdays of Our Lives. And what a
great story about innovation and creativity. During those thirty or

(19:53):
forty years, we got all that content so people could
watch it when they want and where they want. You
get some good and you get some with technology. But
we're never going back. The story of Saturday Morning cartoons
a great era in American television. Here on our American
Stories