What Killed Saturday Morning Cartoons?
Saturday Morning Cartoons are Dead Because Kids Grow Up Faster
In the year 2007 kids grow up faster than they did in 1987. Not grow up faster physically, most kids I know are twerps. But the kids now face things in the real world at a much younger age. They grow up so fast that it is no longer cool to watch cartoons once you're 10 years old.
Saturday Morning Cartoons are Dead Because Cartoons are For Adults
If you think about a lot of the cartoons beings made, most of them are being made for adults. Shows like the Simpsons, Family Guy and Futurama are not for young kids.
Saturday Morning Cartoons are Dead Because of Home Video Popularity
If you think back to when you were a kid, assuming you weren't a kid like five years ago then home videos were probably not as huge as they are today. Sure you probably had a video or two that you liked but now kids are practically raised on videos rather than Saturday morning cartoons.
Saturday Morning Cartoons are Dead Because of Cartoon Network, Disney and Nickelodeon
Thanks to Disney, Nickelodeon and especially Cartoon Network, there are cartoons on every hour of the day, every day of the week. Saturday morning is no longer the only time of the week that cartoons are available.
Saturday Morning Cartoons are Dead Because of the Internet
The internet offers some great things and so bad things. One of the good things about the internet is if you want cartoons you can find them somewhere at any time. Try going to YouTube and search for your favorite cartoon. Chances are you'll find a couple of episodes or at the very least a few clips.
Saturday Morning Cartoons are Dead Because of the Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission requires that every broadcast station in the United State show at least three hours of educational and informative television every week. Networks aren't going to show these programs during the day while kids aren't at home and they aren't going to air them at night instead of their prime time shows. So they put them on Saturday mornings instead of cartoons.
Saturday Morning Cartoons are Dead Because of Japanese Anime
Networks are getting lazy. Once they saw that Japanese Anime was popular they decided to just steal a bunch of Japanese Animes instead of making their own cartoons. Unfortunately most animes aren't kids shows so they don'ot come on Saturday mornings.
Saturday Moring Cartoons are Dead Because of Video Games
When I was 7 years old Saturday morning consisted of Transformers and G. I. Joe on the television. By the time I was 10 years old Saturday morning was spent with the Super Nintendo and Genesis. The video game industry increases more and more every year and kids are replacing Scooby Doo and Fred Flinstone with Mario and Zelda.
Published by Lee Andrew Henderson
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111 Comments
Post a Commentthe 1990 CTA doesn't work in the 21st Century- children aren't going to watch E/I programming that has no entertainment value- there's just no way. Entertainment sells and will continue to sell. Children watch these programs to get away from the stresses of school. They should still be entitled to the same chances we've had when we were their ages. We need to tell the government to back the hell off- prohibition in children's programming is OVER. We're fighting for the kids of this generation and for future generations when we say, "GIVE OUR KIDS THEIR INNOCENCE BACK!!!"
Saturday morning cartoons on broadcast TV CAN make a comeback, but only through badly-needed FCC reforms to the children's television programming code. BTW, although a majority of today's Saturday morning cartoons are on cable, this can be done, only if cable networks would get involved with helping to provide the broadcast networks with the programming. Also, E/I programming code should be reformed, too, namely allowing the syndication arms of the broadcast networks to produce the programs for their respective affiliates and take the pressure off the networks, themselves. Animation studios can now set their own budgets when it comes to producing these programs. It's one thing when the programs are crudely animated- we can get over that, but when it's crudely drawn, that's a problem, draw the characters, backgrounds in a respectable and neater fashion. Computer animated programming, no problem, as long as the studio is within its program budget. Anime, too expensive.
This article is nonsense:
1. Saturday Morning Cartoons were dead long before the internet became popular.
2. Saturday Morning Cartoon survived many many years alongside video games just fine.
3. Kids grow up faster today? That is just gibberish nonsense that people like to say that can't be shown empirically.
Saturday Morning Cartoons died when networks discovered they could make shows like "Saved by the Bell" for a fraction of the cost of a cartoon. These shows slowly phased out the cartoons altogether. In the last few years there actually appears to be a bit of a comeback on a couple networks, but they are a shadow of what they were.
You want to know what killed Saturday morning cartoons. You can think the broadcast news divisions. They pushed to get significant airtime on the weekends. As I recall NBC was the first to go all news on Saturday morning as a way to further push their hold as king of the heap for morning shows. Both CBS and ABC had to respond. Fox later responded by just going with their required educational programs than infomercials. CW/WB are the lone holdouts. NBC has little or no money in children development programs. CBS and ABC are respectable.
Yeah, its sad that there are no more good cartoons(if any) in this day and age, but its a different world now, not better or worse, but just different. Yes, I long for those carefree days of my childhood/ youth, but those are long gone now, just as all those Saturday morning shows we used to watch. New world, new generation, who could car less about all that stuff in the past.
I feel very fortunate to have been born in 1970 (one of the reasons being that my entire teenage life...13 - 19...was the 80's [1983 - 1989]). I miss Saturday Mornings too for what they reminded me of as a kid growing up, but thanks to DVD's, I get every cartoon from the Saturday Morning genre that I can when they are released (the complete series of Plastic Man is coming out in September 2009). Go to www.tvshowsondvd.com to get email notifications of your favorite shows.
I agree with you cartoons now a day is not the same as in the past. I really miss those saturday morning cartoons. I have a few VHS and CD with old cartoons on it and whenever my 12 year old son puts them on to see them it takes me back to my childhood. I am so happy he really loves those old cartoons. They might be in the past but they will never be forgotten because they were actually great cartoons. My favorite was bugs bunny. Thank you for such a great article.
You forgot to mention that today's cartoons are utter shit. Also kids don't grow up faster these days, in fact they're just getting more stupid by the minute.
Wow, great article, there is NOTHING quality on in the Saturday morning cartoon department. Good call.
Why do people say "Japanese anime"? If anime is only from Japan, there's no reason to say the Japanese part, it's annoying.