Back in 1988, I fondly remember waking up very early on a Saturday to watch cartoons, and would officially pack up and prepare for the day the minute twelve in the afternoon reared it head ushering local sports.
2014 marked the end of many traditions that pop culture fans hold near and dear to their heart. One of the most surprising announcements was the official heralding of death of the tradition we all knew and love: Saturday Morning cartoons. In September 2014, the CW Network’s parent company Warner Bros. officially ended their run of morning long schedules of animated series, and reverted to cheaper educational programming in a time slot that barely filled three hours. These days if you turn on the CW on a Saturday morning, you’ll likely find a ton of infomercials sandwiched between some vaguely family based animal shows.
Once upon a time before cable television and the internet became staples, every Saturday morning was a buffet of children’s entertainment in the realm of animation, along with occasional live action fare peppered in to the line up. Back then kids shows began airing as early as five in the morning, and would end their run around one in the afternoon. And during its prime, here in New York, stations you could find Saturday Morning Cartoons on NBC, CBS, FOX, ABC, and WPIX. The latter three stations wouldn’t just host their own original animated series, but would also syndicate series from Nickelodeon or USA Network.
So if you didn’t have cable then, it was a fun treat to watch “Gladiators 2000,” or “Video Power.” It was a dynasty, especially when every fall, networks would air “Saturday Morning Cartoon Previews” during Fridays night primetime. They were half hour clip shows filled with short glimpses at the new programming premiering that year. If you were a kid during the decade, you always made sure to tune in to TGIF or NBC to see what animated masterpiece the network’s current stars were promoting. FOX would even air big ratings hits like “Power Rangers” and “X-Men” during special Friday night prime time events. This would assure kids would follow the series in to the next morning, and these tactics often cemented big fan bases for them.
To add to what made the mornings so special, networks often used the time slots to experiment with potential programming that didn’t always launch in to a phenom. ABC is notorious for airing “Hammerman” and “Kid and Play,” and even stinkers like “Rubik the Amazing Cube” and “Pac Man.” NBC gave many animated series based on hit movies like “Karate Kid,” and “Rambo,” while CBS even gave surreal kids programming like “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” and “Hey Vern! It’s Ernest” But while the legacy of Saturday morning cartoons has its fair share of animated oddities and cash ins, it also gave way to a slew of excellent animated series, many of which are still considered classics.
“Batman the Animated Series” premiered on FOX Kids Saturday Mornings and is widely acclaimed as a masterpiece of animation, and CBS aired the original animated iteration of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” for many years during its domination of America. To name a few, there was also “The Real Ghostbusters,” “X-Men,” “The Tick,” “Garfield and Friends,” and “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.” My favorite period was 1992-1995. During those years, I could tune in to “X-Men,” “Tales from the Cryptkeeper,” “Tiny Toon Adventures”, or “Sonic the Hedgehog.” Everyone has their favorite Saturday Morning cartoons they couldn’t do without, and for kids with one TV, it was as disorienting as it was fun.
Many networks had a line up of fun cartoons, and you had to pick at least one. If you were lucky enough to own a VCR, perhaps you could tape another line up, but it’d be at the cost of another show you loved. These days kids are given the advantage of quick DVD releases of their favorite shows, Netflix, and DVR’s with the capabilities to record five programs at once, so it’s not so much about the hunt anymore. As the nineties progressed, and technology advanced, the pressure to sell toys, and provide top notch programming was relieved by most networks, since the advent of the internet allowed them to reach their audience through different avenues.
During the early aughts, only three channels aired a few hours of cartoons in the morning, and eventually it boiled down to just one. The remaining line ups became filled with terrible retreads like “Lunatix,” or imported anime like “Pokemon,” or “Yu-Gi-Oh.” Now with the economy, the internet being an easily accessible utility, and studios finding importing programs cheaper than producing their own, the ritual of Saturday Morning Cartoons went extinct. Plus, when you have to compete with Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, Disney XD, ABC Family, Nick Toons, PBS Kids, and Nick Jr (and a slew of many other children aimed channels) with cable subscribers, it likely seemed like the only rational thing to do for these networks.
That said, thirty years was a good run for Saturday Morning Cartoons. I feel privileged to have been one of the last generations to remember when Saturday mornings began at 5am and ended at 1pm, and cartoons were on every station. I loved getting up when the sun was rising, eating sugary bowls of cereal, being awe inspired at toy commercials, and feeling as if you were being let in on something amazing. Those that were there will forever keep those days with them as precious memories.