Saturday Morning Cartoons Officially Dead As a kid of the 80's, I have fond memories sitting in front of the "boob tube" watching such intellectually-epic fare as "Superfriends," "Hong Kong Phooey," "He-Man" and "Dungeons and Dragons" while being bombarded with ads for the latest toys. But as Slashfilm notes, the era of Saturday morning cartoons has officially come to an end with CW running their last block of Saturday morning cartoon programming.

quote: A 1996 Federal Communications Commission mandate, issued in the wake of the Children’s Television Act, requires stations to program a minimum of three hours of children’s educational/informational (“E/I”) programming per week. To help their affiliates comply with the regulations, broadcast networks began to reorganize their efforts to adhere to the mandates, so their affiliates would not bear the burden of scheduling the shows themselves on their own time thus eliminating the risk of having network product preempted by the mandates. This almost always meant that the educational programming was placed during the Saturday morning cartoon block. Of course even without the FCC ruling, the rise of first DVDs and then Netflix children's programming has been As the report notes and Wikipedia explains , that's thanks in part to FCC requirements demanding broadcasters issue a set amount of educational programming:Of course even without the FCC ruling, the rise of first DVDs and then Netflix children's programming has been eroding the viewership for fixed-schedule Saturday morning content for some time anyway. Still, I'm sure I'm not alone in having fond memories of sitting too close to the television and "rotting away my brain" watching "Godzilla" as my dad was quick to insist.







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Most recommended from 96 comments



MooJohn

join:2005-12-18

Milledgeville, GA 5 recommendations MooJohn Member A Whole Generation Removed Elementary school kids today have likely never seen a single Bugs Bunny cartoon. They don't know who Foghorn Leghorn or Yosemite Sam is. Cartoon Network remade the Thundercats into some anime crap, only to end it when it didn't take off. There have been a dozen iterations (and several bad movies) of the Transformers. We have live action Smurfs movies but not the cartoons.



They're missing the obvious: Show the old cartoons and keep selling the toys! It's new to these kids even if the parents know every episode by heart. The Bugs Bunny I watched at age 5 was already 35+ years old then! They'll have zero production costs - just air the shows! Put Scooby Doo on! The Ghostbusters cartoon was every bit as good as the movie.



I don't expect something like Hulk Hogan's Rock & Wrestling or The Dukes cartoons to work today (put them on Boomerang though!) but you're entertaining kids under age 10 - they'll love the old ones just much as we did.



Give us the SilverHawks! Every episode taught a lesson, even if it wasn't rammed down your throat like they want it to be with this E/I programming garbage. Same goes for The Magic Schoolbus -- it was educational without being boring.



First they took away the after-school cartoons and then the Saturday morning shows. The excuse of "they can get them online" is total BS. Many stations show infomercials in that timeslot now because it's more profitable.



People want to know why kids are acting so "grown up" now when those same people have removed their chances to just be kids. Sometimes you just need entertainment; not everything has to be a lesson!

ptrowski

Got Helix?

Premium Member

join:2005-03-14

Woodstock, CT 3 recommendations ptrowski Premium Member Ahh the memories.... Funny this came up, I just made a Wonder Twins reference a few minutes ago. "Form of a bucket of water"!

ilikeme

Premium Member

join:2002-08-27

Stafford, TX ·Toast.net

2 recommendations ilikeme Premium Member Television is just not the same anymore



Some of my favorites



I loved Saturday morning cartoons. I was born in the late 80's and loved watching Saturday morning cartoons throughout the 90's and into the early 2000's. Starting in the late 90's-early 2000's is when they started going downhill.Some of my favorites »www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· C8qjV30c



»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· alkW6lKg



»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· 5R9bJZwk



»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· 7YTWeg20



»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· ijSAicNM