Saturday morning cartoons dead dead dead

[Lockheart_fox]

Saturday morning American broadcast TV was once animation's home field. Filling a cereal bowl with artificially colored sugar pebbles and staring at the tube was every kid's weekend plan. Not any more: For the first time in 50-plus years, you won't find a block of animation on broadcast this morning. It's the end of an era.
Yes, The CW, the final holdout in Saturday morning animation, ran its last batch of Vortexx cartoons last weekend. This week, where you once saw shows like Cubix, Sonic X, Dragon Ball Z and Kai, Digimon Fusion, and Yu-Gi-Oh!, you'll instead find "One Magnificent Morning," a block of live-action educational programming.
It's the end of an era, but it's been a long time coming: NBC ditched Saturday morning cartoons in 1992, CBS followed suit not long after, and ABC lost its animated weekend mornings in 2004. The CW, a lower-tier broadcast network, was the last holdout in a game that the Big 3 left long ago.
What killed Saturday morning cartoons? Cable, streaming, and the FCC. In the 1990s, the FCC began more strictly enforcing its rule requiring broadcast networks to provide a minimum of three hours of "educational" programming every week. Networks afraid of messing with their prime-time slots found it easiest to cram this required programming in the weekend morning slot. The actual educational content of this live-action programming is sometimes debatable, but it meets the letter of the law.
But more importantly, with hundreds of cable and satellite channels to choose from that don't have to abide the FCC's guidelines, whippersnappers kids these days can get their animation fix any day of the week. With the rise of cable and satellite, advertisers no longer had to cram all their kid-aimed commercials into the four-hour Saturday morning block. When the money left Saturday mornings, so did the cartoons.
Add in mobile streaming from Netflix, Hulu, and the like, and you'll realize that the spoiled brats we're raising today don't even need to dash to the TV in time to catch the opening credits. They can just watch whatever, whenever. Sheesh.
Still, there's something a little hollow about the notion that we woke up this morning to an America bereft of broadcast 'toons. I guess we all had to grow up sometime.

So my fellow Gaia's out there:
gaia_spoons What was your favorite Saturday morning cartoon when your growing up?
gaia_spoons What are you going to do now that there is no more Saturday morning cartoon?
gaia_spoons Do you think the FCC went a bit to far?
gaia_spoons What new show do you think the FCC will show that is "educational"?

Talk and discuss your thoughts on this.

[Anka Kuroneko]

1. My favorite cartoon growing up was Mew Mew Power, I loved watching that and so did my friends. In Elementary school, me and my friends always pretended we were the characters from the show. Ah nostalgia....

2. I'm 19 now, so I'm probably too old for Saturday morning cartoons but hearing about this made me cry. There's the rare occasion where I wake up early and can't go back to sleep so I just watch some Saturday morning cartoons to pass time but now I have nothing to watch if I wake up early on Saturday.

3. Seeing how I'm already pissed off at the FCC for doing something that's going to let cable companies f**k up the internet, I'm honestly not surprised the FCC had to enforce their rules on cartoons. In a nutshell, yes. I do think they went too far. It's not fair that they have to force to make channels by their rules, all it does it sometimes downsize the channels ratings if they screw up something.

4. To be honest, I don't even know but I know that kids won't watch it. I doubt kids were excited to get up on Saturday to watch something educational.

[toragawa233]

this is really really depressing. i didn't have cable tv growing up, so saturday morning cartoons were my life. i remember watching the first seasons of pokemon and digimon, as well as other anime like escaflowne and all the ones they ran through in rapid succession because they were all kinda bad (anyone remember fighting foodons? how about the one with the cavemen?). i loved that shit. there were also the cartoons like recess, proud family, pepper ann, doug...

it really is a shame. even when as a kid i first got exposed to cable tv (and, subsequently, cartoon network) because my granpa's house had it, i thought it was kinda overrated. i liked the idea of having a certain time set aside for all the stuff i wanted to watch. i think even if kids don't know the difference nowadays, i think they'll be missing out on that too.

it's such a shame.

[Anka Kuroneko]

toragawa233

this is really really depressing. i didn't have cable tv growing up, so saturday morning cartoons were my life. i remember watching the first seasons of pokemon and digimon, as well as other anime like escaflowne and all the ones they ran through in rapid succession because they were all kinda bad (anyone remember fighting foodons? how about the one with the cavemen?). i loved that shit. there were also the cartoons like recess, proud family, pepper ann, doug...

it really is a shame. even when as a kid i first got exposed to cable tv (and, subsequently, cartoon network) because my granpa's house had it, i thought it was kinda overrated. i liked the idea of having a certain time set aside for all the stuff i wanted to watch. i think even if kids don't know the difference nowadays, i think they'll be missing out on that too.

it's such a shame.

Oh my god, I remember Fighting Foodons! I used to love that show!

[QueenZ90]

Wow! This is a sad night for me now. Knowing that all the Saturday morning cartoons are over with. I can't believe it. I'm twenty-three going on twenty-four in December. I just can't believe its actually gone now. I got a little teary eyed in all reading this. I guess we all got to grow up sometime. My favorite anime on there was Yu-Gi-Oh!. I loved that anime.

What I'm I going to do now> Well I guess the usual sleep pass 12:00pm on Saturdays now. I use to watch it to pass the time lol. I'm going to miss them. ;-(

[Sheshira]

It reminds me of this picture of a theater full of cartoon characters from Cartoon Network shows back in the day and how filled with awesome it was whereas now it's a handful of characters. It's kind of depressing to see how a medium that can beautifully express issues, themes, etc in a way that is often much more difficult in a live action form is being laid to the wayside. What frustrates me is that people misrepresent cartoons or believe wrongly what they are about.

Like with Hey Arnold, there was a whole heck a lot of social commentary of being a kid living in an urban setting. In a setting that while a lot of us didn't know about it, still were able to relate to because the median income was that of average to below average (don't know if I'm expressing this correctly) so there was a good representation of families and cultures.

Then there were shows like Recess that was seriously so much fun and captured the awesomeness of recess and that invincibility that we as kids sometimes felt, or wish we felt that we saw in those kids... Heck even the Weekenders was a great show.

I'm going to miss shows. I'm also going to hope that channels like Cartoon Network don't shoot themselves in the foot further and cancel shows for inane reasons like not reaching the "right" demographic because we need to produce more shows not cancel them.

[Blue Eyed Wallflower]

What was your favorite Saturday morning cartoon when your growing up?
There are too many to pick one. I liked The Weekenders, Recess, Pepper Ann, Angela Anaconda... there are lots I enjoyed.

What are you going to do now that there is no more Saturday morning cartoon?
Honestly this hasn't been an issue for me for years. I usually work Saturdays anyway. It's mostly sad just knowing that Saturday morning cartoons will no longer be a thing.

Do you think the FCC went a bit to far?
The FCC is bullshit anyway. So, yes, I do.

What new show do you think the FCC will show that is "educational"?
I have no idea. A lot of those cartoons were educational. Education does not always have to be about math, science, or reading. A lot of those cartoons taught you social lessons.

[WitchlingPrincess]

What was your favorite Saturday morning cartoon when your growing up?
Likely Kirby: Right Back At Ya, Sonic X, Fighting Foodons, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

What are you going to do now that there is no more Saturday morning cartoon?
Hide in my reclusive video game world

Do you think the FCC went a bit to far?
Yes. I want my 4Kids, my FoxBox and all of that back.

What new show do you think the FCC will show that is "educational"?
Who cares, it's not cartoons or anime.

[ShadowNinjaCiara]

The first thing I would do when getting up is cut on that TV, now I just cut on my computer and watch some Youtube vids, really is sad television turned gay now:/

[Tiana Luscinia]

I was a little kid in the 80s and 90s. So that meant you'd get up at the crack of dawn every Saturday morning, grab a bowl of cereal and watch cartoons until golf at noon forced you outside.

So we had He-Man, She-Ra, GI Joe, Alvin & the Chipmunks, Punky Brewster (the cartoon), Muppet Babies, Jem and Kidd Video to name a few.

I don't think a lot of people remember Kidd Video. But it was one of my favorites.
http://youtu.be/nhSI8QTJBk4

That's the intro. The kid with the glasses is Robbie Rist. Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch.

We didn't have much in the way of anime back then. Just Voltron and Robotech. And those were both heavily edited. But it was either chop them up and make lots of changes or they didn't get on the air. Robotech was actually several different anime series turned into a Frankenanime for American audiences. Yet somehow it worked and was actually pretty enjoyable. It was only after I got the internet that I discovered what the series really was.

And while it's not a cartoon, Pee Wee's Playhouse. Well they had Penny and the King of Cartoons so... I guess it kind of counts. Hey Vern, It's Ernest wasn't a cartoon but it sure was cartoony in it's own right.

In the 90s I liked shows like Pepper Ann, Tiny Toon Adventures and Recess. And of course all those Nicktoons.

It's sad that Saturday morning cartoon blocks are no longer relevant with the times. Although you could argue that the suits decided this and there are plenty of kids that would still watch.

[Tsuki_Kirkland]

Wow, on one hand its a shame its come to that and kids will no longer be getting up saturday mornings for cartoons. However, on the other hand its probably healthier that kids get out instead of parking themselves infront of the tv every saturday morning for hours. I don’t think the FCC went too far, of course a lot of stuff being shown was a repeat or not that great. As I said before , its not good for kids to park themselves infront of the Tv for hours saturday mornings,its better they’re out playing around.

[Nearby]

Danny boy, danny boy, the pipes the pipes are callin'...

I am heart broken. I was relaxing with some early morning tea, then the FCC stormed in, shot down my scooby dooby doo sad

 What was your favorite Saturday morning cartoon when your growing up? None. I was a bitter little s**t.

 What are you going to do now that there is no more Saturday morning cartoon? Cry. While the toons that were on when I was growing up I couldn't get into, over the years I have collected a good knowledge over some pretty spicey little saturday morning offerings. As a middle finger to society, I will now be hosting my own block of saturday morning cartoons via my DVD collection. Start with '60s scooby doo, move on to '60s spiderman. Follow it up with an hour if ninja turtles, both '87 and '03 show. Then some gargoyles, maybe a hint of samurai pizza cats, close out with yogi bear...

 Do you think the FCC went a bit to far? Oh you bet they did! They'll be hearing from my lawyers!

 What new show do you think the FCC will show that is "educational"? Plenty of cartoons were educational. Scooby doo taught me how to meddle, ninja turtles taught me how to defeat an alien warlord from another dimension, He-man taught me how to beat up skeletons, yogi gave me a lecture in the art of pic-a-nic basket swiping.