No more Saturday morning cartoons on broadcast networks
 

A piece of my childhood has died.

The end of Saturday morning cartoons - WTOP.com

The Saturday morning infomercial-fest!

Robert Thompson is quoted in almost every news article that has something to do with TV. I took all of his classes at Syracuse, he's kind of an entertaining oddball that has the most ridiculous job in history. He was the expert of television back before the internet when there wasn't a million television experts. He was critically deconstructing Three's Company during its original run.

Now though, I think he's maybe starting to mail it in. Saturday morning cartoons go away, so they have to call him. His response, "I don't know, maybe kids are playing playing more soccer Saturday morning or something....oh, and there's more TV channels now!"

My kids watch cartoons most Saturday mornings, and they are all either from Netflix or TiVo'd from during the week.

My kids watch PBS or Nick Jr. The cartoons on network channels are stupid these days. Grumble grumble.

Yes, same here.

I think maybe the better title (or maybe a separate discussion) is "The End of Linear Programming Schedules."

My four year old has no concept of x show coming on at y time because he has everything at his fingertips. He goes from watching football highlights to Curious George to Peppa Pig with a swipe or two.

I watch my saturday afternoon cartoons (anime) on Hulu or Crunchyroll.

Last season was great: Sword Art Online II, The Irregular at Magic High School, and Aldnoah Zero.

This and This. My son can watch anything he wants at any time either on demand or Youtube.

I was actually just having this discussion with someone about how my 4 year old just doesn't get the concept of waiting for a show to come on at a certain time. I tried to tell him how things used to be for Daddy and he looked at me like I was nuts. He really enjoys watching the voice, and just couldn't comprehend why we had to wait until next week for a new episode.

I know this discussion well. :lol:

My kids would rather play video games than watch TV. We do watch some, but they prefer interactive entertainment by a large margin.

the question i always get is "can you fast forward through the commercial" when we are watching something that is live

Unlike me, my son never grew up watching cartoons - don't think he can name one. Instead he played video games and mostly, watched sports. Even now, he gets up at 6:30am on Saturdays to catch game day and other pre-game shows. When I was a kid, no sports came on until 1pm so that gave me 8-1 to watch cartoons.

But....where will I watch SuperFriends now?

I think they have a Roku channel.

Yup. This is completely foreign to my 5-year-old. Other than a few football games with me, she has never watched anything on live television. For that matter, I would imagine that she thinks that commercials are only played during football games.

I don't have a Roku :)

Kinda sad. When I was little there were only the Big 3 channels, but they all had their Saturday cartoon blocks. Then they all slowly faded away. Now nothing. Kinda sad.

Yeah, I told my son about the Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner Hour. Greatest hour in programming history as a kid.

There's cartoons on 24/7/365 on a number of channels. The need for dedicated Saturday mornings on networks simply ceased to exist.

The next Saturday tradition to go might end up being MLB Sat afternoons.

Apparently CW was the last holdout? As far as I can tell, ABC/NBC/CBS haven't run Saturday morning cartoons in 15 years.

Yeah, I think that's about right.

Once the FCC's "educational" requirements for licensees stiffened in the 90s the cartoon block's death was pretty much assured. The popularity (or at least familiarity) of 30 mins show akin to Animal Planet programs helped finish it off.

Until doing some reading today I didn't even realize that the Big 3 networks had all farmed Saturday morning's out to the same company (Litton) to handle over the past few years.

I get the "can you pause it so I can go to the bathroom?" question a lot.

I know NBC was the first to go. They had cartoons and then Saved by the Bell in the late 80s into 1991 or so, then they just dropped cartoons and added the weekend version of the Today show, and added more of the live shows for Teens like California Dreams and Hang Time. Pretty sure CBS lasted into the 2000s as they had corporate synergy with Nickelodeon, and ABC had synergy with Disney, but I think ABC went with more live action stuff in the early 2000s

My girls are pretty much the same as other kids nowadays. Between the DVR, the free on-demand from AT&T, and Netflix, they pretty much only watch recorded/streamed programs. I don't think they watch anything live unless they accidentally stumble across a program they normally watch as a recording. Hard to believe it's been 30 years since I spent my Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons looking at Transformers and Saturday Supercade (when video games were so popular, just about all of them got turned into cartoons for a Saturday morning block on CBS) and all that fun stuff.

What I miss are the non-cartoon Saturday shows: Roy Rogers, Rin Tin Tin, Sky King. Those shows were the best, and they don't come close to those standards these days.

And of course the greatest kid show ever:

Andy's Gang - Pasta Fazooli vs. Froggy the Gremlin - Tuba - YouTube