10am Saturday No Cartoons

It's 10am Saturday on the East cost of the united states and there isn't a single Saturday Morning Cartoon Block.
I woke up this morning extra early and decided to see what kids these days watch for Saturday morning cartoons before I headed off to the gym.

Not even the shitty sonic X and whatever crap they had before, no literally nothing. On cable CN is showing 50 re-runs of Teen Titans Go which makes you wonder if kids are really this mindless or parents just simply don't let their kids watch TV or exclusively use streaming services like Hulu.
This isn't a nostalgia thread I realize that broadcast/cable TV has gotten progressively shit and nearly rock bottom but like is there a reason we haven't seen shows in the same caliber like the Animated Batman, Batman Beyond Men in Black hell animaniacs?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=WXDH2NUYrgg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KidsClick
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Don't you get Litton's Weekend Adventure on at least one of your local channels? That's what passes for a "Saturday Morning Cartoon Block" these days.

Saturday mornings died back in 2014. The last show that aired was Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal on the CW's Vortexx block.

>Litton's Weekend Adventure
No, it's that or a dubious "educational" program.
So what was the deal with this? Not profitable? advertisement issues?

Who the hell watches these edutainment blocks anyways?

Not profitable, educational requirements, being btfo in ratings by cable.

Nobody, but the local networks love them because they fill all the FCC's E/I programming needs and are literally dirt-cheap to run.

They'd be better off running infomercials.

No audience, the whole notion of waiting days from episode to episode seems ludicrous to modern kids.

That's a load of crap from the networks, that law was virtually made unenforceable going back to the Regan Days. Before then you had programs like School house rock to fill that requirement.

You know, weekday blocks existed too.

You act like there's anything on television at all.

Welcome to YEARS ago my friend.

Right on but this is sad state of affairs. How are people promoting or going to create new animation if no one is going to air it?

>unironically watching TV

Go to bed, grandpa

They have apps for that.

And they died even sooner. Good damn rerun machines.

>there isn't a single Saturday Morning Cartoon Block.
They kind of died with the advent of dedicated cartoon channels.

You see. It's not just animation. Television stations in general just want to find some way of fighting a losing battle against the internet, while not putting forth any sort of effort to gain viewership for their networks. Meanwhile, they put segmented pieces of their shows online in a vain attempt at being "with it" that effectively does nothing to better their network ratings or their traffic to their websites.

These are all shit.

>sick from school
>get to watch TV while lying on the couch
>nothing but strange shows for babies and reruns
Why was staying home from school a good thing back then again?

I’d assume that it’s because whatever reason they had for forming the tradition of airing cartoons on Saturday mornings is just no longer applicable.

What was the reason anyway? For the purpose of maximizing viewership of the cartoon, it always struck me as a bad idea. I remember hearing the old trope of kids having to go out of their way to wake up earlier on Saturdays just to watch cartoons instead of sleeping in, but I always thought it was weird of the networks to choose a time when kids might rather be doing something else like sleeping instead of just scheduling the block later. I get why Saturdays would be ideal because kids don’t have school or church, but not why the morning was chosen specifically. Is it because back when programming was a lot more limited it was really important to schedule all the other content in the other slots?

I almost miss the time I was hosting a weekly Saturday morning cartoon stream for /ctg/ to try and recapture the magic.

It was fun, but it's ran it's course.We never did finish Sonic underground.

I usually just watched The Price is Right then played vidya.

Video games, if you didn't have parents like mine.
>If you are too sick for school, you are too sick for games!

I enjoyed me some Little Bear and Bear in the Big Blue House

For some it was more of an avoidance of the unwanted aspects of school like work or social interaction than actually having anything better to do at home. Also there was still always other stuff to do besides watching tv, like playing video games or reading comic books.

Kids watch youtube now.

>No audience, the whole notion of waiting days from episode to episode seems ludicrous to modern kids.

How? My niece is 9 and watches AT and SU. She has to wait like 3 months before they deign to air a new episode of Steven Universe or Adventure Time as some miniseries or event on TV in between 12 straight weeks of TT Go

It was historically a dead slot between the news and the news at noon.

Haven't they been airing all that stuff in "bombs" now for the most part?

You say that as if weekly blocks didn't occasionally do back-to-back new episodes too.

Cartoon Network launched in 1992. In the time between that and 2014, we had the majority of Fox Kids's run, all of Kids WB, the various incarnations of the 4Kids blocks, and lastly Vortexx.

I'd say Saturday mornings didn't really start to die until about 2005.

Local networks stopped buying the blocks around that time.

Also, One Saturday Morning.

Around 1992 or 2005? Because I can agree with the latter, but the vast majority of local networks were still showing the blocks throughout the 90's and early 00's.

Glad you made your mornings bearable.

2005. Maybe 2008. It's hard to say but I remember a thread about it around that time. Local access shit was cheaper to produce and had better ratings.

But it is worth noting that cable wasn't really offered with cheap packages that included CN until that time as well. Cable Internet changed the game in a lot of ways.

Saturday Morning Cartoon Blocks died for four reasons:

1.) Weekday syndication of animated shows
2.) The rise of specialty cable networks such as Cartoon Network
3.) The "educational material" requirements imposed by the government
4.) Similar requirements on what could be advertised to kids during shows aimed at them

Nowadays, "the rise of Internet video" can either be added to or outright replace #2.

>is there a reason we haven't seen shows in the same caliber like [x]

Animation is expensive and risky, moreso if it cannot be monetized in other ways beyond advertising spots and physical/digital distrubution. Half the shows that ran in the '80s and early '90s were half-hour-long toy ads, after all. To steal a line from one such toy ad: A good show is only half the battle.

Schoolhouse Rock is far superior to anything Litton queefs out.

...

I'd also like to add Kids WB acquiring the rights to the Pokemon dub to that list. After that, pretty much every network was buying dubbed anime by the truckloads to compete as it was easier and cheaper to just voice over foreign shows than pay for producing actual American-made cartoons, and it rotted all the blocks in the end.

This, too.

>3.) The "educational material" requirements imposed by the government
This doesn't exist, this requirement is virtually non enforceable and hasn't been since the Regan days.

Yeah, 2008 was the breaking point. That was the year that FOX dropped 4KidsTV and switched to E/I programming, the CW threw in the towel and axed Kids WB (but allowed 4Kids and Saban to run blocks for another 6 years), and ABC Kids switched to running their 07-08 schedule on an endless loop for several years (the only changes from then on being which Power Rangers was airing).

I'll give a counter-argument and say that Kids WB was doing fine until they dropped Pokemon in 2006. The last two years, they were scrambling to plug the vacuum it left behind, but couldn't find anything that brought in the same level of ratings.

I know it's a pipe dream but we need Saturday Morning Cartoons back because no kid needs to hear the crap spewed out from headline news especially the recent stuff.

Hey genius!
1) Died is past tense
2) It was in effect for years after Regan

Something else that should be considered was how CW was basically shooting themselves in the foot by taking over Fox and WB's mornings, splitting viewership, while broadcasting the exact same shows on both stations.

Kidsclick on thistv is still on, it's on every day from 5am-8am where i live

>we need Saturday Morning Cartoons back

No, we don't. We have shitloads of other entertainment options for kids.

>FOX Kids starts with Digimon, gets more and more once Power Rangers ends, renames itself to FOXBox, gets bought out by 4Kids
>Kids WB drops all Spielberg-made shows and milks their success with Pokemon further through Yu-Gi-Oh and Cardcaptor Sakura, culminating with "Kids WB's Toonami".
>ABC tries to resist the anime fad with One Saturday Morning and a weekday-afternoon version called "One Too", but gets slaughtered in ratings and is forced to drop out.

>Kids WB was doing fine until they dropped Pokemon in 2006
If anything, that was when the anime bubble burst.

That sounds like an issue with your local station. Unless you meant 4Kids, but the overlap between 4KidsTV and CW4Kids was only about five months and they did run different shows on both blocks during that time (except TMNT, but even then they were running different seasons).

>If anything, that was when the anime bubble burst.
The bubble didn't burst until every network had an anime block. I'd say adult swim pulling out was when it was going south.

>2018
>Saturday Morning Cartoons


Bruh, where have you been? In a coma? SATAM cartoons stoped existing like 5 or years ago

forcing that shit is what actually killed the afternoon and saturday morning blocks in the first place. Too damn many rules requiring some form of educational crap, which just had kids moving over to cable channels.

Nah, Cartoon Network and Disney XD release their series episodes a few, like 3-4 episodes at a time with large 6-8 month gaps between them.

A return to one episode a week consistently for 8 months would be an improvement at this point.

Traditionally in the early days of tv, no adult was up that early on Saturday morning to watch anything, they slept in. On Sunday they were assumed up and at church.

So the slot was filled with Children's programing instead. Weekday morning also had kids shows, this continued on until the 90's or so. Mornings from 6 to 8am usually had some kind of kids shows.

What sucks is how local networks quit showing them.

Local Atlanta ABC quit showing saturday morning stuff in 94, while Atlanta Fox quit with afternoons around 01.

not every kid has those options

>I'd say adult swim pulling out was when it was going south.
That hasn't happened yet, futureAnon. Adult Swim aired anime nearly every week since they launched in 2001. They've never stopped.

Basically. Edutainment is a good way to boost ratings if done well (and in moderation), but it can backfire easily. After all, who wants to come out of school to see more school.

They used to run it all week, then moved to saturdays, then cut half the programming and nearly axed the whole thing.

Not every kid has Netflix or Xboxes or tablets, no. That does not mean there are still not options for those kids other than "bland-as-fuck broadcast network crap".

>Mornings from 6 to 8am usually had some kind of kids shows.

Can confirm this. Up through the mid-'90s or so, broadcast networks ran syndicated cartoons in weekday morning slots. I watched the entirety of Conan The Adventurer at least twice as a result. Once cable networks like CN and Nick gained ground and Disney Channel became a non-premium network (holy shit remember when Disney Channel was a premium network like HBO?), the broadcast networks switched over to blander E/I content, then eventually to local news broadcasts before the morning talk shows.

I thought they do the original cartoon block on Sundays mornings from 7 am to 1 pm.

>So what was the deal with this? Not profitable? advertisement issues?
Educational requirement effectively neutered cartoons. ABC realized they could just rerun shows from disney channel without making new content during the mid 2000s. Parent companies realize everyone has cable and don't need to air kid content on their main channel.

>not every kid has those options
You have to be pretty poor not to have one of the following
A smartphone
A tablet
A games console from last gen to now so like 6 systems
A pc/laptop
A smart TV

In Mexico we had cartoons and kids' shows everyday until around the evening. In fact, we had a whole channel dedicated for children. Every morning was "Saturday morning" for us. Now it's nothing but reruns of Spongebob, Dragon Ball, and Nick's crappy live-action shows.

They stopped in 2007.

Just because you don't have wifi in your cave doesn't make them shit

*2014

Netflix and YouTube provide constant entertainment without commercials. Kids don't even need to get out of bed; they just turn on the tablet and watch what they want.

Or at the very least satellite or internet.

Ok but when? Because I was talking about the origin of the tradition, which I think started during the birth of tv in the 60s. Children’s networks became a thing in the 80s, I think, so it wasn’t weird to have kids programming that may have been largely cartoons after that time in its own era, but there was a time before that when networks weren’t aimed at kids and the majority of programming wasn’t cartoons on nearly all channels.

Cartoons are dead

For me it was during the 90s and 00s. After that, I started seeing less and less cartoons on public TV.

Believe it or not, Televisa used to make soap operas for children. They stopped during the mid 00s.

Its hard breaking the habit of a lifetime, waking up and turning on the tv for some cartoons and seeing the local news or some kind of educational program. Sometimes I'll flip the channels looking for something just out of habit and finding nothing.

I miss Saturday morning cartoons, I know I've got the internet and I can watch whatever the hell I want but its just not the same as sitting in front of the tv with a bowl of cereal.

I miss my cartoons, I want em back.

Monday through Friday waking up for school would be hell but for some reason Saturday Morning I'd be up and ready with no problem anticipating Saturday Morning Cartoons. Of course One Saturday Morning was the go to on channel 13. I Remember many times waking up so early some home improvement show was on and I thought it was kinda cool but 7am would be the kickoff to some good cartoons till around 11am when it was starting to end and I channel surfed. WB was my goto for Pokemon, Beast Wars also there was a cartoon where each alien was from a planet of rocks, fire, ice and so on and I remember at one point the planets at World Engines to GTFO from something, forgot the name of it. Channel 10 had some cartoons but had lots of educational stuff like my local news hosted quiz bowls with local high schools. Channel 3 was real young kid friendly like stuff you'd find on PBS and of course there was Nickelodeon and years later the glory of Rising Sun Toonami and hell some anime on Tech TV to get my fix. I guess variety and choices was top notch, IDK, Thanks for that bit of nostalgia.

War Planets
youtube.com/watch?v=WXDH2NUYrgg

That's it! That theme song will be in my head forever. Thought it was called something more complicated than that, Thanks user.

There's a thing called KidsClick, if you have a ThisTV affiliate you should be able to watch.

I'm not even up early enough to catch this shit anyway
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KidsClick

KidsClick is a swing-and-a-miss.

Or, more likely, Saturday morning cartoons were falling out of favor because they were becoming too expensive for the return on them. Anime being cheap is what allowed KidsWB and FoxBox to linger as long as they did. Saturday morning cartoons would have very likely ended on both networks around '03-ish otherwise, just like every other block that didn't switch over to anime.

>CBS struggles to hold on, before turning into a Nick Jr rerun block in 2000
>NBC's teen-themed live action block wasn't technically Saturday morning cartoons, but still turned into a Discovery Kids rerun block in 2002
>ABC's One Saturday Morning turned into a Disney Channel and Toon Disney rerun block in 2002
>KidsWB began transitioning into a Toonami rerun block in 2001 starting with its weekday lineup, but the breakout popularity of Yu-gi-oh averted that from happening
>FoxKids dies in 2002 and 4kids takes the opportunity to use its Pokemon money to start its own block

Anime wasn't the problem. Every block was just turning into a cable channel rerun block on their own. Anime is the reason that KidsWB and FoxBox were able to narrowly avoid that fate.

It was either boring shit in my room, or soap operas and Law & Order on the couch with my grandparents. I still watch General Hospital some days

Was just about to say this, for me it's on the WB though.

in the 90s it was nuts.
Local Fox network in my area:
>8am-9am weekdays had Conan the Adventurer, and Exosquad
>1pm -3pm weekdays had Beast Wars, War Planets, Captain Bucky O’Hare, and Bots Master

and this was just one station, I know others that were glutted with kids cartoons in those lumps between lunch hours.

I wanted to skip school

God I miss watching Pokémon in the early 00s.

What was your Saturday morning block of choice, Sup Forums? I was all into One Saturday Morning until I discovered Digimon, then I was Fox Kids until it left the block. Occasionally Kids WB for Pokemon. Used to love getting up early before my family, fixing a bowl of cereal, and settling down for Saturday morning fun.

Of course today I got up and have spent my entire day catching up on Star Wars Rebels, so I guess technically not much has changed, but I miss the innocence. Also the bumpers and comfy feel of blocks. I wish Myspleen had more of those available.

I'm Born 83 and I was Fox Kids right up until it changed to Foxbox in 2002. It just hit every spot and was my first exposure/awareness to network censorship. When Beast Wars aired their on the main network rather than the local syndication (which strangely was still airing at that 1pm time) a lot of battle scenes were changed up, every hit/shot that connected on one of the female characters was edited to not show the punch/blast connecting, also a lot of shows got overwork post 9/11 for obvious reasons. I weirdly thought weekday/weekend tv ended much sooner than 2014 because both major networks like CN and Nick were hitting their golden years of shows in the early 00s so local blocks taken to cartoons seem worthless but I was wrong and learned it fought hard right up to 2014.

>Pokemon now airs on DXD instead of Kids WB or CN
I'm not sure how to feel about this

>yfw the One Saturday Morning website is still active
disney.go.com/disneytelevision/

Fox Kids all the way, occasionally watching other channels just to see what they were up to.

it was mostly Fox Kids untill Kids WB got Pokemon
then it was mainly Kids WB from here on out
still watched Fox Kids from time to time, mainly for Power Rangers up untill Lost Galaxy and Digimon.
never watch the others except for Ned's Nightmare on ABC