The Disappearance of Saturday Morning 838
Ant writes "Saturday morning no longer means kids in front of TV sets across the country, glued to the latest in hip cartoons. Why? Gerard Raiti investigates the death of an era." As a former Saturday morning TV addict, this doesn't seem like a bad thing to me.
I remember saturday mornings (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I remember saturday mornings (Score:5, Interesting)
My little brother loves Sat. mornings he always wakes up at some un-godly hour (7:00am!?!) to watch Kids WB and FOX - Yu-Gi-Oh, Jackie Chan, Pokemon...
From Article:
My parents are divorced and my brother still loves to watch TV from 7:00 to Noon. I think the "death" of Sat. Morning Cartoons is due to the 24 hour cartoon stations, not divorce and TiVo. As I was growing up I did not have Cartoon Network, Disney and Nickelodeon. The programming for kids was only on Saturday Mornings and for 1-2 hours after I got home from school. So if I wanted to see the only kids shows I would have to have watched on Sat Morning.
Re:I remember saturday mornings (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it simply a count of divorces per marriages in a particular year? If so, doesn't that discount marriages that last for a long time?
JoAnn
Re:I remember saturday mornings (Score:5, Interesting)
> Ninja Turtles.
The Saturday-morning cartoons I most easily remember from when I was a kid are *The Smurfs* and those public service type edu-toons the stations were required to run, like the *Schoolhouse Rock* cartoons, as well as the musical advertisements from cheese manufacturers' or beef industry associations...
I also recall that my favorite Saturday-morning show wasn't a cartoon, but rather some show in which a bearded guy would tell stories to a room full of kids. Just like story time in elementary school, only on TV. He'd tell some really gruesome kids' stories though, like the one in which a man fights with some sort of man-beast and cuts a chunk out of its flesh during the fight, and takes it home and cooks it up to serve for his family...
A few years later the arrival of *Saved By the Bell* started to change the landscape of Saturday-morning kids' TV, turning it into a time for kids' versions of sitcoms and other live-character shows instead of so many cartoons. Mmmmm, the crush I had on those *Saved By the Bell* gals when I was a kid...
BTW, for anyone who doesn't know, the classic *Schoolhouse Rock* series is available on a special-edition DVD these days. Great nostalgia.
Re:I remember saturday mornings (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I remember saturday mornings (Score:4, Interesting)
I am 36, which means I remember Cartoons starting when I was 5 in 1971, up to when I left home at 19 and no longer had younger brothers and sisters watching them.
No one hear has mentioned Boomerang, the Cartoon Network spin-off which showcases Hanna-Barbara cartoons from 1958 to 1985.
Yes, now seen as an adult, some of the shows I thought were cool, are, well, junk. However, some things still hold up well. Like Johnny Quest
Also no one has mentioned such Jay Ward classics as Rocky and Bullwinkle. A show written for kids, with dialog for the adults and humor that cut to the heart of the cold war.
I remember back in the 70's when the networks would have a Friday night where they would show off their new Saturday morning linuep. One of the things we would look forward to after school started up again in September is seeing what new cartoons would be on.
Inspector Gadget and Robotech were worth watching. At 18, I grew tired of the He-Man,GI Joe tie-ins. They had enough bullets flying around to call it world war 3, but no one ever dies, They can't die, K-Mart had 100 units of each figure on the shelf, killing of the character would have been bad business.
Yes, the quality of the animation is terrible now days. There are a few modern gems. I find Ren and Stimpy funny and pretty incorrect.
I would have to agree that most cartoons are not very good, because they are not witty and there is no adult humor in them, or that they are so PC. Let's dialog about our feelings. The Simpsons has not been on so long because they dialog about their feelings, it's because they take no prisoners.
It's pretty sad realy, even back in the 70's most of the great cartoons had been made in the 60's.
Re:I remember saturday mornings (Score:4, Funny)
I used to love Saturday morning cartoons... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I used to love Saturday morning cartoons... (Score:5, Funny)
Now I think I that the cartoons are boring and the Christian Evangelists are hilarious.
Re:I used to love Saturday morning cartoons... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not very ethical however. Its a shame that these people represent believers in Jesus to so many people.
They are like the crackers of hackers. Crackers give hackers a bad name but they are a very small percentage of hackers. Same with greedy televangelists. They give Christianity a bad name, but are a very small percentage of Christians.
Jesus knocked over the tables of the "money changers" in the Temple. He definately does not approve of fraudulent televangelism.
Re:I used to love Saturday morning cartoons... (Score:5, Funny)
Then the university programs would come on for one or two half-hour shows. There'd be lectures on dinosaurs, chemistry, ancient art, archeology, religion, Egyptian architectures, etc...
Then, if I remember correctly, Scooby-Doo would start off the morning line up (the real Scooby-Doo, not that new-age Scrappy crap, and DON'T get me started on Gadzookie...).
Superfriends, Laugh Olympics, and of course the classic Schoolhouse Rock fill-ins...conjunction junction, what's your function?
I never really liked the Smurfs; guess I was starting to outgrow cartoons then. But I never missed an episode of Dungeons and Dragons. Always wanted that bow...
Back then, shows were real. Now we've got Artifical T.V. ... my wife says that Jenna won.
Re:I used to love Saturday morning cartoons... (Score:5, Funny)
(singing)
I'm an amendment to be, yes an amendment to be, and I'm hopin' that they'll ratify me. There's a lot of flag burners who have got too much freedom. I wanna make it legal for policemen to beat 'em, cause there's limits to our liberties. 'Least I hope and pray that there are, 'cause those liberal freaks go too far.
kid: Well why can't we just make a law against flag burning?
Amendment: Because that law would be unconstitutional.
But if we changed the Constitution...
kid: Then we could make all sorts of crazy laws!
Amendment: Now you're catching on!
Kid: What if people say you're not good enough to be in the Constitution?
Amendment (singing): Then I'll crush all opposition to me, and I'll make Ted Kennedy pay. If he fights back, I'll say that he's gay.
Congressman: Good news, Amendment! They ratified ya! You're in the U.S. Constitution.
Amendment: Oh yeah! Door's open, boys.
Re:I used to love Saturday morning cartoons... (Score:3, Informative)
Sunday mornings in India... (Score:4, Interesting)
A new Era (Score:4, Insightful)
Then agian, some kids just sleep in
Re:A new Era (Score:4, Funny)
What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Interesting)
When was the last entertaining Bugs Bunny cartoon made? Around 1960 or so?
I can't help but wonder what happened. Sure, anime is good and all, but not as a replacement for classic cartoons. Why did it die out? They were infinitely more entertaining than anything recent. Did some Texans raise a stink about Yosemitie Sam, and PETA about talking animals being shot at all the time?
Come on... What happened?
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:3, Insightful)
I hear you, man! From the article, some of the reasons for the change:
a poorer quality of animation, and a greater emphasis on family time.
Please! The quality of cartoons took a huge dive in the 70's and 80's and those who think that the the quality of animation is poorer today, is looking at the past with rosy colored glasses.
Yogi Bear, Godzilla (ack!),Snagglepus, Atomic Ant, the Tom and Jerry from the age (the oroginals are *
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyways it seems to me like sometime in the early seventies, they started making them more kid-oriented (hence Scoobie-Doo, Flinstones, Jetsons, et.al.) and therefore not as all around entertaining.
Anime, as you suggest, is the only thing that comes close because it doesn't pretend to be a product for kids.
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Informative)
That's a very common misconception. While the audience might be a bit older here in the states, most of the anime we get is targeted at middle school students in japan.
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Insightful)
This switch forgets that kids live in a world filled with adults, and tho they may not get all the complex jokes, they do recognise when they're being talked down to. And making cartoons "kid-level" takes away the kid's incentive to pay attention so he gets all the nuances. IOW, they become uninteresting, so the kid loses interest. Once that happens, you never get the kid back.
Kids aren't near as stupid as some adults think. Write a good clean cartoon with complex humour that an adult can appreciate, and it'll keep the kids' interest better too.
Survey question: What was your fave cartoon as a kid? and as an adult?
A: Bullwinkle, and A: Bullwinkle. Why? See above.
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're forgetting something important. A show that "keeps the kids' interest better" will be cancelled, unless it's also driving toy sales. Obviously, "keeping the kids' interest" is not the primary goal of the people who produce cartoons. Cartoons nowadays are basically just infomercials.
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with your thesis, but not with some of your examples. The Flintstones were a cartoon version of The Honeymooners, with Fred mapping to Ralph Kramden and Barney to Ed Norton etc. It originally aired from 1960 to 1966, in prime time if I remember rightly. The Jetsons started in 1962.
Fundamentally, though, you're right. When you write for, bud don't pander to, children, the results are things such as Tom Sawyer, Watership Down, and A Wrinkle in Time. When you pander to children, you get Barney--the mind-sucking Purple Hellwyrm.
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where things got stupid, IMO, is when the adults got stupid about cartoons. Everything started sliding when someone declared that Road Runner and Coyote cartoons were too violent. I'm quite certain that kids understand Coyote is his own worst enemy. I'm pretty certain it's clear that you can't push your brother off a cliff somewhere in a Southwestern desert, and expect him to live. The only people who have troubles with such distinctions are moronic do-gooding adults.
-Paul Komarek
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids also generally understand what's fantasy and what's not, more than adults often realise. A few kids will believe cartoon physics are real, but a few adults believe impossible things too, so it's not just a kid thing.
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:4, Funny)
Wile E. Coyote, Software Genius.
Then again, they say that humor is just a small twist on mundane every-day life. Coyote as a programmer wouldn't be that far from real programmers. Just like real programmers, he'd be sure every one of his "creations" was a work of art, and expect it to work without adequate testing.
-Paul Komarek
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Interesting)
Looney Toons and Calvin and Hobbes seem to span the full range of humor. There were simple gags and punch-lines to appeal to children while having hidden adult themes and social commentary subtlely burried to appeal to adults.
"Actually it's a buck-and-a-quarter quarter staff, but I'm not telling him that."
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:3, Interesting)
What happened? They stopped making money.
The death of the entertaining animated short happened when the practice of running animated shorts before movies died out. Way back when, the shorts had to appeal to everyone, because everyone was going to the movies. Today, adults don't watch most animated TV shows (those specifically targeted to younger-than-boomer adults being the exception), so there is no reason to make them appeal to anyone but the pre-pubescent.
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the lead-up to Iraq, I kept waiting for somebody to show the cartoon where all the mice (allies) ganged up on the cat (hitler) and when the cat was defeated the peace activist mouse tried to join in the victory song and got hit with something. Whether you agree with that POV or not, it's a classic cartoon.
Then there's the one where they build the skyscraper to the tune of a familiar classical work, and at the end 3 bricks fall on some poor animals head in time with the last 3 notes. If you know classic cartoons, you know the one I'm talking about.
And of course, there were all the cartoons made during WWII, much of which went over my head until I learned about the war, then I saw the cartoons again and it was like... OHHHH... so that's what Bugs Bunny was talking about with the "A-Sticker". Or how about the one where the ambulance pulls up and takes the rubber tire and leaves the dying patient? It was just silliness until my Dad told me about the rubber shortage during the war; but that was the great thing about it--it worked as commentary on the shortage, but it also worked as silly humor apart from any knowledge of what was happening. Did the makers of that cartoon hope it would stand the test of time, or was it just dumb luck?
Then there were some that were just great glimpses into the 30s and 40s that had nothing to do with war. Remember the one where all the people go in to "win a car" and they all come out with cars and the whole city pulses to some Latin rhythm? Just good clean fun. Or how about the one where the frightened little mouse runs away from the church and meets frightening characters like Nick O'Tine the cigarette? Yep, even back then we had a love-hate relationship with tobacco... but you'd never know any of this if you hadn't seen classic cartoons.
You don't have to go back to the 30s and 40s either. Why not roll Schoolhouse Rock once in a while?
As to what happened, I dunno. Disney syndrome? I don't think so. If that were the case, we'd at least see overpriced VHS tapes being pitched on TV (call now, operators are standing by...) and I haven't seen it. Maybe they tried that, and failed.
And what's more, there's a lot of more obscure stuff out there. They should re-run it in theatres. One of the best times I ever had in a theatre was in college when they ran a bouncing-ball cartoon. Remember those? Nobody had seen one in years. The next day, we would clap our hands and sing "deep in the heart of Texas" and it was like an inside joke. People thought we were crazy... actually, we kinda were.
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you - but I have to twist it a bit. Chuck Jones, while catrching all the Bugs-buzz these days, is also partly responsible for reducing the quality of the cartoons as well. Remember Bugs in his hey-day, back in the Fritz Freeling era? This is the time I would call "peak-Bugs" - characters like Bugs, Daffy, Yosemite Sam and Foghorn (even the Chicken Hawk) were refined and perfect ploys for the plot. Everything spun perfectly because the balance between animation and character. You can't compare "Buccanner Bunny" or "Baseball Bugs" with anything else...they are so completly wrapped up in the individuality of Bugs that no other character could do them. And they're deeper and richer experiences for it.
I feel Chuck's years were different though - wonderfully experimental and innovative, but in some ways also the point in which the quality of the animation began it's decline. Bugs and Co. became flatter, more square-headded and ragged-edged, as if BB was morphing to Road Runner edginess.
Character also took a big step backwards too - it became more a sticom. Or worse - the late 50 and 60's garishness invaded the cartoons. Colors became more electric and abstract. Cartoonists also began to play with the idea of a cartoon - the Dot and the Line (I've never been a fan of that one), Bugs battling the animator with an erasor (where I betcha you could watch it, and just swap Daffy for Bugs and never know the difference - the individual character of each was blended and lost).
Don't get me wrong - I like Jones, but I don't think he was the saviour of cartoons as recent history tells. (But then I'd NEVER allow Hollywood to write history - it's all fashion and fad in their eyes...but that's another screed)
Jones was a classisist and modernist, and I would say he refined the visual style of the cartoons, leading the way for modern Saturday Morning fare. He did for the movies what another cartoonist of that same time did for print - Charles Schultz & "Peanuts" - they eliminated the noise and fluff, and focused on the the center of the events, reducing the cartoon to a kind of visual haiku. I believe Schultz was more sucessful because with a daily publication he was able to keep the character of Charlie Brown more-or-less intact. On the other hand, Bugs, Daffy, Speedy Gonzolez et al became more interchangeable, more "component" in nature and so less successful.
Too many PC issues. (Score:5, Interesting)
To give you an idea to my age, I remember when the original Scoobie do wasn't a re-run, and didn't have that little croch sniffer Scrappie.
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:3, Insightful)
cartoons nowadays are crap
unoriginal and just plain unentertaning.
truly, nothing beats the merry melodies of times gone by.
and what memories they are. sure they wre violent, but everyone laughed then, everyone knwe they were jokes.
no we have tv, movies, and NEWS conveying violence to kids that is just so much more believeable and true to life.
and people blame the games and cartoons.
have you turned on the tv lately? notice how much violence and gore is glorified?
Re:What about classic cartoons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most WWII ones have politically incorrect Japanese or German characters. In other words, they are damn funny, and P2P is really the only way to get them these days.
Unfortunately, it seems that banned-cartoon afficionados never heard of MPEG4, so most are 100+MB MPEG1/2 files and on slow hosts. The quality often leaves something to be desired.
Anyhow, classic cartoons are still aired on Cartoon Network... Not as much as I think they should be, but if you've got a Tivo, you could accumulate quite a few just setting it to record the Chuck Jones/Tex Avery 30min shows. Rip 'em to Divx and pass 'em around on CD and the Internet for the less fortunate.
probably VCD format (Score:3, Insightful)
They might be in VCD format so you can burn and watch on a real television with the help of a DVD player.
Sure, an uber-hot divx formatted cartoon would be great and all, but I doubt these people have access to the originals and it would be a waste of effort to take low-quality television video (or more likely second or third generation VHS as these episodes are no longer broadcasted) and put it in huge high-quality divx-like formatting.
When it comes to television broa
It is because of all Cartoon networks (Score:5, Insightful)
I was glued to the Transformers in the 80s. There is nothing as good on now. End of an era.
Re:It is because of all Cartoon networks (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you tried watching some of those old Transformers cartoons? If you have, you'll realize that no, they really aren't good, it's just that your tastes were different back then.
Re:Dragon Ball Z. (Score:3, Interesting)
A bad thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't mean to come across as a self-righteous curmudgeon, but has watching less TV ever done anything but good for a child?
The alternatives, as I see it, are reading books, using computers, or interacting with other humans. Which one of those activities would you judge to be inferior to staring at the tube? The problem with TV is that it's not interactive; it doesn't require the "user" to think (or even react), but merely to passively stare at it.
Re:A bad thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
RTFA. You'll see he points out that the availability of cable TV means that kids can watch kid-oriented TV any time of the week, not just on Saturday morning. Though he doesn't mention it, the increased percentage of families with 2 or more TVs probably doesn't hurt either (as Mum and Dad go off to watch "The West Wing" while the kids watch "Nick at Night").
The availability of TV shows for kids probably means that kids watch more TV than before, not less. They just don't do it on Saturday morning.
(The demise of the cartoon, at any time, though, has different factors, also covered in the article)
No cartoon violence == less fun (Score:5, Insightful)
Because children don't enjoy boring PC bullshit. I'll bet the little rugrats would tune in to the old WB cartoons, dynamite gags and all.
FARK to Slashdot transmission time... (Score:5, Funny)
That, of course, is for the initial Slashdot article, not when they repeat it again three hours from now.
And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!
The classics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The classics (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh well.
Re:The classics (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The classics (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The classics (Score:4, Insightful)
thad
You list those as "classics"? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's like a list about the debasement of the kid cartoon, not about the classics. You were on the cusp of the every-show-is-an-excuse-to-push-action-figures generation, but not quite there yet. Transformers was actually over the edge... Not that the production values were so bad, with Orson Welles in the movie and all, but that was well on the way to Pokemon.
"Cl
isn't what it used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it was just the time I grew up in, but the good shows aren't on anymore.
(And by the good shows I mean Rocco's Modern Life, Garfield and Friends, and other such shows that were a satire of current popular and political views [hey, maybe I was an overly smart nerd as a young'un too].)
Nowadays, the stuff on TV just isn't attractive. Not on Saturday mornings, afternoons, or even nighttime (except for toonami midnight run, which is pretty old stuff anyway). It seems as though there is less and less of a reason to watch TV at all anymore. The only things recently that I've even remembered the show times for were 24 (the drama that takes place one hour per episode) and Trigun (toonami).
Maybe it's just me, but TV doesn't hold my attention enough for me to keep watching it.
[...reading atricle...]
Ok it says the internet is a major factor in the decline of TV viewing. They have me on that point (damn you slashdot). Also, I forgot to take into account the whole "job" thing with the working or sleeping through the mornings.
[...last attempt at being right the first time around...]
Meh, I still think if they put something on that captivated me enough I would make time to watch it.
The real reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The real reason (Score:5, Insightful)
A.C. Slater and the gang (Score:3)
The college years starring that oaf Bob Golic weren't the same *sigh*
lost specialness (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think cartoons are a bad thing, and I cherished my Saturday morning cartoon watching time. It taught me the value of patience, and the value of privledge. If I was bad during the week, then guess what, my cherished time of cartoon watching would be revoked.
Unlike today, I don't think parents tended to use the television as some kind of electronic babysitter. The television on the whole just wasn't entertaining to children most of the time, so instead of a crutch it was used as a reward tool. In this way, I think the Saturday morning cartoon era was much more valuable to the youth that experienced it than today's pacifier approach.
Don't want to deal with the kids? Turn on Cartoon Network. Yuck.
The end of an era (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, this really does seem like the end of an era to me. Admittedly I was a Saturday morning cartoon addict. I liked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Inspector Gadget, and all those other great cartoons of those days. What happened? This article attempts to explain what, but I just don't buy it. I don't think that there has been a lack of quality television programming these days. I just think that kids are getting involved in something more immersive - for better or worse - that is taking them away from cartoons and thus drying up the market.
What am I talking about? Videogames! In my youth the SNES was the coolest videogame system anyone I knew had. It was also very expensive. I remember how we all congregated at the house of the one kid in my neighborhood who owned it to play Street Fighter. But that wasn't Saturday morning - that was weekdays, after school.
Nowadays, however, videogame systems are cheap and prevalent. Heck, my SIX YEAR OLD nephew has a PlayStation and a GameBoy Advance. I would estimate he plays games at least two hours a day. That's time he probably would've spent watching TV anyway. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? All I know is, kids these days are getting exposed to videogames very early on in life.
I was babysitting my cousin recently. We were playing Gauntlet: Dark Legacy together on my PS2. I thought he would suck. I was wrong. He wasn't amazingly good, but he's better than my father. This, from a kid who can't really even read! The kids these days, they're just intuitively "getting" videogames. My dad sucks at action games. He's very good at strategy games though. And this new generation, for better or worse, is highly trained in electronics.
I suppose the electronizing of our nation's youth is a good thing. That's the way the future's headed. I just feel sad, though, that the closest thing they'll experience to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the cheap knock-off games for GameBoy whose sole good quality is the license they obtained. The cartoons, even though non-interactive, were at least better.
Any thoughts?
Re:The end of an era (Score:3, Informative)
I totally fail to buy the argument that videogames or anything else (quality time?!? WTF?) is taking kids away from cartoons. The problem is that they just don't exist. I recall the last time I woke up before noon
Re:The end of an era (Score:3, Interesting)
This may be unrelated, but I just wanna comment that while kids are learning games (and gaining that instinctive reflex action to press the controller buttons), they're not learning something else. 2
Re:The end of an era (Score:3, Interesting)
Like many forms of entertainment there is a cultural basis established with it and people will interact due to that shared culture. Look at the internet, people run websits about games, get involved in communities over them, play games with other people, form clans, and even lasting friendships. I know at least one pe
fond memories... (Score:5, Funny)
Course, these days, I don't think I'veseen a Saturday morning in a few years, unles you count the time between Friday at midnight and when I crawl into bed.
Alright!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Sleep, blessed sleep (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not a parent, are you?
Seriously. I never used the TV as a babysitter but the Glass Teat did have it's use on Saturday morning. After putting in an 80 hour, five day week an extra few hours to sleep on that one critical day was, well, critical. The Saturday morning cartoons were something for my little sweetie to do instead of prying my eyelids up and asking me to entertain her at six in the morning. And I didn't have to worry about what she might be watching because I *knew* what was on, on every channel ( we didn't have quite so many of them in those days).
In times when I wasn't working quite so hard, or at all, we'd watch Danger Mouse together every afternoon, then go out and play, and read books after dinner and most Saturday mornings would find us in the car going somewhere neat.
But in those times when I was working that hard Saturday morning cartoons were a gift from God and the only thing that kept me alive, and sane. Probably kept her alive too.
KFG
Saturday Morning (Score:5, Insightful)
Being slashdotted as I type (Score:5, Insightful)
(can't read other three pages:(
This is not necessarily a good thing, despite what timothy implies. One of the reasons cited for the decline is parents having to 'fill' the time. Why are they doing that? Divorce. Each parent is trying to make up for only having half time with their kids. For some reason, other parents feel that Johnny and Susie have to be in soccer (scouts, swimming, etc.) as well. Having overly complicated lives is something that adults can barely cope with without the use of alcohol, Prozac, and other drugs. Why should we expect 8 year olds to be able to cope?
Oh, they're going to learn socialization skills. Bull. Did everyone forget 'Lord of the Flies'? Those are the type of socialization skills kids learn when left to their own devices. What's wrong with a bit of leisure on the weekends, particularly for children? 'All work and no play...'
So let them play outside, whether it's ball, gardening (some kids dig it, no pun intended), or whatever. But why not wake up Saturday morning and decide what to do? That's fine, for the more temperate months. But in the depths of summer, hiding out in the basement is a good thing. In the winter, sitting in front of the fire isn't bad. But what to do?
Read? That's nice, but do you *always* feel like reading? No. Look at the number of people already who have lamented the loss of classic WB cartoons. There's something there. It's simple entertainment. What's wrong with that?
Internet? It's just as non-interactive as the TV.
Video Games? Not sure how this is a better use of time. Perhaps timothy can fill us in? (Note, I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's no better than TV.)
The death of Saturday morning cartoons is not something to necessarily cheer about. Look at the causes ('non-traditional' families, turning kids into little adults) and lament the occurence.
Changes.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The second thing I feel leads to their demise is just the lineup. When I was a kid the Sat. Morning Cartoons had a basic layout, the lame cartoons early, the "hip" cartoons, or whatever cartoons fit the trend, and finally you could round out the morning with the timeless cartoons such as Bugs Bunny. In my eyes, things got bad when some jack ass executive decided that they needed to take the classics and change them into kid versions of themselves, such as the Tom and Jerry Kids (although I will excuse Tiny Toons, but thats my opinion). These crappy cartoons just took up air time.... then the Power Rangers came out and to me, thats when I feel Sat. Morning lost its apeal.
Looking around my neighborhood and at my friends and their children, Id have to agree with the divorce notion on the demise of these cartoons. Most people I know who get the kids for the weekend make plans with their children, like going to the zoo or the pool, or camping. Its sad, I remember waking up in my PJs to watch cartoons, and those will always be some of my fonder memories.
Cartoons were readily available during the 80s too (Score:5, Interesting)
We had Nickelodeon, we had Nintendo almost everything that exists now existed back then. The only real difference is the complete lack of cartoons (and the lack of major action figure lines as well... do kids not play with them anymore? What's the deal?!?). I think it's the networks trying to save money by not putting into shows that they state don't make a great deal of money. They ignored the cartoon departments and now they've just more of less given up on it and blamed cable as the reason.
I think a fair comparison would be a local theater. They got rid of student and military discounts a few years back in a small town (Manhattan, KS) that exists mainly due to Kansas State and nearby Ft. Riley. They jacked up adult prices at the same time. The cited reason for the lack of discounts was that dollar theaters covered this market. Ignoring that the same company then bought and quickly closed the only dollar theater in town they cite something vaguely related that doesn't compare (I want to see a first-run film, not something that I didn't want to see or already saw four months ago) as an excuse to make more money.
The Golden Age (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't seem a big surprise to see Saturday morning TV cartoons imploding, since 25 years ago the best things on were from 30 years before that, and not designed for TV.
What ever happend to kids sitting around radios? (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea of BBSes and online shopping was such an amazing thing people couldn't believe it.
When Byte ran an artical about how computers would replace TVs eventually people were sceptical. The pet rock of the 80s or so they belived.
For kids today computers have already replaced TV. They probably don't even know what radio is. Music comes from MP3s and CD players. Books are PDF files.
Bugs Bunny has nothing on Neopets.com
Yugi and Pokemon... and while the cartoons exist as 30 min daily ads for the card games it seams more and more kids only watch them becouse of the card games.
Now a days the Yugi and Pokemon video games are ads for the TV shows and card games.
Willy Wonka candys advertises by having a website filled with games and runs ads on Neopets.com.
It's not just the kids. Thow they lead the way.
CNN Headline News already knows the future. CNN.com. FoxNews has it's website. and when NBC looks for a partnership it looks to Microsoft.
People complain less about the crap on TV... Not becouse there is less crap. All the good shows are going away or going to hell leaving nothing but crap. But it's the crap that people who won't go online like.
It's the digital age. I just gave a 7 year old a Knoppix CD and then the topic of upgrading ram came up... (The Bosses son.. His computer need more memory)
The next generation understands Rinkworks Computer Stupidities [rinkworks.com].
For them Google is the place to look up information not the public libary.
The idea of sitting around watching TV for 30 minuts seams.. alien.
My boss dosen't worry about her kids watching to much TV. She worrys about them playing to many video games.
Hot Patootie (Score:4, Funny)
Don't tell Meatloaf or Richard O'Brian
njordThe best cartoons were never taken seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
things like bugs bunny and yosemite sam blowing holes in each other's hats, then running from each other and bugs beating the crap out of sam through various dirty tricks.
the late 1950s was the end of the great cartoon era. They were written for an adult audience, and often shown before movies to get folks' attention on the screen. Movie trailers now do this.
[offtopic]
I long for the days when there were still parts of one's life that were not saturated with advertisements. the only part of my life not saturated with ads is my dreams, and as soon as the technology exists to put ads in my dreams, they'll be there. I hope I'm dead.
[/offtopic]
When cartoons were not taken seriously, and considered entertainment only, is when cartoons were great. Nowadays cartoons like Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls are good cartoons, but they'll never be as good as the WWII and babyboom era Warner Bros cartoons.
I saw an interview once with some animators from that era of Warner animation studios' life, and they all said that they wrote and drew the cartoons that *they* wanted to see, not what someone else wanted to see. Nowadays executives decide what is written and drawn, in an attempt to please the most people possible, and keep their ad revenue up. it is my belief that all bad decisions are based on the desire for more money, and this is yet another example of that form of decision making.
Anyway, ranting off. The cartoons will get great again when they study what psychology made the old warner bros cartoons great, and reproduce it. talking rabbits, ducks, dogs, roosters, squirrels, etc, with jokes and situations written for adults and silly fake violence written for children. then they'll be great again. I would love to see one cartoon character jump into a freaking burning coal stove on a train and find a huge party inside just one more time. I would also love to see a good old fashioned shootout in a dusty old frontier town, between a talking, wise-ass rabbit that walks on two legs and a stupid gun-happy gold miner just one more time. "i dare you to step across this line" said 4,000 times until sam is led into walking off of a cliff. doesn't get much better than that.
oh, the good old fashioned crazyness will never be repeated!
Blame it on video games. (Score:5, Interesting)
Then along came the NES, which truly revolutionized the home gaming phenomenon and became as commonplace as toasters in many households. Kids started spending more and more time with their came consoles and less with their toys, and this phenomenon continues to the present day, when video games continue to take up a larger and larger portion of floor space at toy stores every year.
It's especially pronounced in Japan, where, through the 60s, 70s and 80s there were jillions of live action and cartoon shows produced to serve as vehicles for promoting superhero, monster, and robot toys. Nowadays, there are only a few core brands left that have any kind of sustainability, with very few newcomers to the fold. Some companies like Takara have tried crossover products like Web Diver Gradion [google.com], but they haven't caught on as much as they'd like. Kids there are just having more fun with their Playstations and Game Boys.
Of course, there is the occasional Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh that achieve breakthrough success, but one could argue that these are pretty heavily game-based properties as opposed to toy-based.
Simple; they suck (Score:5, Interesting)
Cartoons were clearly tied to gender. There were boy cartoons (GI Joe, Transformers, Voltron, M.A.S.K., that one with the light gun plane where you shot at the screen, and so forth), and girl cartoons (Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, etc.). These were genuine, good quality shows that were obvious toy tie-ins, but kids loved them. See, toys provide something tangible, and the easiest way to generate toys is to not have character development. If I want to add a character to Spongebob, I have to have a meaningful purpose for that character, because said cartoon is primarily narrative and dialogue-driven. Transformers is also arguably narrative-driven, although the narrative consists primarily of Autobots vs. decepticons, so adding a flying plane or a dinosaur is trivial.
It seems a bit rambling, but I'm bringing it together here. I can remember watching kids play Power Rangers at the park. Power Rangers is easy to play. You choose your ranger, you go off and battle "evil". How the hell do a bunch of kids play Spongebob? What, you pretend to be some crab and exchange half-wit banter while simultaneously apppealing to an older demographic?
Basically, it's a lack of conflict. Every solid cartoon show revolved around the simplest of ideas, good vs. evil. It might've been that the evil was Decepticons, or the wicked Voltron queen, or Cobra, or that Rainbrow Brite villain who was only drawn in shades of gray. A dialogue-driven children's show is going to have to be pretty damned well-written to appeal to kids, and hiring good writers costs good money. Cartoons exist primarily because they're cheap to produce, so any gain from choosing the medium is eliminated when you have to gety talented writers on board. Maybe it's a reflection of our values as a society (or more particularyl, young parents' values) , or maybe it's Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, as other posts have mentioned, but something's just missing there.
Alternately, it could simply be that the plethora of cable networks broadcasting cartoons has taken the profitability away from the format.
No pinky and the brain (Score:4, Funny)
Ahh memories... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps I watched a little too much TV as a kid. Like Pavlov's dog, I flip the TV off every time I see "Meet The Press" cause that means the cartoons are over.
The Conservation of Crappiness (Score:3, Interesting)
I was a TV kid; a real obsessive little dweeb. I watched far, far too much kiddie crap, and for too long. (Think Milhous van Houton.) But I was also an observant, skeptical, and curious little dweeb. (Good training for my career in QA!) I recognized before most kids the difference between first run and syndicated shows, film and video tape, and the value of different time slots.
Well, my point: There is a conservation of crappiness in Saturday Morning TV. Most of it has always been awful. Much of what we liked as kids was awful. It wouldn't hold up if you saw it now. At least, if you've grown up even a little.
The bright lights, then as now, were few, and usually died quickly. (There was a whole slew of live-action poetry-and-storytelling shows in the early 70s; well-meaning post-hippie artiness like "Animals, Animals, Animals." Anyone remember an early-90s FOX show called "Nightmare Ned?" Or the artsy, weird, "ZaZu U?")
If Saturday Morning dies, I can't feel too sad. Give the kids books, or video tapes, or shove them outside so they can build up their immune systems by rolling in the dirt.
Stefan
Ah, good ol' cartoons (Score:3, Interesting)
Saturday mornings are crap nowadays. It used to be watch ABC's friday night lineup (family matters, step by step, some other crap and perfect strangers), go to bed, wake up, watch saturday morning cartoons, then sit around and play nintendo all day. Watch SNICK at night and then sunday was here. Ah the good ol' days.. now papers for school and this internet thing suck up all my time.
kids grow up too quick (Score:5, Funny)
Their role models - Eminem and Christina Aguilera, Brittney, Holly Valance etc. You get the picture.
What happened? De-regulation happened. Duh! (Score:5, Interesting)
What was the mystery again?
Beginning of end of larger era (Score:5, Interesting)
There is one thing that the article is not completely clear on, and that is whether or not there is a definite drop in the number of children watching cartoons at all. In other words, is it just that they can now watch cartoons anytime they want, or are they also watching less?
From other trends I have seen, it could very well be that the current generation of children are too busy doing other things to look at TV (something that the article does mention), at least not as extensively as the generation before them. But if this is true, think of this: Today's cartoon-watchers are tomorrow's primetime TV watchers. If they're not watching TV much now, will they suddenly turn around and start watching it when they get older? I think not.
So we could be seeing the beginning of the end of the era of television itself. It will be a very slow death, but it may come nevertheless. Even now primetime TV is starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for fresh ideas. I doubt the next generation of potential TV watchers will be satisfied with this.
This makes me think of a throwaway line of dialogue from an episode of the original Star Trek. I forget the name of the episode (it was the one where they get zapped back in time to 20th century Earth and accidentally beam the Air Force pilot on board). At one point Spock said something like (paraphrased) "Television died out as an entertainment medium sometime in the 21st century."
Life imitating art, perhaps?
Forget Chuck Jones and Hanna-Barbera... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better than the Warner Bros. releases, however, were the Fleischer Studios offerings. Betty Boop has become a global cultural icon in a way that Bugs Bunny and Company - let alone any of the current crop - simply can't touch. (And nobody but nobody could get away with naming a character "Bimbo" these days, unless you're a Mexican bakery.) Fleischer Studios did several musical numbers themselves, many starring the vocal talents of Cab Calloway. Max Fleischer and his brother also invented a piece of technology that's still in use for animation today - the rotoscope. It allowed them to capture real motion, which is why so much of their animation had a "surreally real" look and feel.
Personally, I think that the demise of Saturday Morning Television has less to do with the internet, cable, or "quality time" than with the fact that even 20 years ago, people gave kids more credit for intelligence and mental toughness. We are seeing the most rabid romanticism of childhood to occur since the Victorian era. On one hand, children are being painted as delicate little creatures with easily damaged psyches; and heaven forbid that they should be exposed to anything that could mold them in a disturbing way. On the other hand, you have advertisers who pander to the pre-pubescent smartass by portraying kids as being infinitely wittier and more intelligent than any of the adults around them (if you buy X product.) [aside] And people then wonder why their precious child pops off to Grandma. Why? because the commercials, obnoxious as they are, are more fun to watch than the PC pap that passes for a cartoon these days.[/aside] Kids should have things filtered, to an extent. But don't insult their intelligence. They're lots smarter than people think.
I watched all of those violent cartoons, and not once did I try to bicycle off of the roof, or drop an anvil from my perch in the tree onto my cousin's head. (Blocks and Nerf balls are another story.) Heck I even read my father's National Lampoons, although that might not be the best example to use if I intend to paint myself as a reasonably well-adapted adult.
In a nutshell, I am going to find as many of the old cartoons as I can. That way, when I do have kids, we can sit and watch them together. I'll get to re-live some darn good memories, and the munchkins will have an appreciation for what the good stuff looks like.
Another Merrie Melodies link.
And a very well done research book.
Further information about Max Fleischer's early work.
Well, crud! This is not my day for HTML... (Score:3, Informative)
Merrie Melodies:
http://www.toonzone.net/early-years/
http://www.bcdb.com/pages/Warner_Bros_/Merrie_Mel o dies/
The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartons at amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0816 038325/103-1349286-7639828?vi=glance
Fleischer Studios and Max Fleischer biographical information:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/archive/innova tors/fleischer.html
http://www.toonopedia.com/fleischr.htm
http://www.bcdb.com/pages/Paramount/Fle
Saturday cartoons? Why, you have ballet classes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Anxious parents overload their children, pushing them too hard, too soon. It is becoming increasingly common for parents to enroll their young children in after-school activities (sports, music, ballet). Here is an interesting quote from Time magazine: "Kids who once had childhoods now have curriculums; kids who ought to move with lunatic energy of youth now move with the high purpose of the worker bee."
I do not know what the author considers to be quality time, but taking kids to ballet school and driving together in the car is definitely not quality time.
I can do the math. (Score:5, Funny)
'Heyday' of cartoons (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny how everyone perceives the 'heyday of cartoons' simply as the time they themselves watched cartoons as a kid, with everything after that being crap. Different generations - different 'heydays'.
JP
Saturday morning - RIP. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think network tv is missing the real market for Saturday morning cartoons - adults that grew up with it. I think a lot of us would tune in (with our own kids) to watch good cartoons. We could be spending a couple hours every Saturday morning with our kids just having a laugh. Some good cartoons like Looney Tunes. Toward the middle of the day fade the programming from animation into more grow up stuff. Bill Nye the Science Guy, Junkyard Wars, etc.. sort of educational things children and parents might watch together.
End of Saturday Morning Cartoons (Score:5, Interesting)
Cartoons during the 80s anyway (when I was watching them) typically had very morally absolutist/dualistic themes permeating their storylines. You had a group that was identified as "good," another group that was identified as "bad," and the line between the two was very clearly defined. This of course was before the advent of postmodernism, which includes among other things the concept of moral relativism...ergo, the concept that there's no such thing as moral absolutes. The other thing that was different is that back then the entire concept of political correctness didn't exist either. Society now is so inundated with the clamouring cries of this or that minority group that it's virtually impossible to conceive of a storyline for just about anything without the risk of offending *someone*. I'm not sure why it's happened in the last 20 years, but before about 1990, people used to be nowhere near as easily offended as they are now. There's talk of releasing watered down versions of The Lord of The Rings, the Bible, and pretty much everything in between in order to make them bland and as inoffensive as possible.
The bottom line is that if you can't say something without having to worry that it's going to bring all sorts of crap down on your head because of possibly offending the gay movement or some other equally paranoid, emotive, and fanatical minority group, you most likely will end up not saying anything at all. To me, this has far more wide-ranging implications also than just the death of cartoons...we're talking about freedom of expression as a whole.
I'm one of THOSE parents (Score:3, Insightful)
But, there are several reasons why we don't let them watch cartoons on TV:
1) They are a waste of time.
2) They are "mind-swill".
3) They are a primary means of marketing toys and teaching my kids rampant materialism. I want my kids to want a toy because they see it and think it is cool or useful, not because they were mesmerized by a commercial to buy it.
4) It is too passive. I'd rather have them playing with their toys together inside, or playing with their friends outside.
5) They can always read more books.
I've discussed these things with my kids, and they understand them, but they still want to watch the cartoons. When they do get a chance to watch them (like when they go to grandpa's house... he lives in Iowa, and TV watching doesn't seem to be such a looked-down on thing there), I usually let them get away with watching a few hours of them on a Saturday morning, hoping they will get it out of their systems.
I think my kids have become the better for it. I think they are better rounded than most kids their ages.
dochood
I still watch Saturday morning cartoons (Score:3, Interesting)
There are also the "salute to WB legends" shows, like the Tex Avery and Chuck Jones shows. Those are fun to watch because they address the cartoons from an academic standpoint and you get to appreciate what was groundbreaking in particular episodes.
One problem I've seen with cartoons these days are the music. Look at cartoons from the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's and the music is all classical, or even somtimes jazz. The animation is made to work with the music, too. If you watch the current crop of cartoons, it all sounds like an afterthought - a cheap, uninspired afterthought. Oh, the cast is going to a tropical island? Let's play the show's crappy theme song with steel drums! The end result is a cartoon that hyperactive kids can tolerate, but the shows will be completely unwatchable in ten years. Do you think anybody in ten years is going to want to watch old episodes of 'Ed, Edd, and Eddy?' Old Disney, Warner Bros. and MGM cartoons can still make you laugh. Seems like everything today is just Hanna-Barbera - one or two good shows if you dig around, but it's probably not worth all that work.
The new Saturday morning... (Score:3, Interesting)
... looks a lot like Wednesday nights but for kids.
So long to real kid-oriented cartoons and hello to kid-versions of adult shows. I spent part of this past Saturday watching TV with my daughters (first graders) and what's big on the morning shows now? A kid version of Survivor. Complete with a dumbed down version of paper/scissors/rock that I supposed was intended to teach some sort of strategic thinking; educational only if one considers out-and-out guessing a kind of ``strategy''.
I wonder what the heck ever happened to real educational TV. When I was a kid there was the ``Discovery'' series (Discovery 67, Discovery 68, etc.), Mr. Wizard, etc. Later on there was another show you could catch on PBS (I think) called something like `Physical Universe' (started out as a lecture but had good illustrative CG graphics to demonstrate the principles being talked about). There was Bronoski's `Ascent of Man', Burke's `Connections', Sagan's `Cosmos', and others. True, those last few aren't exactly kid stuff but at least some kids would find that interesting and I can tell you that my two girls would have found much of them interesting. (Actually, they have seen `Connections' before and thought it was very interesting.) Somebody has already mentioned `Biil Nye the Science Guy' and `Beaker's World' which weren't bad but geared more toward the ADD afflicted to allow kids to really learn very much.
Nowadays, we have Disney hawking `Winnie the Pooh' as educational TV (OK, so they call it `illuminating television'; always good for a belly laugh) and, now, the Survivor clones. At least when I was a kid there were choices that included some educational content. It's gotten to where I think the most important thing that my kids will learn from television is how to turn it off.
Too much commercialization (Score:4, Insightful)
I won't pretend that it was all great and there were no marketting tie-ins. I don't remember which came first - He-man action figures or the cartoon. I remember the saturday morning supercade - which was Pacman, Q*bert, Dirk the Daring and other video game tie ins when that was hot. I remember several cartoons based around the video craze at the start of MTV.
But it seems that the commercialization/advertising started to come first. Where He-man/GI Joe could probably stand on it's own, now it seems that if there wasn't a product tie in, the show would have never existed.
I don't know why NBC, CBS, and ABC got out of it. Perhaps they figured they'd make more money selling ads to gillette than mattel. Perhaps with the competition from cable stations digging into other profits, funding these cartoons was no longer profitiable.
I do know that while the old stuff may not have been the greatest (THe Snorks anyone?) the new stuff seems to be even worse. The animation REALLY sucks (oh...I suppose it's just being artistic in a way I don't understand) and I really don't like my girls watching too much of the stuff on Cartoon Network. The disney channel has some good stuff on - though sometimes it does get a little to edutainment like. Rolie Polie Olie is probably one of the best shows on now that reminds me of the old stuff...decent animation, interesting stories (well...as interesting as a show aimed for 3-4 year olds can be)
Oh yeah...my daughters current favorite - The Challenge of the Superfriends DVD I found at Wal-mart, followed by Scooby and Tom and Jerry - guess the old stuff still stands the test of time.
Wow...I rambled...
Re:Remember nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
Yu-Gi-Ohhhhhh!!!!!
Too many people try to grow up too fast these days, throwing away their childhood in exchange of a stressed adulthood.
Here's something someone e-mailed to me a little over 3 years ago. It fits here. (I didn't write it, and neither did the person who sent it to me. I don't know who the author is and don't feel like google'ing to find out.)
My Adulthood Resignation:
I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult.
I have decided
Re:Remember nothing (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Remember nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Remember nothing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Remember nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the older cartoons, particularly Warner Bros. cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. were targeted at all age groups. The writers were clever enough to include slapstick action for the kids and haughty real-world or old movie references that the adults could laugh at. There were frequent references to Casablanca, Mae West, Cary Grant, et al. There's really alot of depth and love crafted into those cartoons.
I just did some research and found this fascinating page. http://members.aol.com/EOCostello/ Read up on it and you'll discover alot of goodies packed into those old cartoons.
Just be careful. You may find yourself watching them again soon.
Re:Remember nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that this is coming out of a man whose primary preferences as far as movies and television are along the lines of MASH, Shakespeare (which for all you collegiate types who s
Re:Remember nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Remember nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm surprised this thread is not modded higher - until very recently, I got up ay 7 am (or before!) on Saturdays to whatch cartoons with my kid, who is now 7. I know a hell of a lot of people don't dig it, for the both oft-maligned and praised factor in this thread - toy tie-ins - but we watched the freaking hell out of the first three seasons of Digimon. Totally kickass. Then you had in the last couple years these crazy cartoons like Fighting Foodons - not only was that hella f***ed up but also pretty damn
Re:Close (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Retarded cartoons (Score:4, Insightful)
Spounge Bob Sqaure Pants?
I was actually surprised that Sponge Bob didn't get censored to oblivion. That show is COOL. IN fact, my wife watched it with my daughter once (back when we had a tv, and we actually had cable) and told me it was a bad show, too much violence and other crap. She's one of those mothers. Luckily, i don't put up with that crap. So I told her to put on Sponge Bob when it came back on and show me where she had problems with it. Would you know? She couldn't find any problems with it. Moreover, we both found it to be really really funny, and a lot of fun to watch with the kids.
Occasionally I think about getting cable again to watch that show, but then I get real again. Dammit, TV just plain sucks. What do my kids do on saturday morning? They go out with their mother while I sleep. :) Then they come home and play with me for awhile, then we all go outside and play together.