Huh. I hadn’t thought of Saturday-morning cartoons in donkey’s years. But now that I’m aware of this, how sad. It was definitely a big part of being a child. They started really early in West Texas, I think as early as 6am some years, although like others have pointed out, that was more the local station’s doing. It’s how every weekend started.
The only one I really recall was the adaptation of Larry Niven’s “The Soft Weapon”, with Spock instead of a Pierson’s Puppeteer kicking the Kzin commander.
We cancelled our DirecTV plan before my son was born 2.5 years ago…he manages to watch all the cartoons he wants (read: all the cartoons we allow him to watch), 100% on-demand, on Amazon/Netflix live streaming on our smart TV, Roku, iPad, etc. We have Hulu as well, but they aren’t big on cartoons. We already had an Amazon Prime account for the free 2-day shipping, so we pay a grand total of about $16/month for all of our streaming needs.
It’s not cable or nothing these days, not by a long shot.
FYI, Star Trek: The Animated Series is on Netflix instant streaming, which is where I saw it recently.
It was funny and unexpected for me to see that episode, because I read the story and was familiar with the Niven’s universe, but never knew it was adapted to Star Trek!
The cartoons in my area ended with the words, “SOOOOOOUUUUUUULLLLL TRAAAAAAAAIIIIIINNNNN!”
The episode that stands out for me is “Yesteryear,” written by Dorothy Fontana. While Kirk and Spock are using the Guardian of Forever to do some research, Spock is wiped out from history and replaced by an Andorian first officer that everybody is familiar with except Kirk and Spock. Spock must use the Guardian to go back to when he was a youth on Vulcan to prevent his earlier self from dying. Mark Lenard guest stars as Spock’s father, Sarek.
Yeah there was some real garbage in there:
Pac-man
Rubik, the Amazing Cube
Shirt Tales - from that magical time when America was enamored with anthropomorphic animals wearing t-shirts
Care Bears
Pound Puppies
I could really go on for a while. But there was good stuff in there too. I remember enjoying The Littles, Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Dungeons and Dragons, Muppet Babies, IIRC Transformers originally only aired on Saturday mornings (where I grew up at least).
Here’s a year-by-year lineup for the entire decade:
Lol, sneaky video. I still remember that ABC did an “Up Close and Personal” feature on him during the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics that showed him at his day job driving his forklift. Wonder if that’s on youtube somewhere.
A few words from TV writer Mark Evanier on how Saturday morning cartoons worked, why they started to decline, and why they’ve finally vanished altogether.
I admit that I, too, am surprised that cartoons on Saturdays mornings were still around, even in limited form, even though they were a regular ritual for me when I was growing up.
I was the other way - saw ST:TAS episode first, then when I read Niven I’m all “wait! I’ve seen this somewhere before!” I thought he might have written the episode directly, not had his story “adapted” (that is, crammed in where it doesn’t fit).
I also had some fan-based book (pre internet, of course. probably mimeographed) that had the “history” of the Federation. The author tried to fit everything in, so it was really funny having him try to fit The Slaver Weapon in to the timeline. Now there were FOUR Man-Kzin wars to fit in there with the Romulan war, and the Klingon Wars, and World War III, and the “twentieth century brush wars on the Asian continent”, and the Eugenics Wars, plus the development of Warp Drive, the Nomad probe etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. All made to fit in a period of less than 300 years.
I think Evanier misses an essential point: I loved watching cartoons on Saturday (and Sunday) mornings precisely because it was a ritual. I didn’t have to go to school, my parents and older brother were still in bed, and for several glorious hours, I had the house all to myself and could crash on the living room floor to watch whatever I wanted and eat all the junk food I wanted. When the adult stuff started coming on after noon, I knew I was free to leave the house and go play Army down by the railroad tracks the rest of the day. And the next time I saw my friends, we would talk about the cartoons we had all seen at the same time and probably re-enact bits of them.
Watching cartoons on a laptop at any random time of day, any day of the week, with no shared experiences, is just not the same thing!
BTW, does anybody remember **this show **(or its reboot)? I used to watch it on Sunday mornings in Minneapolis even when I was in high school. You could always count on it to have really cool guests, some of which may have gone over the heads of the littler kids (e.g., Evel Knievel, LeRoy Nieman, Olympic athletes, the Jacksons), along with science-y and other educational stuff:
Brownie points if you can still sing the theme song from memory! 
My wife recently got my 3-year old daughter hooked on Jem<shudder>. (On Netflix if you’re a sadist)
I did not need that back in my life.