When I was growing up, the big day of the week was Saturday morning to watch all the great TV shows just for kids. Granted, I am an old fogey, but there were live action shows like Superman, Fury, My Friend Flicka, Flash Gordon…as well as a whole bunch of great cartoons series like Rocky and Bullwinkle, Heckle and Jeckle, Casper the Friendly Ghost and many others.
Are Saturday morning kid shows a thing of the past?
They are on the big three networks, it would seem. ABC is the only one that still carries original children’s programming on Saturday mornings. WB and FOX have some good stuff (TMNT, X-Men Evolution, Static Shock) and some derivitive crap (Fighting Foodons, Yu Gi Oh) but I really think that the age of Saturday morning TV that those of us who were kids from the 50’s to the early 90’s is over.
Once upon a time, Saturday morning was the big time for cartoons. When I was a kid there was alway a couple of hours of cartoon on in the afternoon, syndicated toy commercials like He-Man and Transformers that I couldn’t get enough of, but my mother would always be pestering me, “Turn that off and do your homework!” Saturday was the big day, no school, nothing but cartoons all morning. In those days, other than Saturdays mornings and weekday afternoons, there were generally no cartoons or kids shows to be found on the tube.
Now, with at least four 24-hour a day cartoon networks and networks like Nickelodeon and The Disney Channel offering kid/family friendly programming all day, all week long, there’s little reason for kids to specifically look to Saturday mornings as a time to veg out in front of the TV and catch some toons.
Sure there’s still a few Saturday mornings toons worth catching, but that’s the because the show themselves are special, not because there’s anything special about saturday mornings. Not anymore.
Actually Not even abc has totally original cartoons as most are disney channel reruns ran like a week later
Nbc runs discovery/animal planet shows now
Cbs runs nick jr stuff on saturdays
Even the cartoon network runs wb reruns
And fox sold its animation stuff to disney which is why you see the new power rangers show on abc now … .and why the new fox spiderman x-men series tapes are distruibited by disney
But the down hill trend started when nbc found it was cheaper to make saved by the bell (which ironically started as a disney channel series ) and its knock offs and clones and totally killed off some long running series namely the smurfs but from what ive read the cartoons had gotten so bad no one was watching anyways
Fox saved saturdays with its cartoons until they bowed out and now the wb has taken its place
But the longets running cartoon series which is the bugs bunny road runner show it still running on abc … unless thast changed also But its ironic since its all shorts that were remade for the saturday morning crowd …
But anyway, the point is that with so many places to watch toons any time you want these days, Saturday Morning has become rather redundant.
The only reason anyone watches Saturday morning these days is because some of the toons they show then are worth watching, but I’m betting as many teens and adults as kids watch shows like X-Men Evolution, Static Shock, the new TMNT, etc.
I remember feeling a bit embaressed when I was 15 and loved Beast Wars. But after I e-mailed the owner of a very good Beast Wars fansite to find out that she was 20 I felt better.
If I could see it I’d probably like the new TMNT and X-men is far better than the kids these days deserve… 
Yeah . . . when it’s on . . .
:mad: rassinfrassinwbrassafrassayugiohrepeats . . .
I love Recess, Lizzie McGuire, Fillmore(!), The Proud Family, I’m getting fonder of Teamo Supremo, but I really lament these losses-
HOW THINGS WERK
GREAT MINDS THINK FOR THEMSELVES
MANNY THE UNCANNY (“Where are we going today, Mr. Lighter-Than-Air?” “Someplace wonderful, Manny.”)
TUBE DWELLERS
the elephant & mouse & cute black chick who later went on to be in DARK ANGEL segments
*DOUG
*PEPPER ANN
*TEACHER’S PET
*WEEKENDERS (the character Lor must be the cartoon version of one of my buddies)
I don’t miss the MK&A or LLOYD IN SPACE cartoons a bit!
I kinda liked HOUSE OF MOUSE*, I really wanna see again a cool “Wear Sunscreen” parody done by Jimminy Cricket- esp when he got to “some of you will have children… some of you won’t”, with the “won’t” focusing on a rather angry/disappointed at each other-looking Belle & the Beast L