"Saturday-morning cartoon" is a colloquial term for original animated series and live-action programming typically scheduled on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the United States on the "Big Three" television networks. The genre was a tradition broadly ranging from 1963 until 2016, with its popularity declining over time due to changing cultural norms, increased competition from formats available at all times, and heavier media regulations. In the last years of the genre's existence, Saturday-morning and Sunday-morning cartoons were primarily created and aired on major networks to meet "educational and informational" (E/I) requirements. Minor television networks, in addition to the non-commercial PBS in some markets, continued to air animated programming on Saturday and Sunday while partially meeting those mandates.
In the United States, the generally accepted times for these and other children's programs to air on Saturday mornings were from 8:00 a.m. to approximately 1:00 p.m. or 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time Zone. Until the late 1970s, American networks also had a schedule of children's programming on Sunday mornings, though most programs at this time were rebroadcasts of Saturday-morning shows that were already out of production. In some markets, some shows were pre-empted in favor of syndicated or other types of local programming.
History
1950s–60s: Early years After the Paramount Decree broke up block booking practices, in the 1950s, animation production began shifting from theatrical shorts to television animation. Jason Mittel argues that by the end of the 1960s, this shift to television also unintentionally shifted popular understandings of animation. With the rise of the Saturday morning cartoon block, Mittel observes that animation transformed from "a mass-market genre with so-called 'kidult' appeal and became marginalized into the kid-only Saturday morning periphery." Until 1963, the Saturday morning programming block across all three major networks consisted primarily of telecasts of older cartoons made for movie theaters, reruns of animated series originally broadcast in prime time or reruns of younger skewing live-action television series such as My Friend Flicka or Sky King.
1960s: Rise of original programming Beginning with the 1963–64 television season, CBS took the first steps in setting up Saturday morning programming block made up of two hours of back-to-back animated series. The block consisted of acquired programs Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales and The Quick Draw McGraw Show after the two had been seen in first-run syndication and pairing them with returning series The Alvin Show and Mighty Mouse Playhouse. The block attracted major sponsorship from Kellogg's and General Mills which in turn led to CBS expanding the Saturday morning schedule to three hours with the addition of Linus the Lionhearted and a repackage of Tom and Jerry shorts presented as The Tom and Jerry Show.
During the 1966–67 television season, then head of CBS' daytime programming Fred Silverman recognized the viewership attraction of cartoons and restructured the programming block around 4 and a half hours of back-to-back animated series which saw CBS take first place in the ratings. As a result of the season's success, the slot across all three networks for the remainder of the 1960s would be dominated by superhero and action cartoon series, influenced by the success of Space Ghost and The New Adventures of Superman.
At the time, the practice with networks ordering animated series was to order a batch of episodes and air them over the course of a predetermined cycle. CBS and ABC would typically order an average of 16 episodes to run six times over the course of two years, while NBC's orders were characterized by 13 episode batches to run 4 times over the year in order to cover the 52 week television schedule. The price per episode for these half-hour series ranged anywhere from $48,000 to $62,000 with networks engaging in competitive bidding for the series which would remain the standard practice for these shows into the seventies. Despite the success experienced by these cartoons, they were heavily criticized by parents for their violence. Other criticisms came about from those who worked within the industry such as Stan Lee who was initially enthusiastic for the animated series of The Fantastic Four and 1967 Spider-Man series based on the comics he co-created, only to react with disappointment upon seeing how simplified and dumbed down the writing was. Lee attempted to voice input to both Spider-Man producer Krantz Films and The Fantastic Four producer Hanna-Barbera, but gave up after determining their concerns were more aligned with pleasing the sponsors and not with the quality of the show itself.
1970s: Regulatory changes By 1968, concerns about television violence came more to the forefront of social and political discourse in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. In addition to concerns surrounding violence, additional concerns were raised about advertising to children with a notable instance involving the popular Preschool children's television series Romper Room which advertised its own line of toys within the show presented by the host with the lobbying group Action for Children's Television (ACT) successfully forcing WHDH to conform to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) restrictions. The increased scrutiny of television violence in the wake of increased political scrutiny and social aversion to violence on television led to the networks adopting internal censors, who would sit in on writing sessions and veto any violent or suggestive content. This approach by the networks was criticized by animation industry veterans such as Walter Lantz and Friz Freleng, who felt the connection between cartoon violence and real life violence was dubious. Others such as Norman Maurer detailed frustrations with outlandish concerns of the censors, such as having to change a scene from Josie and the Pussycats due to concerns from CBS that having the characters hide in a plate of spaghetti to hide from a monster would lead to kids putting their pet cats in spaghetti.
By 1972, most action programming had been removed from the Saturday-morning slot, following pressure from parents' lobbying groups such as Action for Children's Television (ACT). These groups voiced concerns about the presentation of commercialism, violence, anti-social attitudes and stereotypes in Saturday-morning cartoons. By the 1970s, these groups exercised enough influence, especially with the U.S. Congress and the FCC, that the television networks felt compelled to impose more stringent content rules for the animation houses. Fred Silverman, who at the time was head of CBS' daytime programming and brought about many of these action-oriented cartoons with his "superhero morning" initiative, refuted the claims that ACT and parental concerns were the deciding factor in the decline of these shows and instead said that ratings for superhero cartoons in general had begun to slip by the end of the 1960s and that declining ratings were a greater deciding factor than parental advocacy groups for causing these series to be phased out. In 1973, ACT tried to get advertising banned from children's broadcasting altogether, but ultimately compromised with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) which saw advertising limited to twelve minutes for every hour. In 1978, the Federal Trade Commission was openly considering a ban on all advertising during television programming targeting preschoolers, and severe restrictions on other children's program advertising, both of which would have effectively killed off the format; the commission ultimately dropped the proposal. Action for Children's Television founder Peggy Charren had mixed feelings about the impact of the regulatory changes and emphasized that she never wished to curtail creative freedom or do away with any entertainment others deemed "trashy" (and admitted to enjoying shows others would see as lacking artistic or moral value) but simply wished to see the networks produce things of higher quality with occasional educational value and not just use the blocks as opportunities to peddle shows that were barely disguised commercials. After deciding that the networks would always choose to do the barest minimum possible, Charren would instead redirect her efforts to advocating for funding of public broadcasting for the remainder of her life.
The networks were encouraged to create educational spots that endeavored to use animation or live-action for enriching content, including the Schoolhouse Rock!, Time for Timer and The Bod Squad series on ABC which became fondly-remembered television classics, while CBS had the Bicentennial Minutes and their long-running children's oriented news series, In the News. In Canada concurrently, the National Film Board of Canada produced a roughly equivalent domestic series called Canada Vignettes and their successors the Heritage Minutes, although they were intended to be aired (as the Bicentennial Minutes had) throughout the usual broadcast day. With the 1970s came a wave of animated versions of popular live-action prime time series as well, mainly with the voices of the original casts, such as Star Trek: The Animated Series, as well as imitations of the highly successful Scooby-Doo combining teen characters and talking animals with supernatural mystery stories.
1980s: Deregulation and toyetic programs With the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, this brought about an era of deregulation and laissez-faire economic doctrine. With Reagan's appointment of Mark S. Fowler as Chairman of the FCC on May 18, 1981, it was determined that the free market would decide the content that appeared on television and not regulations with the previous decade's worth of advertising restrictions and regulations immediately done away with. The 1981-82 Saturday morning season was the last to operate under the previous decade's guidance. By 1982, under President Reagan, the FCC had loosened programming and advertising regulations. On his position when it came to children's programming, Fowler stated:
I believe commercial broadcasters alone should decide what they shall broadcast, because they have the Constitutional right of free speech. It's too bad Captain Kangaroo is gone, but the Government should not be issuing directives about what should be on the air.