A Look at What Killed Weekday Cartoons

Joshuaonline's Essays

              There has been much said on what "killed" off the Saturday Morning network children's television programming block,  so much you can find them on Youtube and other places easily, but we are going to a different side of this, what caused the end of Weekday children's programming (that is not PBS) on over the air television?

The Animaniacs  were a weekday cartoon during their run. 

       The Early Days 

       Weekdays, after school, was the prime time for children and teens because they had just gotten out of school and television stations hope that maybe they would spend a little tile watching their channel instead of doing other things.  Kind of like, how networks felt that daytime television was a way to target housewives.    Weekday mornings , before school, was also a prime time location for children targeted programming.    

     NBC used to offer children-targeted programming on weekdays from the start of their television broadcasting to 1956, yes they gave up really early on Weekday cartoons.   Alot of the NBC, ABC, CBS affiliates did their own local children's shows around this time as well. "Captain Kangaroo" ran CBS weekday mornings from 1955 until the 80's it was the only consistent thing about CBS' morning programming in their history. 

    With daytime television for the affiliates being mostly done by the networks (though local stations could preempt for what they wanted to do)  Non affiliated, also known as - independent stations, saw an market they could go for, Children's TV.  WGN-TV had the famous Bozo's Circus. So programs that were targeted to the children's market were strong on weekdays as much as Saturdays. 

  

     I would still say that focus for makers of programs for Children were weekends, more than weekdays, meaning they'd the more "quality" or newer programming on Saturdays and weekdays was for repeats and lower budget programming.   Independent stations  would sometimes compete against other one or two doing the same kinds of programming. (In many television markets in the 50's to 80's they had more than 3 commercial stations and could just as many indies. )   

  The 80's

        The peak for syndication market , would have to be the 1980's probably the best time  there ever will be for syndicated television in the United States.  This in general , but the children's television market also got a boost in the 1980's.  One thing that happened in the late 70's and 80's was that there were more independent stations popping up , in mid-sized and smaller markets.  That means there was more market for syndication to try to get some audience it needed.   

   Afternoon cartoons were those traditional things like "Tom and Jerry" , "Looney Tunes", and more but there was something coming to add to this.  In 1983 the first cartoon series made just for syndication started.  "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" was made by Filmation in conjuction with Mattel (more on that in a second). Another series, by DIC also started this same year, "Inspector Gadget" 

     These shows were made with weekday in mind, instead of the network model where they seemed to let a show run for 13 episodes (13 Weeks) then give up and repeat them until the new season and maybe that series would return or they just finished up and went on to something, these series were made with 65 episode target.  65 episodes means you could do 5 new episodes a week for 13 weeks, then repeat them.    "He-Man" proved popular enough to have two seasons and 130 episodes. "Gadget" had two seasons reaching 83 episodes. 

     When I mention Mattel ,this is important, the 80's also started a trend that wasn't allowed before,  Cartoon series based off toys.  Mattel made the He Man toys and a great way to promote them is a TV series,  She-Ra too.  In the 1950's alot of children's programming , like alot of television at the time in general was run by the sponsor companies. Later there were regulations placed to not allow this.  But the 1980's meant alot of deregulation and one of  the things deregulated was children focused television. I  may talk about that in some more detail at some later point.  

     So the idea of a program that could be based off a toy line was able to be added to television in the 1980's.  The main 3 networks were kind of iffy on allowing these kind of shows on their Saturday Morning line up, but an independent station who is more in need for content, and reruns of "My Mother the Car" doesn't do it, this became a match made.   Hasbro made TV series based off their toys like "My Little Pony". These programs became successful and this may have seed something that I will to later. 

    A new broadcast network was launched in 1986 , called FOX, most of it's early stations were these independents but since Fox has limited scheduling (as a nice work around the rule against having a broadcast network and a production company being co-owned) the former indie stations still had alot of time to program themselves including the afternoon, and they could continue with their children's programming. 

1987 Changes Everything 

       I personally think the success of shows based off toys showed Disney the syndication market can be a viable way of making getting into television making. Disney had made their first animated TV Series, "Gummi Bears" in 1985, but that was for NBC, this was something different.  In 1987 they launched "Ducktales".  "Ducktales was different than other series in this market, it wasn't there to sale Ducktales toys, or based of a toy line (though there may have been toys after because of the popularity).   Disney putting their hat in the weekday animation game was the beginning of a big change.  Ducktales proved popular where Disney made a whole new syndicated block - The Disney Afternoon. (Which I've written about before) 

  Like a FOX 

      FOX decided to jump into the weekday and Saturday game in 1990 ,with FOX Kids (I've written about before)  FOX affiliates didn't really have to dip into the syndication market as much , Disney Afternoon could have stayed on their stations but in many markets it moved to the remaining indies. and any remaining syndicated programming could have moved off these stations as well.  Fox provided by 1993 , 3 hours a weekday of programming  there were some who also had morning blocks.   Thanks the removal of the regulation that FOX worked around in the 80's  a production company could now own a network, so Warner Brothers and Paramount saw and opening, this is also how Disney could buy ABC.  In 1995 Warner Brothers launched the WB network and Paramount/ Viacom launched UPN.  Most of these affiliates were former indies and they incorporated their children's blocks time slots for their own uses of launching Kids WB and UPN Kids. This included weekday afternoons and mornings.  

  Now the what killed part , after the jump

    NFL killed Weekdays ?

          For the first 10 years , FOX's stations were mostly former indies but they made a big deal with the NFL in 1993 to acquire CBS' rights to NFC Sunday games.  This gave fox a different mentality to notice that in some markets FOX was on some high numbered UHF channel not the nice 2-13 VHF slots.  So they made a deal with New World communications. FOX getting the NFL changed the whole world of America's broadcast television.  Many of the stations FOX flipped to were former NBC , CBS, and ABC stations who had a different mindset. WAGA-TV in Atlanta for example, was a CBS station for a long time it wasn't going to pick up FOX Kids weekday block.  In Atlanta it stayed on former Fox station channel 36 (WATL) until it had to move to Channel 34.    The stations felt they'd rather air syndicated talk shows, court shows, sitcoms , and or local news expansions instead of children's weekday programming.  Fox Kids weekday ended in 2001.  

  Now, to say that this is part of killing weekday children's programming is not saying that it's a main cause. It was more that it changed an internal culture in the Fox Affiliation group , FOX Kids was a joint venture between it's affiliates and the network  meaning that having some affiliates not wanting to air the block (at least on weekdays, some didn't want Saturday either) might have not been invested in it, so the culture of FOX wasn't the same with that mindset.

     E/I and the Children's Television Act of 1990

          The Children's television Act of 1990 gets a lot of blame on it , even I have blamed it as the killer of broadcast children's tv at some point, but now I don't as much.  One thing about the act that is the most important isn't the educational part saying that stations have to air 3 hours of  educational children's programming a week.  The part that effects commercial stations even more is limits. The limits of commercials on programming targeted towards children  were 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays. This mean that the stations would lose some advertising money where most network programming doesn't have commercial limits.   To a point it says ages 12 and younger have a restriction on what kind and how long the ads can be.  The cost of the programming vs. how much it would make was a determining factor. But again the blocks still ran on weekdays for sometime, they even made programs that would fit in the E/I rules. 

   Cable in the room 

       One thing that has to be added to a conversation about broadcast children's television is cable networks.  Nickelodeon offered more than just around 3 hours every weekday, and few hours on Saturdays for children's TV they had more time and space and really added a value to the genre.  They also started making their own live-action and animated children's programming meaning that they had control on the content, they programs that could get viewers that couldn't be found on the networks.  They also have less restriction compared to the networks, they don't have to air E/I programming for example.  FOX may have seen part of the future , with their purchase of Pat Robertson's Family channel in the late 90's they had a space for Fox Kids to breath bast it's  limited FOX Time space.  

     

   Cable networks were giving children more options than they had before and it was also the time is no limit, they could Saturday afternoon cartoons, Sunday morning  a weekday children's block on a local station looks tiny in comparison. 

   

  Ownership changes 

     Something has to brought up would be the ownership changes of the 1990's.  When I remarked that Warner Brothers could now have their own network , they had the WB  network , so that means they didn't have to syndicate to others their programs, they could just go to their own spot.   With the rule being removed this meant that Disney could buy ABC, and they started moving their programming over to ABC (they continued the Disney Afternoon for a little while longer, then replaced it with a block on UPN). Disney also had a cable network where in the late 90's they started investing in making programming for it and moving it to basic cable and no need to syndicate to anyone anymore.  Viacom .which owned Nickelodeon on cable and UPN  was allowed to buy CBS. Now CBS didn't have weekday children's programming way by this time but they could air Nick shows on CBS on Saturday and tell their viewers to watch on Nick anytime.  (Viacom and CBS broke up in 2006.)

     Ted Turner 

      We aren't blaming Ted Turner, as much as it's just catchy heading  , but he had a large effect on broadcast cartoons. With his Purchase of Hanna and Barbara his TBS and TNT had unlimited acess to their cartoons, along with the classic Warner Brothers animation  was also part of the library he amassed.  These  bread and butter of  weekday cartoons for indie stations up until the 90's , though they were waning due to first-run programming.  In 1996 Ted Turner sold his company ,including Cartoon Network, to Time Warner (the Warner from Warner Brothers) .  This didn't immediately have an effect on Kids WB , but it would later. 

    

      Endings

            Fox Kids was hurt by Kids WB and other options existing , so they ended their weekday block after the sale of  Fox Kids Worldwide to Disney. A year later they ended Fox Kids all together.  UPN's Disney block on Sundays and Weekdays was ended in 2002. Mostly because they were about to end One Saturday Morning on ABC, they had their own channels for content, and Viacom may have remembered they owned UPN.  Kids WB was the lone weekday block, though they ended the weekday morning in 2001, so local stations can do local  news instead.  The Weekday block's death was announced in May of 2005 that they felt the audience had moved on to cable (plus Cartoon Network is co-owned)  and they replaced the programming with Daytime WB.  With that none of the major networks came back it's more value to have "Ellen", "Judge Judy" and maybe local news earlier than to try and  have children's programming.

        Syndication dried up as well most of the first run stuff was now really talk shows, court shows , and game shows.  If you want to pitch your new children's series , you try your had with Nick, Disney, Cartoon Network, or the streamers not with DIC.  Hasbro even owned part of a channel over bringing their content.   Ion television , a minor network, did have it's Qubo block air a various times on weekdays and their own 24 hour digital network.   The broadcast group, Sinclair has a made a more recent attempt airing Kids Click on some of their  CW and My Networks, and on Tribune's digital network , This TV.  This mostly airs in the mornings.

   
      Weekday children's television kind of died but lives on , just on cable channels (and PBS) the idea fostered what we have now in television that the younger audience can watch their programs at the times the fit them like everyone else. It is kind of sad that the networks or local stations don't do this anymore, but maybe it was a natural progression.   So what killed it?  I think it was some of the same factors that killed Saturday Morning, but with more pressure, the idea that local stations would try for a broad audience with talk shows, court shows, off run sitcoms, and news and children's television wasn't really in their mindset. Ownership combining into broadcast and cable operations along with cable allowing to have channels target specific audiences it made it more worthwhile.