Had to cheat and use an image from 1995
Previously on the blog, we looked at ABC's 1996-1997 Saturday Morning programming. You can read that here.
The idea here is to do a snap shot of a period of time in Saturday morning television history, by doing an overview of programming while mostly talking about them in a larger context. The time being the 1996-1997 season. The reason why I picked 1996 for this post (and the ABC post) is that 1996 was a transitional time for this network's morning programming. This would be the last year of their traditional programming block before adding news programming and focusing on E/I children's programming. NBC had started the ball rolling with "Saturday Today" and CBS was going to join in later.
There's another similar story to ABC: acquisition. I'm going to keep it simple for this post because there's a larger context, but that's not really here for this post. Westinghouse announced in 1995, they were wanting to purchase CBS. This was announced about a day after Disney announced they were buying ABC, and Westinghouse got their network purchaused approved first. Now, CBS had new owners, though Westinghouse wasn't really a company that was like Disney, it owned local stations and was an electric products company, so they didn't have anything to bring to Saturday Morning kids TV they way Disney would.
Let's get a look at this line up now. In 1996, this would be the last year of a traditional block for CBS before mostly going to a) E/I programming and b) later letting someone else program the time for them.
First, the second and final season of "The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat" This is a series that's a modern take on the character Felix the cat, (duh) this series has Phil Roman working on, you would know him from "Garfield" specials and some "Peanuts" specials as well. This season only had 8 episodes, and of course was the last for the series. In "Felix" history this was the first series since the 50's series that ended in 1962. So far, the next series was the last one with "Baby Felix" which came out in 2001. (but that didn't air on CBS)
Next on CBS, was the 2nd season of "Timon & Pumbaa" yes, Disney's. The Disney Afternoon by the mid 1990's was mostly faltering as a block , especially as local stations were changing around the country. Disney decided to work with CBS on a few things, before well, buying ABC. Just because they bought ABC, doesn't mean contracts would change that easily. This though, was the final season of this show on CBS; it had one more season in 1999, airing on Toon Disney. CBS didn't even finish airing the 2nd season, five episodes premiered in just syndication. This series takes Timon and Pumbaa from "The Lion King" and sets them on their own adventures.
Another returning series for it's second and third seasons, yes two in one season period was "The Mask: Animated Series" based off the movie of the same name. Fun fact, three movies starring Jim Carrey were turned into animated series and two of them aired right here on CBS. It's an interesting to idea to turn a movie into an animated series, but here we are.
Now for a series, that could be blog post material in the future! (Not sure why there's exclaming going on) "Project G.e.e.K.e.R." which, I hate spelling correctly, I m mean look it. Anyway, This Series is was created by Doug TenNapel (Creator of Earthworm Jim and Catscratch) and Doug Langdale (Creator of Weekenders and Dave the Barbarian) It was a series about about an experiment named "Geeker" who can shapeshift, but since he was stolen before they could program him to do death stuff, which is good, and now they try and keep him away from his creator to make sure he's not used for evil. Sounds like fun, it lasted one season and this was it.
There weren't many new series on the CBS line up that year, so back to another sophomore show, this time, another show based off a movie that starred Jim Carrey. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective . This series is based on the movie and expands on the world in the movie. Since this is an animated series in the 1990's based off a movie, the original movie people didn't voice their roles. Oh well, that's sad. This series apparently did get a third season which aired on Nickelodeon in 1999.
The next series was a new one, and it wasn't animated. Bailey Kipper's POV was a kids' sitcom,from MTM studios, owned by Pat Robertson at the time, (yes) This might be it's own blog post in the future, just because. (This is not the brainstorming post, but ideas do come up) This series predicts our modern future of cameras everywhere (joke) because it's about a boy named Bailey who records his family through hidden cameras to uhhh make a video diary. (odd)
Please do watch the intro here
The final new series that season, was a game show! "Secrets of the Cryptkeeper's Haunted House" which is based off the Cryptkeeer series, which had an animated version at some point. It's a spooky themed game show, of course. It lasted on season and CBS had different ideas for a kids' game show and this wasn't it.
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" needs no introduction (besides it's introduction) this season, they ran the final episodes of the 1987 series. There's not much else I can say it's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it's so well known what they are I really don't need to. (Read: being lazy?)
TLC network used to be The Learning Channel , where you would learn things.Here is a series that started on TLC and syndication and later moved to CBS, than reran for years on local stations because it was E/I. "Beakman's World" This series fits like a glove in the E/I world, because it's an educational series. This series has science but shown in fun ways and was a very somewhat popular series. All the shows I've mentioned before were gone in fall of 1997, this one survived because it was E/I and it ended in 1998 when CBS turned to Nelvana to run their Saturday AM block
Over on ABC, the final season of "ABC Weekend Specials" was running, while on CBS they were airing reruns of "CBS Storybreak" This series had long already ended years before, but it was old reliable for CBS. This series is basically, animated adaptations of stories to encourage kids to read, by making the stories into animated episodes. (Slightly joking) Kind of a charm to the series, maybe I'll pick up to write about. This was the last season these reruns would uh rerun, because we have to make room for news the next year and yeah.
That's the line up and really it's hard to tell just from the line up anything would be changing the next year. The one impact is an external change as 1996 was the year E/I rules were clarified and CBS decided to wash their hands of a traditional block and follow NBC's steps of a Morning show and 3 hours of children's shows, in this case shows that would fit the E/I commitments with Think CBS. There's not much to learn here, but it is interesting to see what a network was airing at this time and seeing how much change it went through the next year gives it an interesting momentary look at a time piece. That it's for now, tune in next time, when we add use eye cameras to spy on people in the year 1996, watching this block.
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