July 7, 2026 • 45 mins
For several decades, Saturday morning cartoons were a massive industry in the United States. Every weekend, millions of American children tuned in to watch their favorite shows... and, later, bug their parents for related toys. The studios made bank off this, yet it was only a matter of time before concerned citizens and government agencies started asking: Are these really shows, or just sneaky, 30-minute exercises in brainwashing? In the second part of this two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max explore the fall of Saturday morning cartoons.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. That's our super producer, Max the
Beachhead Williams. That's no Brown and still has a bit
of long tresses, uh, which may not last forever. That's
Noel Brown. I am ben Bullen.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Uh, Noel.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Let's let's do uh. Let's do it in the style
of Lost or in the style of Saturday Morning cartoons
previously on Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Previous Saturday Morning cartoons. How does that leave?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
There's always like an announcer voice in those programming blocks.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
And we are coming to you live, hot and ready,
just like that viral meme about Little Caesars. With part
two of this, because we talked about the halcyon age
of Saturday Morning cartoons when there there was a huge
(01:29):
loophole that Big Studio saw this was the easiest way
to sell merchandise to children and to propagandize children. And
they got in a fight with the federal government about
what makes a show versus what makes essentially a thirty
minute advertisement.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
For sure, feature length advertisements, I believe is what some
of the parenting groups who are lobbying lawmakers and the
FCC to kind of crack down on some of this,
were referring to those as and they had really the
networks this is all on broadcast television, the big three networks,
along with a lot of these animation studios who were
(02:10):
kind of booed up with some of these big toy
manufacturing companies like Mattel were just raking it in hand
over fists. They were having a real boom time as
far as you know, their profits were concerned, and that
is what kind of led to I think what you
and I really remember as kind of the golden age
of Saturday morning cartoons, at least when we were more
(02:30):
like little tykes. But we're going to talk today about
kind of the next phase and then what became of
the concept of Saturday morning cartoons as we enter, I
guess are more like middle school, early teenage years the nineties.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So up until the early nineteen eighties, this out if
it used to kidnab people, kid nab studios as well.
I'm saying kid nab as a delicious pun because NAB
stands for National Association of Broadcasters, and they enforced what
(03:16):
you mentioned earlier in our previous conversational voluntary guidelines, and
those voluntary guidelines said, if we have a show, that
we have a series of shows that runs for an
hour on weekends, the ad time cannot be more than
nine and a half minutes on the weekends, and if
(03:41):
it's the weekdays, it can't be more than twelve minutes,
which is still a significant amount of time.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
But we trust you to police yourselves on this.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
The networks, however, starting in the eighties, under ray again.
As we know, this is a huge period of deregulation.
The Federal Communications Commission pushed for deregulations, and those NAB guidelines,
which were already kind of toothless in the first place,
were completely abandoned. So broadcasters were then legally allowed to
(04:12):
air as many commercials during kids programming blocks as they wanted,
which led to exactly what you were describing ben those
program I said feature That was the wrong word. Program
length commercials, shows designed purely to sell toys like transformers
and Gi Joe's. But as we mentioned, we're kind of
now entering the early days of the nineties when the television,
(04:34):
sorry the Children's Television Act of nineteen ninety would ultimately
begin to change all of that and require broadcast stations
to air a lot of educational programming while limiting commercial
advertisements directed at kids.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Well, someone think of the children.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Got to think there are few? Sure, I believe that.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
It's the easiest way to get evil stuff passed as well.
Look at the efforts to de anonymize the Internet today.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
But this was I think we both can agree that
this is beneficial in many ways.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Like I was going to say, this is a good
faith effort as far as we could tell in our
mutual research. And thank you again, Noel for creating this series.
This Children's Television Act, this CTA nineteen ninety is a
watershed moment because they're saying, Hey, these kids are going
(05:30):
to watch the screen no matter what, so why don't
we teach them a little something, and why don't we
try to ease it off with the dial back the advertising.
I cannot help but imagine that there were some parents
in Congress who were like, why does my kid will
(05:54):
always want the most expensive toy out there? But again,
as we set up in our first part of this series,
there were loopholes, right, No, there were exemptions.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah, for sure, and we're going to get into like
a whole kind of sea change as far as the
landscape of what it meant to be able to bring
this kind of programming to kids. This was indeed designed,
like you said, in a good faith effort to provide
educational broadcast stuff that kids would have to kind of
also experience alongside their favorite Saturday morning cartoons. But to
(06:34):
your point, them an exemption did allow the five commercial
broadcast networks at this point there are five to increase
ad time while pretty much abandoning these educational blocks targeted
at kids under thirteen.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah. Absolutely, And according to one of our favorite sources
for this, David rob writing for Deadline, this spell the
beginning of the end for the age of Saturday morning
cartoons in a big deal. A big aspect of this,
I should say that we teased previously is the emergence
(07:13):
of cable networks cable television. Because while they there were
many aspects of cable programming that we're still beholden to
these FCC regulations, it was a lot easier for them
to get around some of them too, because they weren't
on the public airwaves. Yeah, which means they're again, legislation
(07:37):
is always reacting to innovation. It's never really It hasn't
historically been prescient, it hasn't really figured out the future, right,
so it has to react at present. Yeah, yeah, not yet.
And so in the early nineteen nineties, as you were saying,
we see a significant amount of new players on the field,
(08:03):
and they're increasing in not just quantity but in quality.
We see Nickelodeon, we see Fox Kids, we see Warner
Brothers getting bigger budgets. They're actually snagging cinematic soundtrack scores.
And then they're they're letting people like they're actually letting
some of the world's most lauded comic book writers start
(08:29):
to write cartoons.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Giving them a budget and a platform, and they made
some incredible work, like the film noir coded Batman, the
animated series that I think we all grew up with
and really holds up to this day. It's just such
an art what would you call that style band kind
of art deco noir, like the Angular, you know, Frank
Lloyd Wright, kind of buildings of it all, and.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Just very very cool and viby stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Of course, X Men, which we're gonna get too little later,
but has experienced a reboot in the style of the
old cartoons.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I believe it's called X Men ninety seven and uh
this one but little and but a little.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
I know that was such a hallmark for I think
all this Max, I see you popping in.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Were you an X Men's kid, X Men's kid? X
Men Kid.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
I'm just gonna say, as of recording today, you know,
the first three episodes of season two just drop.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I have not even watched season one, but I really
loved it when I was a kid, and I've been
meaning to watch it.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Well, season one is season one. I mean, obviously I'm
not going to judge season two yet because you know,
we're only three episodes in. But season one it was
like when people told me about it, I'm like, okay, whatever,
It's like, this seems like a catch grab. It's it
is amazing, like how well ridden and like they let
like the show grows up with the audience. It's written
for people who watched the nineties cartoon, which.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
I yeah, very much, very well written and great, great
boy Max. And then we got Tiny Toon Adventures and
of course it's time for an maniac.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Wait, we've got bologna in our Slacks, where Zany to
the Max, Who's Bolognian?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:06):
And Tiny Tunes and Animaniacs, if I'm not mistaken, both
involved Steven Spielberg. He uh he executive produced both of
those shows and actually would make little cameos in both.
So the Animaniacs was about the Warner brothers and the Warner.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Sister Dot who have been like these.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Chaos gremlins who were locked in the Warner Movie Lot
water Tower, the famous water tower with that Warner Brothers
logo on it, and then they get out and they
cause all kinds of craziness. We got Pinky in the brain,
the good Feathers, remember the pigeons that were sort of
like Mafia gangsters.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Oh my gosh, I love that show.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
What I loved about Animaniacs as well is the the
phenomenal like geo weirdly astute geopolitical awareness they learn, they
name all the countries and the absolute banger song. And
then back in Boy Scouts, we used always write these
parody lyrics for things we would have instead of ani Maniacs.
(11:08):
We had the entire intro song as Pyromaniacs, Nice on Fire,
pre Smoke to You, Collapse Romaniacs so well, thank you, sir.
So like we're saying, I didn't know the Spielberg aspect there,
(11:31):
and like we were saying, these new shows completely ring
the bells of all the other pre existing stuff that
was treated as templatized cookie cutter, corny cell toys crap. Yeah,
this is now like reimagining it all.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
All those all those shows that we were talking about
in the eighties segment or the section were all like
quantity over quality. They wanted to make as many episodes
as they could. They were all kind of working hand
in hand with the toy manufacturers, so they were inherently
commercial and they just weren't that creative.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Like we were saying, it's like.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Magical strong Man a hold sword aloft and fight skeleton monster,
you know who lives in a spooky castle. It's like
the most basic kind of loreless stuff you could imagine.
With Batman the animated series, you're talking about some real
hard boiled kind of like edgy, serious detective kind of writing,
like of the quality of like a what's it dashiel
(12:34):
Hamnet or some of you know, the Multese falcon and
stuff and x men as well, comedy writing on tiny
tunes and animaniacs top notch. You had all these old
Hollywood references that even like adults would get. It really
was a new kind of beginning of a golden age
of animation. The new shows made that rushed animation and simplistic,
moralistic narratives of eighties shows kind of look a little
(12:56):
bit hack in comparison.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah. So now at this point, your extant five big
broadcast studios networks, they are encountering lower advertising rates upon
which their business depends, and they're seeing increasing competition from
(13:19):
these cable channels which have an entirely different model of income.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Whuch that makes sense spend the lower ad rates because
there's just more competition, so like there's more opportunities for
advertisers to go in different places. So it's almost a
buyer's market rather than a seller's market.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Right, Right, that's on base. We're also seeing that, you know,
a cable channel be not beholden to the same model
may seem more interesting to the golden goose. The child demographic, right,
the child consumer demographic, which sounds very cold, they call
(13:57):
it preteen audience, but I still think it's it's like,
treat people as people and recognize when folks or children.
Don't treat them as numbers. But that's maybe two leftists.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
And it's just not it's not cutthroat enough.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Ben, there's no room for morals and empathy and business. No,
there should be.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
But it was really just kind of a little footnote
in the Federal Communications interpretation of the Children's Television Act
of nineteen ninety that was really kind of the beginning
of the end, one of the final nails in the
coffin of Saturday Morning cartoons. So, under the agency's interpretation
(14:44):
of this law or this Act, broadcast stations were required
to run at least three hours of what's referred to
as educational and informational children's content every week for kids
sixteen and under. And this was a caveat of me
able to retain their licenses. You know, the FCC is
(15:05):
the one who issues and maintains, you know, a good
standing of these broadcast licenses.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, so it's like having a driver's license. Think of
it that way, folks. You get a license if you
qualify for your driver's test and so on, and you
don't have serious prior crimes or serious serious constraints that
would disallow you from driving a vehicle, you have to
(15:33):
satisfy government requirements. And what we're saying here is that
the CTA Act of nineteen ninety said that if you
don't have at least three hours each week of intentional educational,
non propagandistic programming for kids who are you know, also
(15:57):
just about or too young to drive, then you are
going to lose your right to broadcast anything the very
high stakes. So you also have to limit the amount
of advertising that you can do to ten point five
minutes per hour on weekend. So again, that's a sixty
(16:18):
second increase I.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Was gonna ask, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
And then the twelve minutes per hour on weekdays, which
is still a lot of advertising time. Like, I'm sure
it is fought against it, but yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
And by nineteen ninety six, the government decided to take
this even a little bit farther in a package of
rules that had been referred to as and I swear
when I read this, I think of burger king kids.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
And I'll tell you why.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
The kidvid rules by really further kind of becoming a
little bit stricter in their interpretation of the children's programming.
By implementing a study called the Children's Programming Report, which
was full of kinds of new mandates. Do you guys
remember Burger King Kids Club? This was the thing in
the nineties. They were like these kids, Like there was
(17:07):
one name Wheels who was in a wheelchair.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I always remember that there.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Was one with the cool sunglasses.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
That's kidvid. His name was kid Vida.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And it had to have been a reference to this
in some way or I don't know if it's a
chicken or the egg thing, but I can't imagine that
the SEC named their program after the Burger King cartoon character.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
But maybe it was around the same time.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
But yeah, this Children's Programming Report, which you can read
in full online if you'd like to check it out,
had a lot of these new kind of frameworks for
how the FCC felt educational and not educational things should
be interpreted, or what their standards were for those things.
And this kind of really kicked off a new age demographic,
(17:50):
a new range for sixteen and younger. It kind of
identified them instead of just generally just you know, kids.
And another thing that this did was prohibit the advertising
of tie in merchandise for cartoons during the hours of
seven am to ten pm, which is one of several
what do they called I believe they're called safe harbor periods.
(18:11):
That's an FCC concept as well.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, like which words one can use on air, And obviously,
folks we think it's we think it's dirty pool to limit,
like I'm not saying, teach every three year old all
the curse words, you know. But it is imperialistic and
(18:34):
kind of gross in general in this country to limit
what people are saying or try to police what they're saying.
It violates the First Amendment. But the issue here is
again the loophole is the existence of children. Right, So
you could argue, if you're a studio, you could say, hey,
(18:55):
these bullies are trying to tell me what to say
and how to say it. But then if you are
looking at this, which again I think is well intentioned,
they're saying, you guys are going to bleed households dry
when you have a Gi Joe show that has Gi
Joe expensive toys as the only commercial in the show. Again,
(19:19):
I'm a huge proponent of allowing people to say what
they want. It's super gross to do otherwise, I mean,
including hate speech. It's the first Amendment. But as you're
saying there NOL seven am to ten pm, they're clearly
mapping out the window where kids would watch this stuff,
(19:41):
and they say, Okay, let's teach the children with this
amazing technology television, mass broadcasting. And now the makers of
Saturday Morning Cartoons on broadcasts and on cable they have
to they to figure out how to deal with these
kidvid rules.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, and it's complicating things for them, for sure. It's
definitely mudding the waters and all the while Cable just
is not behold into this stuff. They are not required
to fill up significant parts of their programming blocks with
educational content. And we played you some of those segments
in the last episode, like the hunk of cheese thing,
well picture of that, but stretched out to literal, full
(20:26):
length kind of programming, more like PBS style stuff. So
as the nineties kind of continued on, the era of
Saturday Morning Cartoons was really beginning to further kind of wane,
with more folks households rather with personal computers, the advent
of the Internet. Obviously VCRs had been around where you
(20:48):
could record things off of TV, but that wasn't really
eating into their market share quite as much. As things
like home video DVD players began consoles that could play videos,
kids were finding other ways to entertain themselves outside of
broadcasts and even cable. But broadcast was really starting to
show its age and was starting to become increasingly irrelevant
(21:09):
when it came to how kids got their entertainment.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, now, we're not saying this was a light switch moment, right,
This was not a sudden flip. There are a lot
of shows that many of us in the crowd will
remember tonight, fellow ridiculous historians, things like Teenage Ninja, Turtles, Animaniacs,
Bobby's World, of course, Pinky and the Brain earlier mentioned.
(21:34):
These are cult classics. They've spawned so many iterations, so
many memes. In some cases they've spawned full on film adaptations.
And then you have, of course Nickelodeon, the legendary cartoon network,
Adult Swim, Disney Channel. Of course, the mouse has been
in this game from the beginning. So there are other
(21:58):
way they're saying, Okay, I can't do what we want
in these specific constraints of the federal government of the
United States. We're going to find other ways to sell
stuff to children. That's what's happening, and that leads us
to one of the quintessential textbook examples of this adaptation,
(22:22):
which is Pokemon.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Hooke, hm on, you gotta poke that mom pokem on?
Man never was my thing. I think it hit a
little late for us, I did, I don't know, Max?
Did it hit just about the right time for you? Yeah,
you're a little younger than us.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Where were you at? Next?
Speaker 5 (22:41):
I want to be the very best. No one ever was?
Is my real test? Train them is, buddy?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
This is this is this peak.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
It wasn't really a this wasn't really a Saturday Cartoons.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I watched it like every day before right, it was life.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
This was when I was in elementary school. This was
the show. And man we talked about commercialized shows. There
is nothing like poll COmON.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
So it's nineteen ninety eight and our young Max Beachhead
Williams is grow it up, dealing with all the trials
and travails and triumphs of be the child. We see
that none other than our super producer is embroiled in
(23:32):
something that is a true paradigm shift. It's a sea change.
It up ends the viewing habits of children, It accelerates
the decline of the big network Saturday morning dominance because,
like you were saying, Max, this becomes a show you
watch before you go to school every weekday.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
Correct, yep, every single day. Because there were so many episodes.
I think the first season I looked this up at
one point was like eighty two episodes.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Because wasn't it already It already hit big in Japan,
so these are just being repackaged and re dubbed, and
it was like just an endless content stream from Japan.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Yeah, and there's also kind of a regression. And I
remember my dad loved shows like The Animaniacs and stuff
like that because he could watch that with us and
we find it funny. We actually, on vacation were referencing
Tiny Tunes a whole bunch because there's a famous scene
in Tiny Tunes where they summer vacation episode where they
go spend like forever the whole summer going to amusement
park and then they go ride them on a round
(24:32):
and leave. That's some making fun of like vacations that
are like that. But my parents never liked Pokemon because
the actual writing quality horrible. Is it's it's kind of
a step back.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
It's like.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
They grind out so much stuff. And you guys will
see this when you encounter you when you travel to Japan. Right,
we're going separately this year, but maybe when you were
go together.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
The the sheer one piece, right, the One Piece franchise
is another example of this. The sheer number of episodes
in a thing means a lot of filler. Like I
I also remember this was maybe a little bit earlier,
maybe around the same time. I remember Dragon Ball Z
(25:23):
if you ever saw that one, guys, Uh, most of
the episodes are people talking about how they're charging up
their power moves.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
To be honest, my friend Enrika, he's a he has
every dragon Ball thing he's done. I've seen all dragon Balls.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
The I watched.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Actually in college, I brought up with the fact that, like,
you know, the Freeze of Saga is just Goku doing
uh sit ups in a ship for like twenty.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Episodes about I'm about to that's it.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Ten thousand however, a hundred million or whatever the numbers.
I mean, it is so much there you go, it's
to corny throw out. And I guess a lot of
that comes in the fact that it is translated and
they are like you know, having to do the voices
of the dubbing, and there is a certain amount of
kind of regression that goes into that. It's not until
you see like Studio Ghibli and the dubbing and the
(26:13):
quality of voice acting in those films that you kind
of see a good version of what could be accomplished.
But they're trying to churn these things out, so you're
gonna have a bit of a throwback or a step
back in quality in that department. But what can't be
denied is that it was an absolute craze, Dragon Ball,
all of the anime stuff that was kind of flooding
(26:35):
the zone. But Pokemon in particular, that weekday kind of
appointment viewing was really just absolutely eating Saturday morning cartoons' lunch.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And I've got to point out I will slightly derail us, guys.
I've got to point out on the on the note
regarding Studio Ghibli, there is a phenomenal stage adaptation of
Spirit Did to Wait that is coming to Yeah, we
could watch it online. I had seen previously because it's
(27:07):
you know, it's based in Japan, but they're going to
have a showing of it in Los Angeles and in London.
It's traveling the world. La is probably the closest to us.
So I say, we go, are you guys down day?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
I I've just seen little snippets of it online. It
looks incredible, And you say it is streaming. It's available
to view online currently, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yep, you can find it on Amazon Prime. It's it's
a great hangout movie night, you know, because we're I
think we're all in love with the innovations of Japanese poetry.
This is astonishing. Even if you don't care for plays,
if you enjoy hearing about cartoons, this is a live
action cartoon. It's way better than it should be. And
(27:54):
that thus ends our derailments here, because Noel, I don't
want to lose the amazing point you just made, which
is that things like weekday morning appointment viewing, they absolutely
rock the industry. Advertisers were coming back into the fold
(28:16):
because they said, if we can get the kids before
they go to school, that we can make you know,
instead of two days worth of money on the weekends,
we can make seven days worth of money through advertising.
And Pokemon also helps normalize and popularize the idea of
(28:38):
anime in the West, right outside of the Wiyaboos and
using that I'm using that term the way it's meant
to be used. We're not trying to cast dispersion. We're
just people. Yeah, most people didn't didn't know about, or
care about or like this stuff. And I think he
nailed an excellent point in that this is a repackaging
(29:02):
of stuff that was originally created in Japan, and Japan
through the intervening decades of post World War two, they
just got so far ahead in cartoon war like just
absolutely way better than the US.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
For a minute, no, no question about it. Ben Oh.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
And we should point out also when we say weekday
appointment viewing an important point here, which is in your research,
we're not just talking about that six thirty to a
thirty block where kids are getting ready or going to school.
We're also talking about immediately after school three thirty to
(29:46):
five thirty or what have you, the kids who don't
have extra curriculars, who maybe Latchkei kids their main thing
is going to be watching TV and waiting for their
parents to get home.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
That's exactly right. So at the same time, some of
these new rules were really you know, just absolutely hamstringing.
Some of these legacy networks and making them have to
air more and more educational content, leaving them far less
competitive against some of these really, really, really powerful franchises
(30:21):
like Pokemon, Ugo, Digimon, Dragon Ball, all of that stuff
across weekdays on cable, and this was absolutely becoming just
the death knell for the concept of Saturday morning cartoons.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
What we're building the case here for folks is that
in the two thousands the two thousand, the center of
gravity has been shifting decisively to cable. So now the
kids are not just saying, what did you see on
ABC or CBS, They're saying, oh my gosh, Billy's dad
(31:03):
has cable at the house. We gotta go and broadcast
networks the old guys are outsourcing their blocks of cartoon programming,
or they're shutting it down entirely. They're doing something really
interesting that if you and I were kids, we would
(31:24):
not have understood at the time. Like NBC is essentially
selling real estate to Discovery Kids, They're leasing time to them.
It's a similar practice to what we saw with whomever
replaced Stephen Colbert's Late night program. I haven't watched it.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
But I do know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Yeah, they they Essentially.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
It was a new model where he's like paying to.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Be on the air essentially, right, Yeah, and that's what
that's It's weird because we hold a new model for
late night TV, but in this case with cartoons, we
see it is the same model NBC least time to Discovery,
Fox had something called Number four Kids TV, and then
(32:17):
the CW moves to outsourcing programming. Didn't they guys, correct
me if I'm off base here. Didn't they used to
be the Country Western Network CWN was that different from CW.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
I don't know, Ben.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
There were so many like rebrandings of those like TLC
became its own thing, to the Learning Channel, and then
it just kind of it's sort of like removing the
meaning of the acronym or trying to strip it away,
like Kentucky Fried Chicken turning into this KFC, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
So it's hard to keep tracks sometimes, man.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
It is a fusion dance between the CBS Corporation and
Warner Brothers C and.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
W the phone and fall in knowledge.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
It's just for you right now?
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Okay, okay, So, as you were saying, no, CWN is
something entirely different, got.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
It, got it.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
I was also thinking, there's Country c CTNE.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Okay, and then there's CNN.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
CMT CMT Country Music Television.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
The one CMT is the one. And then we got
Cartoon Network, which later spawns Adult Swim. We've got Nickelodeon,
Disney Channel. They're running animation all week. If you don't
believe us, check it out now. Uh, And then you
have you have the erosion of the appointment television habit
(33:50):
because now we can uh, we can record stuff in
advance for our kids, right, and we can play it
when we want those kids to trackeded by a screen.
And it's two thousand and eight, so we're not at
the point where every child has a smartphone. We see
the I guess, as Gizmotos said it, we see the
(34:14):
death knell really coming into play in twenty fourteen when
the CW's outfit Vortex with two x's ends. That's right,
the last that marks the end of it.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, okay, big time. And as Bob A.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Sora Canitch from Gizmoto put it, I'm just going to
quote directly from this piece he wrote that came out
right after this kind of you know, watershed moment. It's
the end of an era, he said, but it's been
a long time coming. NBC ditch Saturday Morning cartoons in
nineteen ninety two, CBS followed suit not long after, and
ABC lost this animated weekend mornings in two thousand and four.
(34:56):
The CW, he goes on a lower tier broadcast network,
was the last holdout in a game that the Big
three left long ago.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Ouch lower tier.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
They kind of were, I mean, y, yeah, they were
one of those like the WB, you know, the CW,
they had some of these kind of you know, lower
quality teen dramas, and then they had sort of like
I believe the WB is where didn't you have like
Buffy the Vampire Slayer on one of those as well?
They were they had like kind of a little bit
schlockier content, it would seem. I'm not saying Buffy schlocky.
(35:32):
Buffy rules people love it, but it was yeah, very
very good. But I think it's not an unfair characterization there.
And then we finally have Lisa Golombowski who kind of
further eulogizing Saturday Morning cartoons in a piece she wrote
for Refinery twenty nine in October of twenty fourteen. And
I think this is a great way to wrap up
(35:54):
this section. The nation mourns today as we witnessed the
first weekend in America without Saturday Morning cartoons in more
than fifty years. Last weekend, the CW ran the final
installment of its vortex with two Axes by the Way
animation block, marking the last gasp of the decades long
animation domination. The network has replaced it with One Magnificent Morning,
(36:17):
which promises all the wonders read boredom of live action
educational programming. But not all is lost, Ben, because we're
starting to see some really fun kind of reboots and
nostalgia baiting but admittedly pretty high quality versions of some
of these eighties cartoons that we sort of have this
(36:40):
soft spot for in all of our hearts.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I think, yeah, a bunch of a bunch of kids
who grew up on Saturday Morning cartoons are now big
studio moguls and they're chopping their bubblegum cigars and they're sick.
Yeah I should do Yeah, let's not waste time on
new risky ideas like the phenomenal Pacific rim. Let's look
(37:04):
at the old pieces of intellectual property. This stuff I liked,
you know, top tough, tough top. They say, let's make
Vultron sleeker, sexier, more character driven. Let's get some good writers.
Remember how we didn't respect writers. Let's get some good
ones for Ductails and reboot that.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
You know comedians?
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Do you recognizable comedians doing voice parts.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Paton Oswald as Splinter? Why not, guys, Let's think outside
of the box. The calculus here is is weaponized nostalgia.
It is the idea that you know, the Lago Company
is phenomenal with this. It's the idea that your kids
(37:50):
that you got early on, the ones you propagandized, the
ones you indoctrinated, you got in their heads with it.
As they age up into their own adulthood and have
their own children, they want to share that story of
their own evolution. And they have disposable incomes. So obviously,
(38:10):
an eight year old is going to have a hard
time convincing their parents to pay three hundred dollars for
a Lego set.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
But if you want to be the cool parent, and
you also maybe wanted a little bit for yourself, let's
be honest.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
You know you wanted a hundred a bit for yourself,
Let's be honest. Yeah, So that's that is that is
part and parcel of what is fueling this new renaissance
in Saturday morning cartoons, even if they're not on Saturday mornings.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
And admittedly Ben and Max too. You know, this doesn't
necessarily mean that some of these reboots aren't fun and
pretty good. Like The X Men ninety seven is absolutely
what you're describing. There is a cynical view of it
that could be taken and saying that it's some sort
of cash grab, know, to capitalize on nostalgia, but it
also is being written and helm clearly by people with
(39:04):
a serious affection for the original material and and trying
to think it should be true a million percent, dude,
And I think that's the case with a lot of
these shows. Uh, Teenage Being Ninja, Turtles keeps getting reimagined
Masters of the Universe. There's other versions of that that
were fun, some of which didn't quite go, including I
believe the live action MO two movie that I think
(39:28):
was a bit of a flop.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
But you saw it and said it was a good time.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
It was a good time. I mean, it's look, are
we expecting something like an a war an Academy Award
winning thing. No, are we jared leto fans, I'll definitely
nah really but but yeah, you're you're nailing it there.
(39:52):
It's the sweet spot. As as you said in your research,
modern storytelling more inclusive cast links to old themes and
Easter eggs, heaps and heaps of merchandise, one of which
we have here now. It's a skeletor popcorn cup. It's
(40:13):
his brains, yeah, because it opens to the it's so weird.
It's not as off footing as that dune sandworton cup.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
No, or the recent uh Supergirl commemorative soda cup that
has inexplicably a flesh colored trench coat on it that
when you look at it from behind just kind of
looks like a aany a Vaney dome.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Georgia O'Keefe, would.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Anyone, yes, please more of that? I'll have what she's having. So,
I mean, I guess it's been to wrap it up.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Saturday Morning cartoons didn't just vanish overnight, like you said.
This was kind of a death by a thousand cuts
thing that happened over time.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
They were squeezed out.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
The cable network started airing animation all week long. We
didn't really get into DVRs, because that's not even as
relevant anymore. But that was a thing the kind of
replaced VCRs and allowed on demand viewing, So the appointment
viewing habit really became kind of less and less relevant,
and streaming truly finished the job by letting kids watch
(41:16):
anything they want at any time. Meanwhile, the FCC educational
rules made these legacy broadcasters just absolutely eat into their
airtime with hours of educational programming, and of course the
toymakers and the advertisers they migrated away to folks like Nickelodeon,
(41:40):
Fox Kids and the WB.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
So the thing is that while this current ritual or
this former ritual faded away at the time, and by
twenty fourteen, the last broadcast holdout ended. As we said,
the cartoons themsel elves soldiered on. They simply moved and
(42:04):
adapted to wherever the kids already were. I would say,
the kids present and the kids past right the kid's former.
So if you want, and a lot of people do this,
if you ever want to have an excellent binge of
something like Captain Planet or he Man and Masters at
the Universe or Gem in the Holograms, you can easily
(42:28):
go find it and that is a beautiful thing, because
as ridiculous as the premises of so many of these
cartoons are, they rule and we're super happy that they
are there. Big big thanks or super producer mister Max Williams.
Big thanks to our research associate for this series, mister
(42:49):
Noel Brown. And Nola got to ask you, what do
you think Jonathan Strickland aka The Quister's favorite cartoon was.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
It's a good question.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
It's probably something sword and sorcery related, maybe some of
those maybe some of those O, G, D and D
cartoons from being charitable, he also was basically his favorite
cartoon character is probably Doctor claw On Inspector Gadget, because
that's like they have, you know, the sort of spiritual
commonalities there.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah, I was gonna say his favorite cartoon characters himself.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
I did not walk right into that one, and I
should have. Well, well, well said Ben, and you know what,
let's just say I'll who's thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka
The Quister, A J. Mohammas Jacobs, the Puzzler, Rachel Big,
Spanish Lance, the Doctor, the Underwater Doctor herself.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Big big thanks as well to the rude dudes of
Ridiculous Crime if you dig us, you will love them.
We can't wait to we can't wait to announce when
we have them back on a collaboration. We also and
I guess we should tease it here even though we
don't have to. We're also taking to our super producer
(43:58):
Max and our pal Matt Fredrick, along with a few
compatriots on a tour of the High Seas for different shoes.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah, it's true, we are doing that.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
We're going to Bermuda by way of the Port of
New York, one of many.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
It's not just one.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
We're so mystified by the toured authority too.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
I know that's pretty it's the thing. Yeah, and why
do they run the bus terminals? I don't understand what
you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
So where are we gonna be doing that? With Virgin Voyages?
You can if you just look up what is it
stuff at sea? You can book yourself a cabin on
that journey with us. What we'll be hanging out? That's
when has that been? Early October is when the actual
voyage takes place.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
That's right, it's October two to the seventh. We hope
to see you there. And Noel, I had a great
time with this. I knew you've got to go watch
another episode, but I'm gonna be honest with you guys.
More and more often, I've been working out too old cartoons.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
So many amazing super cut of them on YouTube that
you can watch.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Pretty freely as well. So try that yourself.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Pump some iron, take a page out of the book
of Ben and do some squats to some old he
Man cartoons.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. That's our super producer, Max the
Beachhead Williams. That's no Brown and still has a bit
of long tresses, uh, which may not last forever. That's
Noel Brown. I am ben Bullen.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Uh, Noel.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Let's let's do uh. Let's do it in the style
of Lost or in the style of Saturday Morning cartoons
previously on Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Previous Saturday Morning cartoons. How does that leave?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
There's always like an announcer voice in those programming blocks.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
And we are coming to you live, hot and ready,
just like that viral meme about Little Caesars. With part
two of this, because we talked about the halcyon age
of Saturday Morning cartoons when there there was a huge
(01:29):
loophole that Big Studio saw this was the easiest way
to sell merchandise to children and to propagandize children. And
they got in a fight with the federal government about
what makes a show versus what makes essentially a thirty
minute advertisement.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
For sure, feature length advertisements, I believe is what some
of the parenting groups who are lobbying lawmakers and the
FCC to kind of crack down on some of this,
were referring to those as and they had really the
networks this is all on broadcast television, the big three networks,
along with a lot of these animation studios who were
(02:10):
kind of booed up with some of these big toy
manufacturing companies like Mattel were just raking it in hand
over fists. They were having a real boom time as
far as you know, their profits were concerned, and that
is what kind of led to I think what you
and I really remember as kind of the golden age
of Saturday morning cartoons, at least when we were more
(02:30):
like little tykes. But we're going to talk today about
kind of the next phase and then what became of
the concept of Saturday morning cartoons as we enter, I
guess are more like middle school, early teenage years the nineties.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So up until the early nineteen eighties, this out if
it used to kidnab people, kid nab studios as well.
I'm saying kid nab as a delicious pun because NAB
stands for National Association of Broadcasters, and they enforced what
(03:16):
you mentioned earlier in our previous conversational voluntary guidelines, and
those voluntary guidelines said, if we have a show, that
we have a series of shows that runs for an
hour on weekends, the ad time cannot be more than
nine and a half minutes on the weekends, and if
(03:41):
it's the weekdays, it can't be more than twelve minutes,
which is still a significant amount of time.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
But we trust you to police yourselves on this.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
The networks, however, starting in the eighties, under ray again.
As we know, this is a huge period of deregulation.
The Federal Communications Commission pushed for deregulations, and those NAB guidelines,
which were already kind of toothless in the first place,
were completely abandoned. So broadcasters were then legally allowed to
(04:12):
air as many commercials during kids programming blocks as they wanted,
which led to exactly what you were describing ben those
program I said feature That was the wrong word. Program
length commercials, shows designed purely to sell toys like transformers
and Gi Joe's. But as we mentioned, we're kind of
now entering the early days of the nineties when the television,
(04:34):
sorry the Children's Television Act of nineteen ninety would ultimately
begin to change all of that and require broadcast stations
to air a lot of educational programming while limiting commercial
advertisements directed at kids.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Well, someone think of the children.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Got to think there are few? Sure, I believe that.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
It's the easiest way to get evil stuff passed as well.
Look at the efforts to de anonymize the Internet today.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
But this was I think we both can agree that
this is beneficial in many ways.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Like I was going to say, this is a good
faith effort as far as we could tell in our
mutual research. And thank you again, Noel for creating this series.
This Children's Television Act, this CTA nineteen ninety is a
watershed moment because they're saying, Hey, these kids are going
(05:30):
to watch the screen no matter what, so why don't
we teach them a little something, and why don't we
try to ease it off with the dial back the advertising.
I cannot help but imagine that there were some parents
in Congress who were like, why does my kid will
(05:54):
always want the most expensive toy out there? But again,
as we set up in our first part of this series,
there were loopholes, right, No, there were exemptions.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah, for sure, and we're going to get into like
a whole kind of sea change as far as the
landscape of what it meant to be able to bring
this kind of programming to kids. This was indeed designed,
like you said, in a good faith effort to provide
educational broadcast stuff that kids would have to kind of
also experience alongside their favorite Saturday morning cartoons. But to
(06:34):
your point, them an exemption did allow the five commercial
broadcast networks at this point there are five to increase
ad time while pretty much abandoning these educational blocks targeted
at kids under thirteen.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah. Absolutely, And according to one of our favorite sources
for this, David rob writing for Deadline, this spell the
beginning of the end for the age of Saturday morning
cartoons in a big deal. A big aspect of this,
I should say that we teased previously is the emergence
(07:13):
of cable networks cable television. Because while they there were
many aspects of cable programming that we're still beholden to
these FCC regulations, it was a lot easier for them
to get around some of them too, because they weren't
on the public airwaves. Yeah, which means they're again, legislation
(07:37):
is always reacting to innovation. It's never really It hasn't
historically been prescient, it hasn't really figured out the future, right,
so it has to react at present. Yeah, yeah, not yet.
And so in the early nineteen nineties, as you were saying,
we see a significant amount of new players on the field,
(08:03):
and they're increasing in not just quantity but in quality.
We see Nickelodeon, we see Fox Kids, we see Warner
Brothers getting bigger budgets. They're actually snagging cinematic soundtrack scores.
And then they're they're letting people like they're actually letting
some of the world's most lauded comic book writers start
(08:29):
to write cartoons.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Giving them a budget and a platform, and they made
some incredible work, like the film noir coded Batman, the
animated series that I think we all grew up with
and really holds up to this day. It's just such
an art what would you call that style band kind
of art deco noir, like the Angular, you know, Frank
Lloyd Wright, kind of buildings of it all, and.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Just very very cool and viby stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Of course, X Men, which we're gonna get too little later,
but has experienced a reboot in the style of the
old cartoons.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I believe it's called X Men ninety seven and uh
this one but little and but a little.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
I know that was such a hallmark for I think
all this Max, I see you popping in.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Were you an X Men's kid, X Men's kid? X
Men Kid.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
I'm just gonna say, as of recording today, you know,
the first three episodes of season two just drop.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I have not even watched season one, but I really
loved it when I was a kid, and I've been
meaning to watch it.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Well, season one is season one. I mean, obviously I'm
not going to judge season two yet because you know,
we're only three episodes in. But season one it was
like when people told me about it, I'm like, okay, whatever,
It's like, this seems like a catch grab. It's it
is amazing, like how well ridden and like they let
like the show grows up with the audience. It's written
for people who watched the nineties cartoon, which.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
I yeah, very much, very well written and great, great
boy Max. And then we got Tiny Toon Adventures and
of course it's time for an maniac.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Wait, we've got bologna in our Slacks, where Zany to
the Max, Who's Bolognian?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:06):
And Tiny Tunes and Animaniacs, if I'm not mistaken, both
involved Steven Spielberg. He uh he executive produced both of
those shows and actually would make little cameos in both.
So the Animaniacs was about the Warner brothers and the Warner.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Sister Dot who have been like these.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Chaos gremlins who were locked in the Warner Movie Lot
water Tower, the famous water tower with that Warner Brothers
logo on it, and then they get out and they
cause all kinds of craziness. We got Pinky in the brain,
the good Feathers, remember the pigeons that were sort of
like Mafia gangsters.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Oh my gosh, I love that show.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
What I loved about Animaniacs as well is the the
phenomenal like geo weirdly astute geopolitical awareness they learn, they
name all the countries and the absolute banger song. And
then back in Boy Scouts, we used always write these
parody lyrics for things we would have instead of ani Maniacs.
(11:08):
We had the entire intro song as Pyromaniacs, Nice on Fire,
pre Smoke to You, Collapse Romaniacs so well, thank you, sir.
So like we're saying, I didn't know the Spielberg aspect there,
(11:31):
and like we were saying, these new shows completely ring
the bells of all the other pre existing stuff that
was treated as templatized cookie cutter, corny cell toys crap. Yeah,
this is now like reimagining it all.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
All those all those shows that we were talking about
in the eighties segment or the section were all like
quantity over quality. They wanted to make as many episodes
as they could. They were all kind of working hand
in hand with the toy manufacturers, so they were inherently
commercial and they just weren't that creative.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Like we were saying, it's like.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Magical strong Man a hold sword aloft and fight skeleton monster,
you know who lives in a spooky castle. It's like
the most basic kind of loreless stuff you could imagine.
With Batman the animated series, you're talking about some real
hard boiled kind of like edgy, serious detective kind of writing,
like of the quality of like a what's it dashiel
(12:34):
Hamnet or some of you know, the Multese falcon and
stuff and x men as well, comedy writing on tiny
tunes and animaniacs top notch. You had all these old
Hollywood references that even like adults would get. It really
was a new kind of beginning of a golden age
of animation. The new shows made that rushed animation and simplistic,
moralistic narratives of eighties shows kind of look a little
(12:56):
bit hack in comparison.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah. So now at this point, your extant five big
broadcast studios networks, they are encountering lower advertising rates upon
which their business depends, and they're seeing increasing competition from
(13:19):
these cable channels which have an entirely different model of income.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Whuch that makes sense spend the lower ad rates because
there's just more competition, so like there's more opportunities for
advertisers to go in different places. So it's almost a
buyer's market rather than a seller's market.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Right, Right, that's on base. We're also seeing that, you know,
a cable channel be not beholden to the same model
may seem more interesting to the golden goose. The child demographic, right,
the child consumer demographic, which sounds very cold, they call
(13:57):
it preteen audience, but I still think it's it's like,
treat people as people and recognize when folks or children.
Don't treat them as numbers. But that's maybe two leftists.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
And it's just not it's not cutthroat enough.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Ben, there's no room for morals and empathy and business. No,
there should be.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
But it was really just kind of a little footnote
in the Federal Communications interpretation of the Children's Television Act
of nineteen ninety that was really kind of the beginning
of the end, one of the final nails in the
coffin of Saturday Morning cartoons. So, under the agency's interpretation
(14:44):
of this law or this Act, broadcast stations were required
to run at least three hours of what's referred to
as educational and informational children's content every week for kids
sixteen and under. And this was a caveat of me
able to retain their licenses. You know, the FCC is
(15:05):
the one who issues and maintains, you know, a good
standing of these broadcast licenses.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, so it's like having a driver's license. Think of
it that way, folks. You get a license if you
qualify for your driver's test and so on, and you
don't have serious prior crimes or serious serious constraints that
would disallow you from driving a vehicle, you have to
(15:33):
satisfy government requirements. And what we're saying here is that
the CTA Act of nineteen ninety said that if you
don't have at least three hours each week of intentional educational,
non propagandistic programming for kids who are you know, also
(15:57):
just about or too young to drive, then you are
going to lose your right to broadcast anything the very
high stakes. So you also have to limit the amount
of advertising that you can do to ten point five
minutes per hour on weekend. So again, that's a sixty
(16:18):
second increase I.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Was gonna ask, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
And then the twelve minutes per hour on weekdays, which
is still a lot of advertising time. Like, I'm sure
it is fought against it, but yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
And by nineteen ninety six, the government decided to take
this even a little bit farther in a package of
rules that had been referred to as and I swear
when I read this, I think of burger king kids.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
And I'll tell you why.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
The kidvid rules by really further kind of becoming a
little bit stricter in their interpretation of the children's programming.
By implementing a study called the Children's Programming Report, which
was full of kinds of new mandates. Do you guys
remember Burger King Kids Club? This was the thing in
the nineties. They were like these kids, Like there was
(17:07):
one name Wheels who was in a wheelchair.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I always remember that there.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Was one with the cool sunglasses.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
That's kidvid. His name was kid Vida.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And it had to have been a reference to this
in some way or I don't know if it's a
chicken or the egg thing, but I can't imagine that
the SEC named their program after the Burger King cartoon character.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
But maybe it was around the same time.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
But yeah, this Children's Programming Report, which you can read
in full online if you'd like to check it out,
had a lot of these new kind of frameworks for
how the FCC felt educational and not educational things should
be interpreted, or what their standards were for those things.
And this kind of really kicked off a new age demographic,
(17:50):
a new range for sixteen and younger. It kind of
identified them instead of just generally just you know, kids.
And another thing that this did was prohibit the advertising
of tie in merchandise for cartoons during the hours of
seven am to ten pm, which is one of several
what do they called I believe they're called safe harbor periods.
(18:11):
That's an FCC concept as well.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, like which words one can use on air, And obviously,
folks we think it's we think it's dirty pool to limit,
like I'm not saying, teach every three year old all
the curse words, you know. But it is imperialistic and
(18:34):
kind of gross in general in this country to limit
what people are saying or try to police what they're saying.
It violates the First Amendment. But the issue here is
again the loophole is the existence of children. Right, So
you could argue, if you're a studio, you could say, hey,
(18:55):
these bullies are trying to tell me what to say
and how to say it. But then if you are
looking at this, which again I think is well intentioned,
they're saying, you guys are going to bleed households dry
when you have a Gi Joe show that has Gi
Joe expensive toys as the only commercial in the show. Again,
(19:19):
I'm a huge proponent of allowing people to say what
they want. It's super gross to do otherwise, I mean,
including hate speech. It's the first Amendment. But as you're
saying there NOL seven am to ten pm, they're clearly
mapping out the window where kids would watch this stuff,
(19:41):
and they say, Okay, let's teach the children with this
amazing technology television, mass broadcasting. And now the makers of
Saturday Morning Cartoons on broadcasts and on cable they have
to they to figure out how to deal with these
kidvid rules.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, and it's complicating things for them, for sure. It's
definitely mudding the waters and all the while Cable just
is not behold into this stuff. They are not required
to fill up significant parts of their programming blocks with
educational content. And we played you some of those segments
in the last episode, like the hunk of cheese thing,
well picture of that, but stretched out to literal, full
(20:26):
length kind of programming, more like PBS style stuff. So
as the nineties kind of continued on, the era of
Saturday Morning Cartoons was really beginning to further kind of wane,
with more folks households rather with personal computers, the advent
of the Internet. Obviously VCRs had been around where you
(20:48):
could record things off of TV, but that wasn't really
eating into their market share quite as much. As things
like home video DVD players began consoles that could play videos,
kids were finding other ways to entertain themselves outside of
broadcasts and even cable. But broadcast was really starting to
show its age and was starting to become increasingly irrelevant
(21:09):
when it came to how kids got their entertainment.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, now, we're not saying this was a light switch moment, right,
This was not a sudden flip. There are a lot
of shows that many of us in the crowd will
remember tonight, fellow ridiculous historians, things like Teenage Ninja, Turtles, Animaniacs,
Bobby's World, of course, Pinky and the Brain earlier mentioned.
(21:34):
These are cult classics. They've spawned so many iterations, so
many memes. In some cases they've spawned full on film adaptations.
And then you have, of course Nickelodeon, the legendary cartoon network,
Adult Swim, Disney Channel. Of course, the mouse has been
in this game from the beginning. So there are other
(21:58):
way they're saying, Okay, I can't do what we want
in these specific constraints of the federal government of the
United States. We're going to find other ways to sell
stuff to children. That's what's happening, and that leads us
to one of the quintessential textbook examples of this adaptation,
(22:22):
which is Pokemon.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Hooke, hm on, you gotta poke that mom pokem on?
Man never was my thing. I think it hit a
little late for us, I did, I don't know, Max?
Did it hit just about the right time for you? Yeah,
you're a little younger than us.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Where were you at? Next?
Speaker 5 (22:41):
I want to be the very best. No one ever was?
Is my real test? Train them is, buddy?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
This is this is this peak.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
It wasn't really a this wasn't really a Saturday Cartoons.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I watched it like every day before right, it was life.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
This was when I was in elementary school. This was
the show. And man we talked about commercialized shows. There
is nothing like poll COmON.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
So it's nineteen ninety eight and our young Max Beachhead
Williams is grow it up, dealing with all the trials
and travails and triumphs of be the child. We see
that none other than our super producer is embroiled in
(23:32):
something that is a true paradigm shift. It's a sea change.
It up ends the viewing habits of children, It accelerates
the decline of the big network Saturday morning dominance because,
like you were saying, Max, this becomes a show you
watch before you go to school every weekday.
Speaker 4 (23:54):
Correct, yep, every single day. Because there were so many episodes.
I think the first season I looked this up at
one point was like eighty two episodes.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Because wasn't it already It already hit big in Japan,
so these are just being repackaged and re dubbed, and
it was like just an endless content stream from Japan.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Yeah, and there's also kind of a regression. And I
remember my dad loved shows like The Animaniacs and stuff
like that because he could watch that with us and
we find it funny. We actually, on vacation were referencing
Tiny Tunes a whole bunch because there's a famous scene
in Tiny Tunes where they summer vacation episode where they
go spend like forever the whole summer going to amusement
park and then they go ride them on a round
(24:32):
and leave. That's some making fun of like vacations that
are like that. But my parents never liked Pokemon because
the actual writing quality horrible. Is it's it's kind of
a step back.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
It's like.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
They grind out so much stuff. And you guys will
see this when you encounter you when you travel to Japan. Right,
we're going separately this year, but maybe when you were
go together.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
The the sheer one piece, right, the One Piece franchise
is another example of this. The sheer number of episodes
in a thing means a lot of filler. Like I
I also remember this was maybe a little bit earlier,
maybe around the same time. I remember Dragon Ball Z
(25:23):
if you ever saw that one, guys, Uh, most of
the episodes are people talking about how they're charging up
their power moves.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
To be honest, my friend Enrika, he's a he has
every dragon Ball thing he's done. I've seen all dragon Balls.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
The I watched.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Actually in college, I brought up with the fact that, like,
you know, the Freeze of Saga is just Goku doing
uh sit ups in a ship for like twenty.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Episodes about I'm about to that's it.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Ten thousand however, a hundred million or whatever the numbers.
I mean, it is so much there you go, it's
to corny throw out. And I guess a lot of
that comes in the fact that it is translated and
they are like you know, having to do the voices
of the dubbing, and there is a certain amount of
kind of regression that goes into that. It's not until
you see like Studio Ghibli and the dubbing and the
(26:13):
quality of voice acting in those films that you kind
of see a good version of what could be accomplished.
But they're trying to churn these things out, so you're
gonna have a bit of a throwback or a step
back in quality in that department. But what can't be
denied is that it was an absolute craze, Dragon Ball,
all of the anime stuff that was kind of flooding
(26:35):
the zone. But Pokemon in particular, that weekday kind of
appointment viewing was really just absolutely eating Saturday morning cartoons' lunch.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And I've got to point out I will slightly derail us, guys.
I've got to point out on the on the note
regarding Studio Ghibli, there is a phenomenal stage adaptation of
Spirit Did to Wait that is coming to Yeah, we
could watch it online. I had seen previously because it's
(27:07):
you know, it's based in Japan, but they're going to
have a showing of it in Los Angeles and in London.
It's traveling the world. La is probably the closest to us.
So I say, we go, are you guys down day?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
I I've just seen little snippets of it online. It
looks incredible, And you say it is streaming. It's available
to view online currently, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yep, you can find it on Amazon Prime. It's it's
a great hangout movie night, you know, because we're I
think we're all in love with the innovations of Japanese poetry.
This is astonishing. Even if you don't care for plays,
if you enjoy hearing about cartoons, this is a live
action cartoon. It's way better than it should be. And
(27:54):
that thus ends our derailments here, because Noel, I don't
want to lose the amazing point you just made, which
is that things like weekday morning appointment viewing, they absolutely
rock the industry. Advertisers were coming back into the fold
(28:16):
because they said, if we can get the kids before
they go to school, that we can make you know,
instead of two days worth of money on the weekends,
we can make seven days worth of money through advertising.
And Pokemon also helps normalize and popularize the idea of
(28:38):
anime in the West, right outside of the Wiyaboos and
using that I'm using that term the way it's meant
to be used. We're not trying to cast dispersion. We're
just people. Yeah, most people didn't didn't know about, or
care about or like this stuff. And I think he
nailed an excellent point in that this is a repackaging
(29:02):
of stuff that was originally created in Japan, and Japan
through the intervening decades of post World War two, they
just got so far ahead in cartoon war like just
absolutely way better than the US.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
For a minute, no, no question about it. Ben Oh.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
And we should point out also when we say weekday
appointment viewing an important point here, which is in your research,
we're not just talking about that six thirty to a
thirty block where kids are getting ready or going to school.
We're also talking about immediately after school three thirty to
(29:46):
five thirty or what have you, the kids who don't
have extra curriculars, who maybe Latchkei kids their main thing
is going to be watching TV and waiting for their
parents to get home.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
That's exactly right. So at the same time, some of
these new rules were really you know, just absolutely hamstringing.
Some of these legacy networks and making them have to
air more and more educational content, leaving them far less
competitive against some of these really, really, really powerful franchises
(30:21):
like Pokemon, Ugo, Digimon, Dragon Ball, all of that stuff
across weekdays on cable, and this was absolutely becoming just
the death knell for the concept of Saturday morning cartoons.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
What we're building the case here for folks is that
in the two thousands the two thousand, the center of
gravity has been shifting decisively to cable. So now the
kids are not just saying, what did you see on
ABC or CBS, They're saying, oh my gosh, Billy's dad
(31:03):
has cable at the house. We gotta go and broadcast
networks the old guys are outsourcing their blocks of cartoon programming,
or they're shutting it down entirely. They're doing something really
interesting that if you and I were kids, we would
(31:24):
not have understood at the time. Like NBC is essentially
selling real estate to Discovery Kids, They're leasing time to them.
It's a similar practice to what we saw with whomever
replaced Stephen Colbert's Late night program. I haven't watched it.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
But I do know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Yeah, they they Essentially.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
It was a new model where he's like paying to.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Be on the air essentially, right, Yeah, and that's what
that's It's weird because we hold a new model for
late night TV, but in this case with cartoons, we
see it is the same model NBC least time to Discovery,
Fox had something called Number four Kids TV, and then
(32:17):
the CW moves to outsourcing programming. Didn't they guys, correct
me if I'm off base here. Didn't they used to
be the Country Western Network CWN was that different from CW.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
I don't know, Ben.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
There were so many like rebrandings of those like TLC
became its own thing, to the Learning Channel, and then
it just kind of it's sort of like removing the
meaning of the acronym or trying to strip it away,
like Kentucky Fried Chicken turning into this KFC, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
So it's hard to keep tracks sometimes, man.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
It is a fusion dance between the CBS Corporation and
Warner Brothers C and.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
W the phone and fall in knowledge.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
It's just for you right now?
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Okay, okay, So, as you were saying, no, CWN is
something entirely different, got.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
It, got it.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
I was also thinking, there's Country c CTNE.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Okay, and then there's CNN.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
CMT CMT Country Music Television.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
The one CMT is the one. And then we got
Cartoon Network, which later spawns Adult Swim. We've got Nickelodeon,
Disney Channel. They're running animation all week. If you don't
believe us, check it out now. Uh, And then you
have you have the erosion of the appointment television habit
(33:50):
because now we can uh, we can record stuff in
advance for our kids, right, and we can play it
when we want those kids to trackeded by a screen.
And it's two thousand and eight, so we're not at
the point where every child has a smartphone. We see
the I guess, as Gizmotos said it, we see the
(34:14):
death knell really coming into play in twenty fourteen when
the CW's outfit Vortex with two x's ends. That's right,
the last that marks the end of it.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, okay, big time. And as Bob A.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Sora Canitch from Gizmoto put it, I'm just going to
quote directly from this piece he wrote that came out
right after this kind of you know, watershed moment. It's
the end of an era, he said, but it's been
a long time coming. NBC ditch Saturday Morning cartoons in
nineteen ninety two, CBS followed suit not long after, and
ABC lost this animated weekend mornings in two thousand and four.
(34:56):
The CW, he goes on a lower tier broadcast network,
was the last holdout in a game that the Big
three left long ago.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Ouch lower tier.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
They kind of were, I mean, y, yeah, they were
one of those like the WB, you know, the CW,
they had some of these kind of you know, lower
quality teen dramas, and then they had sort of like
I believe the WB is where didn't you have like
Buffy the Vampire Slayer on one of those as well?
They were they had like kind of a little bit
schlockier content, it would seem. I'm not saying Buffy schlocky.
(35:32):
Buffy rules people love it, but it was yeah, very
very good. But I think it's not an unfair characterization there.
And then we finally have Lisa Golombowski who kind of
further eulogizing Saturday Morning cartoons in a piece she wrote
for Refinery twenty nine in October of twenty fourteen. And
I think this is a great way to wrap up
(35:54):
this section. The nation mourns today as we witnessed the
first weekend in America without Saturday Morning cartoons in more
than fifty years. Last weekend, the CW ran the final
installment of its vortex with two Axes by the Way
animation block, marking the last gasp of the decades long
animation domination. The network has replaced it with One Magnificent Morning,
(36:17):
which promises all the wonders read boredom of live action
educational programming. But not all is lost, Ben, because we're
starting to see some really fun kind of reboots and
nostalgia baiting but admittedly pretty high quality versions of some
of these eighties cartoons that we sort of have this
(36:40):
soft spot for in all of our hearts.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I think, yeah, a bunch of a bunch of kids
who grew up on Saturday Morning cartoons are now big
studio moguls and they're chopping their bubblegum cigars and they're sick.
Yeah I should do Yeah, let's not waste time on
new risky ideas like the phenomenal Pacific rim. Let's look
(37:04):
at the old pieces of intellectual property. This stuff I liked,
you know, top tough, tough top. They say, let's make
Vultron sleeker, sexier, more character driven. Let's get some good writers.
Remember how we didn't respect writers. Let's get some good
ones for Ductails and reboot that.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
You know comedians?
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Do you recognizable comedians doing voice parts.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Paton Oswald as Splinter? Why not, guys, Let's think outside
of the box. The calculus here is is weaponized nostalgia.
It is the idea that you know, the Lago Company
is phenomenal with this. It's the idea that your kids
(37:50):
that you got early on, the ones you propagandized, the
ones you indoctrinated, you got in their heads with it.
As they age up into their own adulthood and have
their own children, they want to share that story of
their own evolution. And they have disposable incomes. So obviously,
(38:10):
an eight year old is going to have a hard
time convincing their parents to pay three hundred dollars for
a Lego set.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
But if you want to be the cool parent, and
you also maybe wanted a little bit for yourself, let's
be honest.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
You know you wanted a hundred a bit for yourself,
Let's be honest. Yeah, So that's that is that is
part and parcel of what is fueling this new renaissance
in Saturday morning cartoons, even if they're not on Saturday mornings.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
And admittedly Ben and Max too. You know, this doesn't
necessarily mean that some of these reboots aren't fun and
pretty good. Like The X Men ninety seven is absolutely
what you're describing. There is a cynical view of it
that could be taken and saying that it's some sort
of cash grab, know, to capitalize on nostalgia, but it
also is being written and helm clearly by people with
(39:04):
a serious affection for the original material and and trying
to think it should be true a million percent, dude,
And I think that's the case with a lot of
these shows. Uh, Teenage Being Ninja, Turtles keeps getting reimagined
Masters of the Universe. There's other versions of that that
were fun, some of which didn't quite go, including I
believe the live action MO two movie that I think
(39:28):
was a bit of a flop.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
But you saw it and said it was a good time.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
It was a good time. I mean, it's look, are
we expecting something like an a war an Academy Award
winning thing. No, are we jared leto fans, I'll definitely
nah really but but yeah, you're you're nailing it there.
(39:52):
It's the sweet spot. As as you said in your research,
modern storytelling more inclusive cast links to old themes and
Easter eggs, heaps and heaps of merchandise, one of which
we have here now. It's a skeletor popcorn cup. It's
(40:13):
his brains, yeah, because it opens to the it's so weird.
It's not as off footing as that dune sandworton cup.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
No, or the recent uh Supergirl commemorative soda cup that
has inexplicably a flesh colored trench coat on it that
when you look at it from behind just kind of
looks like a aany a Vaney dome.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Georgia O'Keefe, would.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Anyone, yes, please more of that? I'll have what she's having. So,
I mean, I guess it's been to wrap it up.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Saturday Morning cartoons didn't just vanish overnight, like you said.
This was kind of a death by a thousand cuts
thing that happened over time.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
They were squeezed out.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
The cable network started airing animation all week long. We
didn't really get into DVRs, because that's not even as
relevant anymore. But that was a thing the kind of
replaced VCRs and allowed on demand viewing, So the appointment
viewing habit really became kind of less and less relevant,
and streaming truly finished the job by letting kids watch
(41:16):
anything they want at any time. Meanwhile, the FCC educational
rules made these legacy broadcasters just absolutely eat into their
airtime with hours of educational programming, and of course the
toymakers and the advertisers they migrated away to folks like Nickelodeon,
(41:40):
Fox Kids and the WB.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
So the thing is that while this current ritual or
this former ritual faded away at the time, and by
twenty fourteen, the last broadcast holdout ended. As we said,
the cartoons themsel elves soldiered on. They simply moved and
(42:04):
adapted to wherever the kids already were. I would say,
the kids present and the kids past right the kid's former.
So if you want, and a lot of people do this,
if you ever want to have an excellent binge of
something like Captain Planet or he Man and Masters at
the Universe or Gem in the Holograms, you can easily
(42:28):
go find it and that is a beautiful thing, because
as ridiculous as the premises of so many of these
cartoons are, they rule and we're super happy that they
are there. Big big thanks or super producer mister Max Williams.
Big thanks to our research associate for this series, mister
(42:49):
Noel Brown. And Nola got to ask you, what do
you think Jonathan Strickland aka The Quister's favorite cartoon was.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
It's a good question.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
It's probably something sword and sorcery related, maybe some of
those maybe some of those O, G, D and D
cartoons from being charitable, he also was basically his favorite
cartoon character is probably Doctor claw On Inspector Gadget, because
that's like they have, you know, the sort of spiritual
commonalities there.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah, I was gonna say his favorite cartoon characters himself.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
I did not walk right into that one, and I
should have. Well, well, well said Ben, and you know what,
let's just say I'll who's thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka
The Quister, A J. Mohammas Jacobs, the Puzzler, Rachel Big,
Spanish Lance, the Doctor, the Underwater Doctor herself.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Big big thanks as well to the rude dudes of
Ridiculous Crime if you dig us, you will love them.
We can't wait to we can't wait to announce when
we have them back on a collaboration. We also and
I guess we should tease it here even though we
don't have to. We're also taking to our super producer
(43:58):
Max and our pal Matt Fredrick, along with a few
compatriots on a tour of the High Seas for different shoes.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah, it's true, we are doing that.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
We're going to Bermuda by way of the Port of
New York, one of many.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
It's not just one.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
We're so mystified by the toured authority too.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
I know that's pretty it's the thing. Yeah, and why
do they run the bus terminals? I don't understand what
you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
So where are we gonna be doing that? With Virgin Voyages?
You can if you just look up what is it
stuff at sea? You can book yourself a cabin on
that journey with us. What we'll be hanging out? That's
when has that been? Early October is when the actual
voyage takes place.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
That's right, it's October two to the seventh. We hope
to see you there. And Noel, I had a great
time with this. I knew you've got to go watch
another episode, but I'm gonna be honest with you guys.
More and more often, I've been working out too old cartoons.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
So many amazing super cut of them on YouTube that
you can watch.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Pretty freely as well. So try that yourself.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Pump some iron, take a page out of the book
of Ben and do some squats to some old he
Man cartoons.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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