The moment I realized Saturday morning cartoon programming was dead happened about two years ago. In the course of random Internet surfing, I discovered that Fox had plans to show a new version of my favorite childhood cartoon, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”. I decided, on a whim (and not having anything better to do on a Saturday morning) to get up early (10 a.m.) and watch the world premiere of the new, improved “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”.
As I sat through the credits to some cretinous Japanese cartoon, I kept an eye on the upper-right corner of the television screen, where Fox had generously placed a timer counting down the minutes and seconds until the show debuted. I found it funny that Fox was hyping up the return of a cartoon that, chances are, none of its current audience had seen. Then I reminded myself that I was 20 and watching cartoons, and shut up.
I silently cheered when the countdown hit zero. Such was my nostalgic glee for the Turtles that it wasn’t until the end of the premiere episode that I fully realized the blasphemy that had been perpetrated upon my childhood heroes. The animation and drawing was crummy, the character voices were all wrong and the blaring industrial-metal music that accompanied every fight scene was an assault on my ear drums. And they even had the audacity to change the theme song! (Nothing, and I mean, nothing, can top the immortal words “Heroes in a half-shell, Turtle power!”)
My disillusionment can only partially be blamed on the fact that I’m an adult, whose tolerance for the simplicities of childhood television is severely limited. Even growing up, I dimly realized something was changing, and not for the better, in the realm of cartoons. It all boils down to 1992, the year the cartoons died.
When NBC dumped its Saturday morning cartoon lineup for fall 1992, I didn’t pay too much attention to it. I did not really watch any NBC shows, besides the legendary “Pro Stars” (who can go wrong with Bo Jackson, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan as sports superheros?), so I did not think anything of it. Besides, I eventually grew into watching some of NBC’s counter-programming, Teen NBC, once I became an adolescent.
At the same time NBC was chucking its cartoons out the window, the second nail was driven into Saturday morning programming’s coffin: Cartoon Network went on the air. A station completely dedicated to cartoons? This was the childhood equivalent of crack cocaine.
Cartoon Network, along with other cable children’s programming, was probably the most important reason why Saturday morning cartoons went the way of the dodo. Cable’s strength was the ability to bring cartoons to children 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, an advantage network stations couldn’t compete with.
Even as I was growing up, I was witnessing the beginning of the end, although I didn’t know it at the time. My love for Disney’s weekday afternoon cartoon programming (“Ducktales”, “Chip’n Dale’s Rescue Rangers” and “Darkwing Duck” especially) was certainly a thorn in Saturday morning programmers’ sides. I’m sure I was not the only kid who limited his Saturday cartoon consumption for these shows. And I was definitely a fan of Nickelodeon and the Disney channel’s kid-friendly content, even though my house didn’t always have cable when I was a kid.
Why mourn the passing of Saturday morning cartoons and the dying ritual of waking up before the sun came up to veg out for hours in front of the television? Because I feel the children of today are being robbed of quality cartoon programming.
Of the three broadcast networks still in the Saturday morning cartoon business, none of them have 100 percent original programming on their stations. ABC gets some of its programming from the Disney Channel. WB airs a fair number of Cartoon Network shows. And Fox farmed out its entire Saturday morning lineup to another production company.
The end result? Lots of cheap, crappy, unoriginal cartoons. Cable is supposed to give viewers more options, not provide a cheap entertainment solution to broadcast networks. And while Saturday morning programming has a history of airing poorly made animation, that wasn’t the case when I was a kid.
Maybe it was because of the competition from cable, but when I was a kid, the big networks rolled out some of the best cartoons ever, both in style and substance. Animators spent more time making their cartoons look good, and networks gave good cartoons more than just two seasons to make their mark. With the stations’ vote of confidence, the creators responded by crafting intelligent shows that did not dumb down their material.
“Batman: The Animated Series”, “X-Men”, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “ReBoot” were all given plenty of time to develop their plots (although “ReBoot” ended up moving to Canadian TV for its last season) and it showed, for the most part. “Batman” won an Emmy award and was briefly moved to primetime TV on Sundays, “X-Men” made five seasons worth of episodes and “ReBoot” held up a complex and dark mirror to human existence.
If we want there to be successful and intelligent adult animated series like “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy”, we need to be showing kids, the animators of tomorrow, intelligent cartoons. Otherwise, we’ll be getting nothing but a bunch of cookie-cutter dookie when “The Simpsons” finally leaves the airwaves.
Benjamin Nanamaker is a senior in English and journalism whose favorite Ninja Turtle is Donatello. Saturday morning remembrances can be sent to [email protected].
