SatAM question

**billytheskink** · Subject: Re: SatAM question Tue Sep 02, 2008 2:46 pm

Ed, Edd and Eddy and substance?

**Tentacle_king's_revival** · Subject: Re: SatAM question Wed Sep 03, 2008 9:23 am

moar than chowder.

**billytheskink** · Subject: Re: SatAM question Wed Sep 03, 2008 11:12 am

I wouldn't accuse either one of substance abuse, but I think Chowder is the funnier of the two.

**Tentacle_king's_revival** · Subject: Re: SatAM question Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:04 pm

that's fine. I just get ticked off a pure ignorance. and chowders variety reminds of toddler programing. I babysit sometimes, and that shit gets old and annoying quick.

**jordan00** · Subject: Re: SatAM question Fri Sep 05, 2008 12:15 am

Why is it every Saturday morning cartoon is now made by 4kids or is shit replayed on the Disney Channel?

**billytheskink** · Subject: Re: SatAM question Fri Sep 05, 2008 8:06 am

jordan00 wrote:

Why is it every Saturday morning cartoon is now made by 4kids or is shit replayed on the Disney Channel?

Because there's no ratings or money in Saturday mornings anymore. The cable networks made everyday saturday morning (theoretically).
The broadcast networks outsource their saturday morning block, they save money, they meet government standards for "educational" programming, the outsourcees (4Kids) make money, we get to watch Dinosaur King and Sonic X...

There are certainly shows that don't match the criteria you laid out, but among the three networks that run programming from 4Kids and the Mouse those shows are few and far between, mostly on what's left of KidsWB.

If you speak Spanish, however, you can get dubbed versions of Beakman's World and Dora the Explorer on Univision.

**Tentacle_king's_revival** · Subject: Re: SatAM question Fri Sep 05, 2008 10:03 am

or there's always the internet....

**billytheskink** · Subject: Re: SatAM question Fri Sep 05, 2008 11:57 am

There internet viewers and money are too fractured to allow anything like the old saturday mornings to develop.

a_new_peace · Subject: Re: SatAM question Fri Sep 05, 2008 11:57 am

Kids today have no time for saturday morning cartoons. All they have left is to train for the next war on Halo. These kids today have to grow up too goddamn fast if they want to compete in keep-everyone-busy Amerikkka.

**billytheskink** · Subject: Re: SatAM question Fri Sep 05, 2008 1:52 pm

a_new_peace wrote:

Kids today have no time for saturday morning cartoons. All they have left is to train for the next war on Halo. These kids today have to grow up too goddamn fast if they want to compete in keep-everyone-busy Amerikkka.

I don't think it's that kids don't have time as much as it is that they don't have to make time on saturday mornings to see the best and the newest cartoons, or any cartoons really. Not that video games and the internet and the like haven't played a part in the downfall of saturday morning, but I'd be surprised if kids today watched significantly less cartoon and kids programming than they did 15 years ago. I think the cable networks (Disney, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon) are the biggest reason for this decline.

Unlike the broadcast networks, cable networks allowed kids to watch brand new cartoons in primetime or after school hours. They allowed kids to see cartoons during every day of the week, and with kids often being less-than-picky television viewers it did not matter that cable's programming was often rerun-heavy, unoriginal, and poorly animated.

In any given week, the broadcast networks (not counting public television) give kids about 5 hours of cartoon programming on saturday (5 networks airing cartoons at the same time), plus maybe an hour or two on weekdays if a local channel syndicates something. That's about 15 hours that cartoons are on television per week, at the most, with the newest and most interesting shows appearing only on the morning of one weekend day.

On cable, though, you have networks that show cartoons for 8, 10, 20 hours a day. If you have a particularly far reaching set of cable channels then you can pretty much find a cartoon on one or more networks whenever you turn on the television. So, instead of 15 hours per week, you can watch cartoons for 100 hours or more, with the newest and most interesting shows appearing during the week and in primetime, as well as on saturday morning.

Kids don't watch saturday mornings like they used to because they don't have to, because they can watch cartoons pretty much whenever they want. They have so many options for cartoon viewing now that it has fractured veiwership to the point where it isn't often profitable to produce several well-written and well-animated cartoons, especially for saturday morning broadcast television.

Kane · Subject: Re: SatAM question Fri Sep 05, 2008 5:32 pm

Saturday mornings used to be a tradition here in America just like Sunday cook-outs and listening to the National Anthem at Midnight before broadcasts went off the air. Those were the good ol' days.

Unlike brenda's rather liberal point of view of the subject matter, I believe it was easy-anytime access to cartoons that pretty much killed Saturday mornings like billy said. Just as more Western cartoons are being consumed by the animu invasion, the American tradition is dying a slow and painful death. Whatever happened to blast from the past Fridays? They use to show all the old cartoons such as the original X-Men, Reboot, Beast Wars and the haye-day of Western Cartoons of '99? These young guns now days don't know what they've missed.