Saturday Mornings?

I feel that kids today are being robbed of the Saturday morning ritual.

You all remember Saturday mornings, don't you? Waking up at the crack of dawn, pouring a large bowl of your favorite sugary cereal, and plunking down in front of the boob tube for 4-5 hours of animated bliss? To me, it was one of the best parts of childhood. I remember it was all I could think about to get me through each dreary week of school, knowing that come Saturday, I'd be in my glory. I have to say though, it saddens me that children today do not get to enjoy the same experience. Today, the Saturday morning ritual is non-existent. Instead, kids have access to stations devoted to cartoons 24/7. If they want to watch cartoons at 3 in the morning on a Wednesday, they can.

But it was different for us growing up. The only way we could see certain cartoons was ON Saturday mornings. These were shows that never aired any other day of the week. To me, that was special and made me look forward to the day all that much more. Kids today have the ability to watch "Kim Possible" or "Atomic Betty" 7 days a week if they so choose. They are basically being robbed of the Saturday morning experience.

So what's on the stations today that make Saturday mornings so special? Well, NBC now airs news and infomercials. CBS partnered with Nickelodeon and airs nothing but pre-school shows. Even Canadian networks such as CTV had dropped cartoons from their Saturday morning line-ups.

Then there's the quality of the shows we see today. The old saying rings true; "They don't make them like they used to". Maybe it's the nostalgic in me, but I think cartoons back in the day were much better than the drivel that's on today. I grew up watching shows such as "He-Man & The Masters Of The Universe", "Go-Bots", "Transformers", and "The Real Ghostbusters" to name a few. In the 80's, I was even introduced to much older shows such as "Rocket Robin Hood", "The Mighty Hercules" and "Milton The Monster". These my friends were the glory days of Saturday morning television.

So is the Saturday morning ritual dead and gone? Well as long as these 24/7 cartoon networks exist, that's pretty much a given. So all we can do is hold on to that special part of our childhood in our memories. Thanks for reading.

Comments

You guys remember on CBS at 6am during the 80's on Saturday morning to start their broadcasting they would have about a 1 minute segment of different television personalities (macgyver) and others saying a catch phrase of "good morning America" or "god bless America" or something... I can't for the life of me remember much about it but I remember it was on CBS. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Saturday morning cartoons are only on NBC (E/I), CW (Vortex), and PBS these days. It is just E/I cartoons and shitty fucking kiddie anime. The term "Saturday morning cartoon" is non-existent - otherwise, the childrens' means for entertainment - is spread out through the week. I do in fact miss watching ABC's TGIF (during the late period) and Nickelodeon's SNICK, during its late period as well. I do remember watching Fox Kids, ABC's One Saturday Morning, and Kids' WB, as well.

I'll say people who are less than 20, do not remember the ritual for Saturday morning cartoons. Or they do not care for it because they have the Internet, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon, YouTube, etc, etc. The last time Saturday morning cartoons were big was '03-'04, it was mainly for the "anime boom", the same goes for weekday cartoons, when Yu-Gi-Oh!, DBZ, and Pokemon premiered; it was the revival from the Golden period in the 70's-early 90s's. I'l always remember waking up at 5/6AM just to watch SATam....

Children today are definitely being deprived of the Saturday Morning experience. Saturday Morning Cartoons was the perfect bridging event between ABC's TGIF on ABC and Nickelodeon's SNICK on Saturday night. I am proud and lucky to be born in the 80s. I remember me and my friends talking about the cartoons when we eventually went outside to play. Even hours after the cartoon lineup went off. Our generation had it great!!!

jango52577, the 55 comments above yours only prove that an article doesn't have to spawn pictures or a million words to spark a good discussion.

Blah. Too short and no pics. Next!

I remember back in the day, not only were saturday moring cartoons better but they also had a lot more shows!

As a teenager, I have never had that Saturday morning experience. Honestly, I find cartoons extremely innapropriate for children to watch. They can rot a childs brain. When I was little, I woke up on Saturday morning and read books or went outside or played with toys. I played bored games with my sisters, or my imaginary friends. The mind needs to be worked at younger ages with creativity. TV is by no means creative, cartoons are no good for kids. They teach them that violence is cool and have hidden sexual inuendos. Many kids like Spongebob Squarepants, the dumbest show on the planet. First off, pineapples don't grow under the sea, second off, he is an absolute moron. When I am an adult, I plan on raising my children under better circumstances than that. The sad thing is, my mom tried to get me to do that whole Saturday morning spiel, but I don't find it intersting at all.

In my opinion, Saturday Mornings went downhill during the mid 1990's. We had FOX Kids and Kids WB, true, but at the same time, we have Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network showing kids shows and cartoons during all hours of the day.

I personally think everyone under 21 truly missed out on the Golden Era of Saturday Morning cartoons (1980's-1992/1993).

Saturday Mornings have been dead for the past 15 years thanks to the birth of Cartoon Network and when NBC dropped their Saturday Morning line up in favor of news and teen shows. Now you can watch cartoons whenever you want, who needs Saturday Morning blocks?

Yeah,I remember those days fondly,when you couldn't wait for Saturday morning to come,when u didn't mind getting up at 6AM (compared with during the week,you always hated having to get up at 6AM for school,during the week),going down or out to your living room in your little Doctor Denton jammies-with-feet,and turning on the TV,plopping down and watching every show from 7AM to 1PM.You always had a favorite network that shows your favorite cartoons. For me and my sisters when we were little,it was the ABC cartoons we watched most of the morning.The only time you'd get up is to eat breakfast,and then at 1PM,it was off to the mall,or off to a friend's house to play,with not a care in the world.Now,you can watch any of these shows at any time,
like the author of this article says.I agree,kids today don't know what they're missing.

I wanna go back! Those were the best days! Kids today don't know what they're missing. It was so special then. All the great shows that were on TV. OMG! Cartoons today stink, wrestling stinks, videa games (you need a code book)stink! We, by far had the best shows to watch. I wish there were a channel on TV that showed all these classics. I'd be planted there for hours!

Saturday Morning cartoons started going downhill in the 90s. I agree DTF1977. I miss the way they were in the 70s and 80s.

AdrimalAwesome, you couldn't be more wrong than anything. The 90s IS when Saturday mornings started dying out.

Well thanks a lot, aradke. I'm glad you have the same opinions as me on Saturday Mornings.

Yep, those previews (I think they ran for an hour or two) showed me what the new Saturday morning cartoons were like.

Damn, I wish I recorded them.

I miss those days! I remember that, I use to get up like 6:30am and drain the main vain and walk to kitchen and make a bowl of my favorite childhood cereal Frosted Flakes or Fruity Pebbles and sit in the middle of the living room floor in my G.I. Joes underoo's and watch cartoons. Ducktales, ninja turtles, Transformers, G.I. joes, and alvin and the chipmunks. I moss those days severly. i almost dropped a tear.

Thanks for all the comments guys. It's nice to see others feeling the same way I do about the demise of Saturday mornings. Actually, ducktalesfan1977 just jogged my memory big time when he brought up the Friday night fall previews. That was a BIG deal for me as a kid. I remember the one ABC did which used "Mr. Belvedere" as a backdrop. I even remember the (still unknown) "Saved By The Bell" kids promoting the upcoming NBC Saturday night lineup. It was exciting for us kids to get a glimpse of what new cartoons to expect for the following year.

i love the disney channel it rocks

I think that when the 90's died out, so did the classic saturday morning!

I remeber watching shows like Re-Boot, The Tales From the Crypt games show, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtals, and eventually anything on One Saturday Morning!

i remeber i used to wake up at 6 am each morning, watch tv for about 4 hours before i saw any other family members. parked on my bean bag chair. Tales of the crypt keeper (cartoon version)was always what was on first, then eventually "One Saturday Morning" would start up.

while many networks don't have the saturday morning ritural like they used too. there still is saturday morning line ups.

And Aradke, I also grew up with older Saturday morning shows before my time too.

I loved Milton the Monster, Mighty Heroes, Underdog etc. (actually I still do)

Boomerang shall show more of the older 60s, 70s and 80s cartoons from other studios other than HB and Ruby-Spears and no more of the modern shows like Baby Looney Tunes. That's not classic/retro.

Even though I'm banned from here (goddamnit Lockett) I'm going to do an similar article to this one soon.

Luckily I can still do articles.

I really wish Saturday mornings go back to the way the were in the 70s and 80s. What happened to the fall Friday night previews? What happened to all those cool ads?

Some of my favorite Saturday morning programs
Gummi Bears
Bugs and Tweety
Dungeons and Dragons
Fangface
Plastic Man
Godzilla (Hanna-Barbera)
Shirt Tales
Smurfs
Mr. T
Hulk Hogan's Rock n Wrestling

and so many others.

Those were the days of real Saturday morning cartoons.

It died when NBC stopped doing Saturday Morning cartoons and when Nickelodeon got big in the 90s and I know a lot of you will disagree with me, but I really don't care.

As long as the cable cartoon channels are up and running, Saturday mornings will be dead from now on. Also, because kids have cartoons 24/7 there is no need for cartoon "competition" over which channel has the better shows to watch on Saturday morning. I remember flipping channels between abc and fox. Now the quality of a show isn't really that important to the networks. Insted of quality they seem to focus on quantity.

I would have to disagree with you TV1985. The early 90s is when Saturday morning cartoons started dying off.

Saturday Mornings went downhill since the mid-90s. Lots of good shows were on Saturday Mornings back in the 80s and early 90s.

Shows I remember watching were Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Hey Vern It's Ernest, Garfield 'n' Friends, Teen Wolf, CBS Storybreak, He-Man, TMNT, Muppet Babies, The Muppet Show, Winnie the Pooh, The Real Ghostbusters, Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters, The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, Animal Crack-Ups, I'm Telling, and a whole much more.

I miss Disney's (Or was it ABC's?.. I know it aired on ABC...) One Saturday Morning. I still hum the theme song as I walk to my biology 2 class. Recess, Pepperann (much too cool for 7th grade)... sometimes I feel like crying. or inventing a time machine and going back. Nothing beats waking up at 6 a.m., dragging your blanket to the living room, making camp on the floor and watching 4 hours of cartoons. Then going to the store and making your parents buy you a new toy.

Lockett, one day some one is going to stomp that big head of yours that holds your EXTRA big mouth... and I pray that someone is me.

70s and 80s ain't sucky.

nice article, yup the good old days man that still dousent sound right lol

...No, not really. I hate to keep bringing this up, but it's just that you're now old enough to tell that some are bad and some are good. Look back at a piece of entertainment you weren't a part of from your time and the current stuff. You've got a bit of awesome, and a lot of crap. Whether it's 1970's cartoons or 2000's comic books, it's a bit of awesome, a bigger bit of decent, and a lot of crap. That is the nature of media. I'm not saying all your favorites are crap(though a lot of them were just half hour long commercials, same as today), I'm just saying the stuff out now isn't any WORSE.

Different? Yes. There's been a shift towards having overarching plots in many shows, whereas a lot of 1970's/80's cartoons went with a more episodic feel with a few major changes throughout the series, usually around the start and end of a season. But WORSE? As in lower quality of writing, worse voice acting and lower quality of animation? Not really. The average is still pretty much the same.

(Swift Heart needs to learn how to spell; its difference.) It WAS a great ritual. I'm with aradke, I still yearn for the old Sat morning cartoons as a 26 yo "adult" because I choose not to buy extended cable. Our 80s/early 90s generation had higher quality cartoon series and animated shorts. Network TV has become increasingly valueless and brainless. I'm sure there are other parents and adults out there who forego cable but wish for a once a week escape for their children and themselves.

There are shows that still show only on Saturdays. I used to watch 1 Saturday Morning, which had shows that were only on on Saturdays. I loved it, but don't know why anymore.

The Foxbox, now 4K!DS TV, is cool somewhat. Wish I'd watched the first revival of Ninja Turtles and not this lame "itz kewl kuz itz in da fyuchur" stuff with Fast Forward. I still watch some of it when I can.

The old Foxbox was cool. I used to get upset when I couldn't watch Sonic X or Kirby (though I'm sick of Kirby now). I used to get up before 7:00a just to watch 1SM. We have our ritual, it's just not as important as it was three decades ago.

i think there is a diffrents between now and then maybe its the content of the jokes it may just be the charaters but there is a diffrents

Now, I can't speak from your position, being that I'm a mere 15 year old teenage male, but all I can say is, stuff hasn't gotten that much worse in terms of the actual quality. I mean, I certainly miss saturday morning cartoons proper, which were still very common when I was a little kid, but the actual cartoons aren't any worse.

I mean, let's look at oldschool Transformers. It's a bloody commercial for the toys and nothing else! That's all it is! I've seen the episodes myself and it's a glorified commercial.

Now let's look at a new show...Hmm...Which to pick, which to pick...Xiaolin Showdown, I suppose. Pretty good writing. Simple plot, but it's got some good gags, some cool fight scenes, and their actual writing quality is really quite good. Or Avatar: The Last Airbender, which also has good plot and great fight scenes and some good comedy.

Now, of course there are bad new cartoons, especially for the 'adult' range. Just look at the majority of Adult Swim produced shows to prove that. But there was bad stuff on back then too.

This argument of what's better, new or old, is going to continue forever. And you know what's going to happen in another 10 years, when I'm 25? There's going to be a site just like this one, and I or someone like me is going to go there, watch the intro to Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and lament the loss of cartoon channels for pure on-demand based services and say that hip new show Radioactive Leslie is crap.

Now then, hopefully I have not annoyed you all too much, and if I have I am sorry.

It's not the same anymore, with 24 hour cartoon networks there's nothing to look forward to.

You're right, the crave is gone. Waiting for cartoons isn't as precious anymore because you have so many options to watch including cable, downloads, and those modern recording devices (forgot the name). We all know what you mean.

I was never able to wait until the weekend would come. I remember watching hours on top of hours of saturday morning cartoons. The eighties were special in that sense. Who the hell wants to watch a tiny pixelated download of anything? Youtube is notorious for that. The feeling of watching something on a computer screen really kills the mood of what you're watching. Even when I watch the retrojunk intros, it doesn't really feel like anything other than a memory. A true nostalgic feeling would be sitting three feet in front of a television set waiting anxiously for your favortie cartoon to come on.

These days, all you see on American television is japanime english dubbed voice over crap. American quality is gone. Then you have new rip off versions like ninja turtles fast forward, g.i. joe sigma six, and some butchered transformers crap I remember a while back. What happened to creativity? Is creativity yugi-oh? What's next in the rip off line? He-Man in a ninja outfit? A remake of thundercats, the shaolin years? Would this include huge eyes for these characters and mouths that don't move when they talk? Come on, where the f*ck did nbc, cbs, abc, and all the others go wrong? How? I don't think it's that we're older and don't appreciate these modern day cartoons. I think we're old enough to depreciate the quality of what's on the television today.

Are people just out of ideas? Who knows wy saturday morning sucks?

I agree my highlights of saturdays morning were getting up and watching spiderman and his amazing friends.

I agree with you completely. Saturday Mornings used to be about getting up early and watching about 4 or 5 hours of cartoons. Nowadays you'd be lucky if you can find anything that's at least half decent.
Nothing on any of the major U.S. networks is decent anymore. Not even the Nick toons that are on YTV. All that's left on YTV isn't anything but cheap crap.
Networks like Teletoon are now filling the void so to speak but they can't get a lot of the stuff that Cartoon Network can get. Mostly because they have problems aquiring the broadcasting licenses of the shows that we used to watch as kids and would like our kids to enjoy.
I think it's because some of the major networks are running a little dry on ideas.

in the uk, my favourite saturday tv show was beast wars. it was the highlight of the week for me growing up in the 90s. when friday came i knew that beast wars was only one day away.. MAN do i miss them days!!

You have to remember that the cartoons on today are designed for kids. They're not really made for people our age (which I'm assuming to be late teens to mid-20s). Also, nostalgia adds a lot to mix. That's why you can return to so many cartoons and be disappointed. I do agree that Saturday morning cartoons probably aren't as special now that they have Cartoon Network.

here is the thing about saturday mornings now, they will not put the good shows on them. I think when we where young, they knew just what to do. Put the good toons on, and all us kids jumped up just to watch them, we would even go to bed early. Now i find it the cartoons are not even the good ones of today. So i sleep in on saturdays. So i would think that yes, yes saturday morning cartoons are as dead as tgif.

I tried to watch saturday morning cartoons not too long ago.... I turned it off after one hour... the shit si just really bad.

Amen, I tried to keep to the Saturday Morning ritual a while back with a few shows I wanted to watch (Xaolin Showdown, Sonic X, Pokemon) but slowly I began to stop because it just wasn't the same as it was when I was 5, I had no brother anymore to run to his room and wake him up to watch Sonic The Hedgehog with me, and the shows just....they just weren't the same as they were in my childhood. At least I tried, but I agree, I feel sorry for the children of today....here's a toast to the 90's.....

Every time I hear "Saturday morning cartoons" I think of MY DAYS. With shows like Real Ghostbusters (I still have the toys), TMNT (those too), Camp Candy, Wish Kid, Muppet Babies, and many others, I also feel that kids nowadays ARE getting ripped off. It makes me wish I was nine years old again.

so true

I agree with you Knives.

I've been saying this for years. I'd say it started when Ren and Stimpy/Nickolodeon first threw their hat in the ring. Saturday morning is dead. R.I.P.

It remembers me good times indeed. Did school week seem eternal until saturday mornings.

But what can we brag about? Nowadays, we are in a world where you can get whatever you need, at every hour, every day, everywhere in the world with internet. Can we possibly hope that things would stay has they were? I don t think so.
A lot of cartoons today are crap. But i watched a few old ones...maybe we should think about it twice. Some of them weren t that good, and, I apologize, very stupid. It is only cartoons meant for kids. Can we really judge progress?
We all find that shows from our time were great, but what about those from our parents? I used to find them pretty boring, but that was the trend at their age. When we will have children, surely they will act the same way.

Though, nice article

i know this isnt all realivant in here, but you do feel me don't you, aradke? TV has gone to hell. Now all im doing is what ABC saturday morning's host "Captin O.J. Readmore" sugested. To READ!!!

Saturday mornings was so much better in the 70s/80s.
Today it's nothing but repeats of Nick and Disney shows that are already overplayed or it's the news.

assuming that we really do share the same point of view, one thing that irritates me is how they now eliminate show outro credits by putting them on the side to place in more promo ads. Take "the super mario super show" for example. say if you havent seen the show for a while, its been a decade maybe, you finally see it showing in a channel only to wait toword for the ending credits to see Mario "doing the mario." When the ending credits start, instead you see only a millisecond of mario dancing, the music starts to mute, the screen starts to shrink, then is then shoved to the side to make 80% room for the promo ads. Back in 93' FOX was the first network I noticed doing it.
I went nuts when TVLAND starded doing it.
I happen to like show outros, "Thundercats", "Family matters," seeing the sunset over Chicago.

Kids these days are missing out. Plus I miss doing this. I wish it would return so that I could watch Saturday morning cartoons again. I mean whatever happened to Bugs Bunny?

this is true in every way yes saturday is nomore special then anyother day now my little cousins dont even get up early on the weekends they just sleep in better use of there time but the probblem isnt just the fact the cartoons aired 2 times everyday its also the cartoons themselfs kids dont look up to there cartoon heros what was once i wanna be like he-man
is now why would i want to be like spongebob? and the fact some shows seem to think badguys are to much for kids but its not just the weekends after foxkids stoped airing on the weekdays things just havent been the same

I totally agree.