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The Bugs Bunny Show
- 3 years 3 months ago
- Posts: 1294
How many of you here remember the original 1960-68 version of The Bugs Bunny Show? It was this show that first featured the "This Is It" (sorry, Michael Jackson and Paul Anka) theme song.
Originally it premiered on ABC's Tuesday night lineup on October 11, 1960. It first appeared on Saturday mornings starting August 18, 1962. The show was broadcast in color for the first time starting September 10, 1966. CBS had The Road Runner Show on its Saturday morning lineup that year, and had added The Bugs Bunny Show to its lineup starting September 14, 1968, which meant the show was now called The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, which featured the opening title sequences from both shows to link the two star characters.
Road Runner's segment defected to ABC for the 1971-72 season, followed by Bugs Bunny's two years later; both would be picked up by CBS again starting September 6, 1975. During the spring of 1976, a half-hour weekly Tuesday night airing of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show was instituted; that September, CBS added The Sylvester and Tweety Show to its Saturday morning lineup; the show aired for one season (as a result no Tweety or Sylvester cartoons were shown on the BB/RR Hour for the occasion).
In 1978 CBS extended the BB/RR Hour to 90 minutes, and was thus retitled as The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show. Three years later, CBS did up another anthology show called The Sylvester and Tweety/Daffy and Speedy Show (the latter part originally aired on NBC as The Daffy Duck Show in 1978) which included many of WB's final theatrical cartoons from the Seven Arts period. As with 1976's The Sylvester and Tweety Show this anthology show lasted one season, and all cartoons from the series reincorporated into the BB/RR lineup for 1982-83, then currently seen as two separate hour-long programs. CBS reconsolidated the two shows as one in 1983, and the following year "This Is It" was retired as the series' theme song in favor of "It's Cartoon Gold." New episode title cards were featured which made use of computer graphics (with trailing effects).
However, 1985 spelled out the end of the Bugs and Road Runner era, thus canceling out the "It's Cartoon Gold" theme song as well. ABC brought back Bugs Bunny and his castmates for its 1985-86 Saturday morning schedule, in a new anthology show called The Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour. The theme song was just the 1946 version of the Looney Tunes theme, heard over scenes from various shorts showcased in the block. For the 1986-87 season the show was reduced to 30 minutes and retitled The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show. It was this incarnation of the show that would run for the longest time on Saturday mornings.
During the summer of 1988, the show was extended to a full hour; and about five episodes into the 1988-89 season, "This Is It" was reinstated as the show's theme song, its extended intro being heard over an introductory sequence. During the 1989-90 season, as Bugs's 50th birthday was approaching, new cartoon episode title cards were used (represented as a winding stretch of gold film, with a tuxedo-donned Bugs inside the WB concentric circles, set to a short version of the Looney Tunes theme song), replacing those first seen in 1984 on CBS. In 1992, an all new intro sequence was used.
THE BUGS BUNNY AND TWEETY SHOW
1988 intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy8dVZ5r_kU
1992 intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0TA2ajPV8k
~Ben"I am such a purist for old information on anything '70s and '80s."Are you sure you want to delete this post? Yes | No
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