Sat AM Cartoons — No More?!

WaPo, by Gail Sullivan:

After these messages, Saturday morning cartoons will not be right back. At least not the way some of you remember them.

“The Smurfs,” “Scooby Doo,” “The Jetsons,” “Ghostbusters,” “Animaniacs,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and other cartoons of Gen X childhoods aren’t gone, but their dedicated time slot is. So what? kids these days might say. But the nostalgic among us remember a time when cartoons weren’t a la carte — and Saturday mornings were sacred.

This past Saturday, the CW became the last broadcast television network to cut Saturday morning cartoons. The CW is replacing its Saturday cartoon programming, called “The Vortexx,” with “One Magnificent Morning,” a five-hour bloc of non-animated TV geared towards teens and their families.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Saturday morning time slots were synonymous with cartoons. Broadcast networks and advertisers battled for underage viewers. But that started to change in the 1990s.