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After MGM shut down its animation studio in 1957, H-B Enterprises became Hanna and Barbera's full-time job, and the company was re-named ''Hanna-Barbera Productions'' in 1960. Over the years, Hanna-Barbera produced many successful cartoon series, including '' The Huckleberry Hound Show '', '' The Quick Draw McGraw Show '', '' The Flintstones '', '' Top Cat '', '' The Yogi Bear Show '', '' Jonny Quest '', '' The Jetsons '', '' Space Ghost '', '' Scooby-Doo '' and '' The Smurfs '', all of which would go on to become icons of Western Pop Culture . In the mid-1980s, the company's fortunes declined somewhat after the profitability of Saturday Morning cartoons were eclipsed by weekday afternoon syndication. In 1991, the company was purchased by Turner Broadcasting , primarily so that Ted Turner could use its library of over 300 cartoon series as the basis of the programming for its new Cartoon Network Cable Television channel. Re-christened ''H-B Production Company'' in 1992, and ''Hanna-Barbera Cartoons'' in 1993, the studio continued without active regular input from William Hanna or Joseph Barbera, who both went into semi-retirement yet continued to serve as ceremonial figureheads for the studio. During the late 1990s, Turner turned Hanna-Barbera towards primarily producing new material for the Cartoon Network. In 1996, Turner was bought out by Time Warner . With William Hanna's death in 2001, Hanna-Barbera was absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation , and Cartoon Network Studios assumed production of Cartoon Network output. Joseph Barbera remained with Warner Bros. Animation as a ceremonial figurehead until ''his'' death in 2006. The Hanna-Barbera name is today only used to market properties and productions associated with Hanna-Barbera's "classic" works such as ''The Flintstones'' and ''Scooby-Doo''. HISTORY (left) and Joseph Barbera pose with several of the Emmy awards the Hanna-Barbera studio has won.]] The beginnings of Hanna-Barbera William Hanna and Joseph Barbera first teamed together while working at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studio in 1939. Their first directorial project was a cartoon entitled '' Puss Gets The Boot '' (1940), which served as the genesis of the popular Tom And Jerry cartoon series. Hanna, Barbera, and MGM live-action director George Sidney formed H-B Enterprises in 1944 while continuing working for the studio, and used the side company to work on ancillary projects, including early Television Commercial s and the original opening titles to '' I Love Lucy ''. After an award-winning stint in which Hanna and Barbera won eight Oscars , MGM closed their animation studio in 1957, as it felt it had acquired a reasonable backlog of shorts for re-release. Hanna and Barbera hired most of their MGM unit to work for H-B Enterprises, which became a full-fledged production company starting in 1957. The decision was made to specialize in television animation, and the studio's first series was '' The Ruff & Reddy Show '', which premiered on NBC in December 1957. In order to obtain working capital to produce their cartoons, Hanna-Barbera made a deal with the Screen Gems television division of Columbia Pictures in which the new animation studio received working capital in exchange for distribution rights. In 1958, H-B had their first big success with '' The Huckleberry Hound Show '', a syndicated series aired in most markets just before Prime Time . The program was a ratings success, and introduced a new crop of cartoon stars to audiences, in particular Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear . ''The Huckleberry Hound Show'' won the 1960 Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Children's Programming. By 1959, H-B Enterprises was reincorporated as ''Hanna-Barbera Productions'', and was slowly becoming a leader in television animation production. After introducing a second syndicated series, '' Quick Draw McGraw '', in 1959, Hanna-Barbera migrated into network Prime Time production with the animated ABC Sitcom '' The Flintstones '' in 1960. Loosely based upon the popular live-action sitcom '' The Honeymooners '' yet set in a fictionalized Stone Age of Cavemen and Dinosaur s, ''The Flintstones'' ran for six seasons in prime time on ABC, becoming a ratings and merchandising success. , seen in a 2007 photograph.]] Hanna-Barbera never had a building of its own until 1963, when the Hanna-Barbera Studio, located at 3400 Cahuenga Blvd. in Studio City, California , was opened. The Columbia/Hanna-Barbera partnership lasted until 1967, when Hanna and Barbera sold the studio to Taft Broadcasting while retaining their positions at the studio. Television cartoons Hanna-Barbera was the first animation studio to successfully produce animated cartoons especially for Television ; until then, cartoons on television consisted primarily of rebroadcasts of theatrical cartoons. During the early and mid-1960s, the studio debuted several new successful programs, among them prime time ABC series such as '' Top Cat '' (1961-62), '' The Jetsons '' (1962-63), and '' Jonny Quest '' (1964-65). New series produced for syndication and Saturday mornings included '' The Yogi Bear Show '' (a syndicated spinoff from ''Huckleberry Hound'', 1961-63), '' The Hanna-Barbera New Cartoon Series '' featuring '' Wally Gator '' (syndicated, 1962-63), '' The Magilla Gorilla Show '' (syndicated, 1964-67), and '' The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show '' ( NBC , 1965-67). Hanna-Barbera also produced several Television Commercial s, often starring their own characters, and animated the opening credits for the ABC sitcom '' Bewitched '', and would use the ''Bewitched'' characters as guest stars on ''The Flintstones''. The studio also produced a few theatrical projects for Columbia Pictures, including '' Loopy De Loop '', a theatrical shorts series, and Feature Film projects based on its television properties such as ''A Man Called Flintstone'' (1966). Starting in , with artists such as Louis Prima , Five Americans , Scatman Crothers , and The 13th Floor Elevators . Previously children's records with Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters were released by Colpix Records . The Hanna-Barbera studio especially captured the market for '', which featured action-adventure, and '' Frankenstein, Jr. And The Impossibles '', which blended action-adventure with the earlier H-B style. A slew of H-B action cartoons followed in 1967 , among them '' Shazzan '', '' Birdman And The Galaxy Trio '', '' Moby Dick And The Mighty Mightor '', '' Young Samson And Goliath '', '' The Herculoids '' and an adaptation of Marvel Comics ' '' Fantastic Four ''. Between these programs and others remaining on the air (reruns of ''The Flintstones'', ''The Jetsons'' and ''Jonny Quest''), Hanna-Barbera cartoons aired on all three networks' Saturday morning lineups, and dominated CBS's and NBC's schedules in particular. While the action programs were notably popular and successful, pressure from parent-run organizations such as , Hanna-Barbera mixed live-action and animated comedy-action for its NBC anthology series, '' The Banana Splits Adventure Hour '', while the successful '' Wacky Races '', aired on CBS, returned H-B to straight animated slapstick humor. Hanna-Barbera's next runaway hit came with '' Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! '', a program which blended elements of the H-B comedy series, the action series and rival Filmation 's then-current hit program '' The Archie Show ''. ''Scooby-Doo'' centered on four teenagers and a dog solving mysteries, and was popular enough to remain on the air and in production until 1986 . A cavalcade of H-B Saturday morning cartoons featuring mystery-solving/crime-fighting teenagers with comic pets soon followed, among them '' Josie And The Pussycats '' (1970-72), '' The Funky Phantom '' (1971-72), '' Speed Buggy '' (1973-74), '' Clue Club '' (1976-78) and '' Jabberjaw '' (1976-77). During the 1970s in particular, most American television animation was produced by Hanna-Barbera. The only competition came from Filmation and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises , as well as occasional prime-time animated "specials" from Rankin-Bass , Chuck Jones and Bill Melendez 's adaptations of '' Peanuts ''. Quality controversy Over three decades, Hanna-Barbera produced Prime-time , weekday afternoon, and Saturday Morning cartoons for all three major networks in the United States, and for Syndication . The studio has been accused of contributing to the decrease in quality of animation and TV cartoons from the 1960s through the 1980s. However, the studio, and most other producers of American television animation, were forced to work with small budgets which did not allow for full theatrical-quality animation. At MGM, Hanna and Barbera spent between $40,000 and $50,000 to produce each seven-minute cartoon short, whereas they had less than $3,000 to spend on their first TV cartoons of equivalent length. The perception of cartoons as a "kid's medium" made them a low priority for television executives and advertisers. For example, one 22-minute (30 minutes with commercials) episode of '' Josie And The Pussycats '' in 1970 had the same budget--$45,000--as one 8-minute '' Tom And Jerry '' short from the late-1940s. Such budgetary constraints demanded a change in production values. In a story published by '' The Saturday Evening Post '', critics stated that Hanna-Barbera was taking on more work than they could handle and were resorting to shortcuts only a television audience would tolerate. An executive who worked for Walt Disney said, ''"We don't even consider competition."'' [http://dawsbutler.com/hb-article-web/hb-article-05.jpg Ironically, during the late 1950s and early 1960s Hanna-Barbera was the only animation studio in Hollywood that was actively hiring, and they picked up quite a number of Disney artists who were laid off during this period. Hanna-Barbera introduced '' in 1990) and adaptations of other material ('' Charlotte's Web '' in 1973 and '' Heidi's Song '' in 1982). The field of American animation reached its low point in the mid-1970s, even as the audience for Saturday morning cartoons was at its peak. The strong focus on scripting and dialogue that had carried the earlier cartoons was more or less gone by 1973, as the studio's output had increased to the point that story quality had to take a backseat to production output. By this time, most Hanna-Barbera shows had degenerated into variations on but a few themes, with each successful formula (''The Flintstones'', ''Scooby-Doo'', '''', '' Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law '' and '' Sealab 2021 '') and in many of Robert Smigel 's ''" TV Funhouse "'' segments on '' Saturday Night Live ''. The slow rise and fall The state of the field of animation changed during the 1980s, thanks to competitors' syndicated cartoon series based upon popular Toy s and Action Figures , including Filmation's '' He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe '' and Rankin-Bass' '' Thundercats ''. The Hanna-Barbera studio fell behind, as a new wave of animators and production studios introduced variety into the market for TV cartoons in the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout the 1980s, Hanna-Barbera churned out shows based on familiar licensed properties like ''''. H-B also aligned themselves with Ruby-Spears Productions , which was founded in 1977 by former H-B employees Joe Ruby and Ken Spears . H-B's then-parent Taft Broadcasting purchased Ruby-Spears from Filmways in 1981, and Ruby-Spears often paired their productions with Hanna-Barbera shows. Following the lead of CBS ' hit 1984 Saturday morning cartoon series '' Muppet Babies '', which featured toddler versions of the popular Muppets characters, Hanna-Barbera began producing shows featuring "kid" versions of popular characters. These included ''The Pink Panther and Sons'', '' The Flintstone Kids '', ''Popeye and Son'', and '' A Pup Named Scooby-Doo ''. In 1985, Hanna-Barbera launched '' The Funtastic World Of Hanna-Barbera '', a weekend-only program that introduced new versions of old favorites like ''Yogi Bear'', ''Jonny Quest'', ''The Snorks'', and ''Richie Rich'' alongside brand new shows like '' Galtar And The Golden Lance '', '' Paw Paw Bears '', '' Fantastic Max '', and ''Midnight Patrol''. The following year, H-B produced '' Yogi's Great Escape '', the first entry in its '' Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 '', a series of 10 original Telefilm s based on their popular stable of characters, including the popular crossover '' The Jetsons Meet The Flintstones ''. Throughout all of this, both Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears were subject to the financial troubles of parent company Taft Broadcasting, which had just been acquired by the American Financial Corporation in 1987 and had its name changed to ''Great American Broadcasting'' the following year. H-B had gradually moved away from producing everything in-house, deciding instead to outsource some of the production to studios in Taiwan , the Philippines , and Japan . Hanna-Barbera in particular was also held down by the demands of TV networks, mainly ABC, who insisted on rehashing the ''Scooby-Doo'' formula many times over, as with '' Captain Caveman '' and '' Josie And The Pussycats ''; this stifled creativity, leading many of the better writers and creative people to leave in 1989. They responded to a call from Warner Bros. to resurrect their animation department, ultimately developing '' Tiny Toon Adventures '' and '' Animaniacs ''. The Turner rebound In 1990, burdened with debt, Great American put both Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears up for sale. In 1991, Hanna-Barbera and much of the original Ruby-Spears library were acquired by Turner Broadcasting . Turner President of Entertainment Scott Sassa turned to an unusual choice to lead the failing studio. Fred Seibert was a cable television branding guru who had created the MTV and Nickelodeon branding and marketing, and had invented Nick-at-Nite, but he had never worked in cartoon production. He immediately filled the gap left by the departure of most of their creative crew during the Great American years with a new crop of animators, writers, and producers, including Pat Ventura, Donovan Cook, Craig McCracken , Genndy Tartakovsky , Seth MacFarlane , David Feiss, Van Partible, and Butch Hartman and new production head Buzz Potamkin. In 1992, the studio was renamed ''H-B Productions Company'', changing its name once again to ''Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc.'' a year later. In the early 1990s, Hanna-Barbera created cartoon series like '''', and '' The Pirates Of Dark Water ''. In the mid-1990s, Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network (which introduced many Hanna-Barbera shows to a new audience) launched Seibert's innovation, the back-to-the-future concept of cartoon shorts '' World Premiere Toons '' (a.k.a. ''What A Cartoon!''), which introduced a brand new stable of characters and, in a way, changed Hanna-Barbera forever. The first original Cartoon Network series to emerge from the ''World Premiere Toons'' project was Genndy Tartakovsky 's '' Dexter's Laboratory ''. Others programs followed, including '' Johnny Bravo '', '' Cow And Chicken '', and '' The Powerpuff Girls '', the last series to use H-B's famous swirling star logo (first used in 1979). H-B also produced several new direct-to-video movies featuring Scooby-Doo (released by Warner Bros. ) as well as a new Jonny Quest series, '' The Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest ''. After the merger between Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner in 1996, the conglomerate had two separate animation studios in its possession. Though under a common ownership, Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. Animation operated separately until 1998. In 1998, the Hanna-Barbera building was closed and the studio was moved to the Warner Bros. Animation lot at Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California . The Cartoon Network Studios era See Also: Cartoon Network Studios | ||
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