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TECHNIQUE An animated Feature Film may use 24 different drawings ''per second'' of finished film, sometimes even more, if several characters are on the screen simultaneously. Due to lower budgets, Saturday morning cartoons are often produced with a minimum amount of animation drawings, sometimes no more than 3 or 4 per second. In addition, the movements of the characters are often repeated, very limited, or even confined to mouths and eyes only. EARLY SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS Although the Saturday morning timeslot had always featured a great deal of children's fare before, the idea of commissioning new animated series for broadcast on Saturday mornings really caught on in the mid-1960s, when the networks realized that they could concentrate kids' viewing on that one morning to appeal to Advertisers . Furthermore, Limited Animation , such as that produced by such studios as Filmation Associates and Hanna-Barbera Productions , was economical enough to produce in sufficient quantity to fill the four hour time slot, as compared to live-action programming. The experiment proved successful, and the time slot was filled with profitable programming. WATCHGROUP BACKLASH Parents' lobby groups like Action For Children's Television appeared in the late 1960s. They voiced concerns about the presentation of violence, anti-social attitudes and stereotypes in Saturday morning cartoons. By the 1970s, these groups exercised enough influence that the TV networks felt compelled to lay down more stringent content rules for the animation houses. Critics have complained that this proceeded to the point where the very depiction of conflict and jeopardy and the basic elements of Drama and Suspense were severely restricted, and the artists were left with few avenues of expression. The prohibition against the depiction of anti-social elements often prompted conformist stories, such as in the '' Smurfs '' series, where almost any individual initiative often resulted in trouble for the group and therefore had to be avoided. Saturday morning animation programming restricted itself to certain clearly-defined types of shows:
In a more constructive direction, the networks were encouraged to create educational spots that endeavoured to use animation for enriching content. Far and away the most successful effort was the '' Schoolhouse Rock '' series on ABC , which became a television classic. DECLINE The decline of the timeslot began in the mid 1980s due to a variety of factors, including:
CURRENT STATE OF SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS While animated production is still present on most broadcast networks on Saturday mornings, it has been noticeably reduced. Because of FCC -mandated regulations that began in the mid-1990s, broadcast stations were forced to program a minimum of three hours of children's Educational/informational ("E/I") programming. To help their affiliates comply with the regulations, broadcast networks began to reorganize their efforts to adhere to the mandates, so its affiliates wouldn't bear the burden of scheduling the shows themselves on their own time. NBC abandoned its Saturday morning cartoon lineup in 1992, replacing it with a Saturday morning edition of '' The Today Show '' and added an all live-action teen-oriented block, ''TNBC'', which featured '' Saved By The Bell '', '' California Dreams '', and other teen comedies. Even though the educational content was minimal to nonexistent, NBC labelled all the live-action shows with an E/I rating. CBS followed NBC's example by producing a Saturday edition of '' The Early Show '' in the first two hours of its lineup and an all live-action block of children's programming. The experiment lasted a few months, and CBS brought back their animated '' CBS Storybreak '' series. In 2004 , ABC was the last of the broadcast networks to add a Saturday morning edition of their morning news program, '' Good Morning America '' in the first hour of its lineup. Prior to that, especially through the 1990s, it was not uncommon for ABC affiliates to preempt part or all of ABC's cartoon lineup with local news programming. "Netlets" like Fox and The WB carried little or no E/I programming, leaving the responsibility of scheduling the E/I shows to the affiliates themselves. Units of larger entertainment companies ABC By the mid-1990s, broadcast networks were now becoming units of larger entertainment companies. ABC was bought by The Walt Disney Company , who began airing all Disney-made programming by 2001 and cancelled non-Disney made productions, most notably '' The Bugs Bunny And Tweety Show ''. After being purchased by Disney in 1996, ABC began airing their Saturday morning cartoons in a programming block titled '' Disney's One Saturday Morning '' before switching to a block of live-action and animated programs titled '' ABC Kids ''. Many of the block's shows are produced by Disney and also air on The Disney Channel or Toon Disney . CBS CBS was purchased by Viacom in 1999 and began airing Nickelodeon-made programming from 1999 until 2006, a year after Viacom was split in two with Nickelodeon going to Viacom and CBS becoming a part of CBS Corporation . The two parties ended the Nick Jr.-branded block, which was be replaced by the DIC Entertainment -produced '' KOL's Saturday Morning Secret Slumber Party On CBS '' in fall 2006. A reimagining of the block, "KEWLopolis", with a greater amount of animation, will premiere in fall 2007. FOX and the WB From 1990 until 2006, smaller channels like '', '' Eek! The Cat '', '' Bobby's World '', and '' Animaniacs '', came out of these afternoon programming blocks, and some later appeared on their networks' Saturday morning programming blocks. By the 2000s, both Fox and '' Kids' WB! '' concentrated their broadcast lineups solely on Saturday mornings. Fox, which ended their weekday block in 2002 , airs 4Kids TV (formerly Fox Box, which was previously Fox Kids), a programming block owned and operated by 4Kids Entertainment on Saturday mornings. Kids' WB!, which ended their weekday programming lineups in January 2006, was absorbed into The CW 's lineup, but retained the Kids' WB! name with mostly Warner Bros-produced series such as '' Tom And Jerry Tales '', '' Legion Of Super Heroes '', '' The Batman '', and a new, stylistically-different Scooby-Doo series, '' Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue! ''. NBC NBC, which had a partnership with the Discovery Kids network to broadcast the channel's original programming, reentered the Saturday morning arena with new, original programming in September 2006 as part of the Qubo " Edutainment " partnership, which involves numerous parties, including parent company NBC Universal , Ion Media Networks , Scholastic Press , Nelvana , and Classic Media , all of whom will be providing the programs for the Saturday morning block. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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