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Will cartoons will ever be syndicated again?

KJBlast2011 said:
Tim L said:
KJBlast2011 said:
Please US congress please put cartoons back on Fox/MNTV/CW affiliates? Please reconsider?
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First of all, It's not likely that "US Congress" reads our lovely little board and has nothing to do with programming..Second, for the reasons already stated, Cartoons are not coming back to broadcast tv, except on some digital subchannels
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Cartoons are coming back to broadcast television. Because cartoons are the essence of broadcast television and US Congress will realized what have done 16 Years ago taking kids Programming from broadcst television
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cartoons would be gong from broadcast TV without E/I, and most E/I programs aren't even animated, they'd be more infomercials without E/I, how many kids actually watch E/I programs (other than PBS)?
 
"Cartoons are coming back to broadcast television."

Maybe, but the cartoons you'll see will be aimed for an 18-49 audience rather than for kids.

Think The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, Futurama, South Park, and other similar shows that are essentially slapstick sitcoms with a measure of social or cultural satire--shows that can portray more outlandish situations than you can feasibly film in live action, and also convey a more iconoclastic message. Nothing wrong with that--The Simpsons stretched the creative boundaries of comedy TV at the turn of the 1990s in ways that a live action show might never have accomplished.

The Flintstones may also one day return with new episodes since Fox TV has commissioned Seth MacFarlane to work up a new series for the stone-agers...but that's going to wait for a while given how busy he's been with his current shows and with his hit film Ted.
 
Although I'm not a fan of E/I, and I believe it's caused the networks to go to more live action programming, I believe if it didn't exist Saturday mornings would have already gone to more news and sports at best or trash talk and infomercials at the worst. It's already happened on Fox stations since they've left local stations on their own to fill the requirements and replaced their Saturday morning schedule with infomercials.

The biggest factors in why there are no more kid's shows though are the move of most kid's shows to cable channels like Disney and Nick, and change in daytime programming on local stations to news, trash talk, courtroom shows, and infomercials.

I miss when Saturday morning was filled with cartoons, and daytime was filled with cartoons, game shows, and sitcom reruns. But I know that there's no turning back now. At least we have options on cable that come close (sometimes).
 
joebtsflk1 said:
No! Leave the Flintstones be! They belong to the 60s. The Jetsons redux in the 80s was pretty weak.
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A big part of the problem with the Jetsons episodes from the 80s is that they were produced for a daytime kids audience, whereas the originals from the sixties were produced as a family show in prime time. A Flinstones reboot will definitely not just be targetted to kids, so it is unlikely to suffer from the same weaknesses as did the additional Jetsons episodes. On the contrary, some of us are worried that Seth MacFarlane might go to far in the opposite direction and give us a version of the Flinstones filled with crude humor.
 
anotherguy said:
The biggest factors in why there are no more kid's shows though are the move of most kid's shows to cable channels like Disney and Nick, and change in daytime programming on local stations to news, trash talk, courtroom shows, and infomercials.

I miss when Saturday morning was filled with cartoons, and daytime was filled with cartoons, game shows, and sitcom reruns. But I know that there's no turning back now. At least we have options on cable that come close (sometimes).
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Well said. I too miss those days...and while I wish there was a way to bring that back to broadcast television, I really can't see it happening, either. The only way it would change is if cable/satellite penetration drops dramatically. And even that would be no guarantee, since it seems that kids are starting to favor online programming over the linear cable networks.
 
In addition to doing live commercials (banned now since the 70's) local kiddie show hosts also served a purpose as "traffic cops." They tied up the loose ends and made the show run on time. The old cartoons everyone loves (Warner, Walter Lantz, Terrytoons, etc.) and other stuff (Our Gang, Laurel & Hardy, 3 Stooges) were originally made for showing in movie theatres. In theatres it doesn't particularly matter if a cartoon runs 6:41 or 7:19, but on TV it sure does. The random lengths of these items might make them difficult to use now without live hosts. When I was a kid, one local TV station ran cartoons without a host as a filler; they simply spliced a half hour 16mm reel together, and when time ran out, just switched off the last cartoon in the middle! (Come to think of it, most of this stuff was syndicated on 16mm film; how many stations even have the equipment any more?)

There is also, frankly, disinterest on the part of the owners of these properties (Disney and Warner excepted.) The son of a friend was working for Viacom a few years ago and asked why they weren't doing anything with the Terrytoons (Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle) and their response amounted to "what does anyone want with that old crap?" 20 years ago there was a multitude of syndicators large and small, all out there selling their shows; good, bad, indifferent, or lousy. Now so much material is concentrated in so few hands that the big dogs in the biz are mostly concerned with selling only what's hot; the rest can rot in the vaults, who cares?

Some shows have even been deliberately destroyed; as Hallmark Cards did to most of Filmation's inventory. (The versions Classic Media have are PAL system transfers at 25 fps and run about 5% too fast on US TV; when they wanted to do NTSC transfers, Hallmark told them all the original films had been junked as the company had placed no value in them. (Hallmark came close to doing the same thing to the original Laurel & Hardy negatives, only a third-party intervention stopped them. When you care enough...)
 
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I see way more kids playing video games, OR watching Nick/Cartoon Network on cable, than broadcast. Most E/I programs get a 0 rating. (Well, Litton's Weekend Adventure ratings surprised me for syndication, being in the top 10 for weeks last year...) Almost nobody watches them, but stations have to show them or they get huge fines and maybe their license revoked. How about introducing kids to Flintstones, Jetsons, the original Scooby-Doo cartoons, anything else Hanna-Barbara in the 60s/70s etc? They don't have to enjoy just SpongeBob, widen the horizon. Speaking of old shows, I am more than surprised that Cartoon Network continues to show Tom & Jerry for lunchtime at noon weekdays. What's more surprising is that my young siblings (in elementary and early stages of middle school), LIKE those old '50s Tom & Jerry cartoons...

-crainbebo
 
What did the Peggy Charren types find so unethical about kiddie show hosts doing the commercials on their own respective shows (like Fleagle pitching the wares of Kellogg's right there on The Banana Splits)?

ixnay
 
Well, there were shows that were so over-commercialized that the hosts were more like carny barkers, and agencies and station sales departments that encouraged high pressure sales tactics. The rules designed to prevent the worst abuses affected those who were far less guilty as well.

I both laugh and cringe when I recall some local stuff here. One year a department store went on the Bozo show here with a campaign, "This Christmas, tell your mom and dad, instead of a lot of little presents, you want a gift for the whole family...a new RCA Color TV!" There was another local weekly show that was nothing but a half-hour-long commercial, on which kids in the studio "bid" on prizes provided (for plugola) by merchants, using "points" acquired from empty dairy packages and bags from a new local brand of corn chips; which were the actual sponsors. The whole show tumbled down when the news broke that the corn chips were manufactured under highly unsanitary conditions (rat droppings were a particular problem!) and that the chip factory, owned by a wealthy building contractor here, had never gotten the necessary licenses from the county board of health to operate in the first place! Urgh. The guy who hosted that show is still on the air, now doing a right-wing talk radio morning show. (The more things change.)
 
JeffM said:
Some shows have even been deliberately destroyed; as Hallmark Cards did to most of Filmation's inventory. (The versions Classic Media have are PAL system transfers at 25 fps and run about 5% too fast on US TV; when they wanted to do NTSC transfers, Hallmark told them all the original films had been junked as the company had placed no value in them. (Hallmark came close to doing the same thing to the original Laurel & Hardy negatives, only a third-party intervention stopped them. When you care enough...)
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Fortunately, a handful of Filmation series, those featuring characters licensed from other sources (the 1973-74 animated "Star Trek" is a prime example) were spared this indignity.

As for Saturday morning cartoons.....it won't happen again. Saturday mornings died when Warner Bros. pulled the Looney Tunes from ABC.
 
You're right about Star Trek; those and The Brady Kids reverted to Paramount (now CBS) after their network run; Superman and all the other DC character series are in Warner Bros' hands (possibly also Tarzan, I think.) Filmation's Tom & Jerry and Mighty Mouse series; as lousy as they were, also went back to those characters' owners. Same is probably true of the Lone Ranger, Flash Gordon, and Zorro. My previous post was running overlong already and I didn't wish to break it down series by series.
 
I agree with almost everybody with this thread. I for one think that the Children's Television act needs to be repealed. Airing children's programming in syndication is one of the great things about the television industry. These E/I programs should be airing on PBS or something like public television. It's a stupid mandate that should be repealed.
 
The problem with that is cable. Nick and Cartoon Network have taken loads of the kids audience, with PBS for the preschoolers. I wonder what would happen if there was no E/I act. Infomercials all the time, or would kids shows still be seen on our local Fox and CW stations in the afternoons? NBC was already starting to get rid of children's programming early in the 1990s with "Saturday Today" and the "TNBC" block.

-crainbebo
 
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