The FOX, The CW, and My Network TV Stations should air re-runs of old syndicated cartoons that the old independent and fox stations use to air like Ducktales, Chip N Dales Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin, Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop, Bonkers, Aladdin, Gargoyles, He-Man, G.I Joe, Transformers, Thundercats, Inspector Gadget, Rambo, Silverhawks, Muppet Babies, Dennis The Menace, The Smurfs, Dick Tracy, Police Acadamy, C.O.P.S., The Real Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Super Mario Bros. Super Show, The Woody Woodpecker Show, Merrie Melodies, Sonic THE Hedgehog......and the list can go on for awhile better than news or informicials in the morning and talk shows and court shows in the afternoon.
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Re-Runs of old Cartoons for local stations?
- Thread starter cool_guy82
- Start date
cool_guy81 said:
I know until a couple of years ago, garfield and friends, the 1980's Dennis the menace, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? was available to local stations via the program exchange. I remember living in a city where the NBC station on a Saturday at noon ran one showing of garfeild and friends and then dropped it for Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?. This was between 2002-2004/2005 so it was not really that long ago.
http://programexchange.com/
Also this TV kids has aired Sonic the hedgehog and Inspector gadget last season.
http://ktla.thistv.com/schedule/sched/2013-06-22
And qubo airs he-man,she-ra, the other ghostbusters, and bravestar. He man and she -ra also run on me-tv, and pb&j.
Fat Albert runs on bounce TV as well.
I read that a couple of years ago when KZJO in Seattle re imaged themselves, they had a looney tunes marathon so one can assume you can buy the rights to content if the price is right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Bjl_IJibY
Another issue with that happening again primarily with most Fox stations and affiliates is that most of those stations have late afternoon 5 pm and/or 6 pm newscasts. That was the reason why the former New World stations from the affilation switches to Fox wanted nothing to do with Fox Kids. It was a given since they already had daytime lineups geared toward ages 25+ and they had high rated shows that lead into those newscasts. Not too many Fox affiliates ran the lineup 1 pm to 4 pm since the traditional hours in most cities then for kids programming was 6-9 am and 2-5 pm.
cool_guy81 said:
It would be cool to see those shows you list back on broadcast television...and I personally think it would be an improvement over what most of these stations currently do run in the morings and afternoons.
But...
...the problem is that the economics just aren't there to do it. Even if you could get decent ratings with those cartoons (far from a sure thing), there are no advertisers who are interested in buying advertising time during them, because pretty much all childrens' advertising is bought at the national level, and most of that is on cable. One of the reasons why childrens' programming has disappeared from broadcast TV (aside from mandated E/I programs) is because the stations couldn't sell the local advertising time in these shows. No advertising means no profit potential.
The CW is the only network running a traditional Saturday morning block of cartoons that isn't all mandated E/I drek. They've ran some (relatively) classic children's programming from the 90's on there, mixed in with some first-run programming. It's got to be profitable in some way if it's still up and running in this day and age.
M
Mario500
Guest
It's best not to classify all animated cartoons as children's programs since most animated cartoons were made to appeal to folks of any age.
TexasTom said:
I've never understood why some of the major OTA networks in Mexico seem to have no trouble airing cartoons on Saturday mornings and other days, especially Televisa's Canal 5, despite the presence of numerous cable/satellite channels airing such shows in Spanish and English. Aside from the likely lower penetration of cable/satellite there, the other other explanation I can think of is that their networks don't rely on local affiliates and local advertising (with very few exceptions) the way U.S. networks do.
M.J. said:
Both of those are key differences that probably explain how childrens' shows remain viable in Mexico. Once cable/satellite penetration drops below a certain level, advertisers need to buy broadcast programs in order to achieve the desired reach for their advertising campaigns. And I do recall that childrens' shows disappeared from US broadcast stations in large part because the local stations couldn't sell advertising during them -- if the Mexican network/affiliate model is different, then that might not be a factor.
One thing that I've thought might work in the US would be if childrens' shows were syndicated with no local ad availabilities, and stations were instead kicked back a portion of the national advertising revenue -- ie, the old "network compensation" model. I'm guessing that while this might work for the local affiliates, it's probably not viable for the national distributor to give up that much revenue.
Yes, it depends of the cable penetration of the country. It happens in other Latin Americans countries as well: Brazil (with only like 27% of its population having cable) still has some cartoons on OTA networks, though this is dropping since Rede Globo got out of the weekday cartoon business last year, only keeping weekdays cartoons for people watching on sat dishes.M.J. said:
Argentina, in the other hand, where most everyone is a cable/DirecTV subscriber, has little children's programming on OTA stations, and most of it it's there to fulfil the local media law, which mandates 3 daily hours of kiddie shows. Most stations however only show 2 or 1:30 hours of kiddie shows a day, with stations outside Buenos Aires airing as little as 30 minutes a day.
I can tell you a friend who worked in promotion for a Fox affiliate told me he and the sales crew celebrated when Fox dropped their daily afternoon kid block. Wrightly or rongly, they DESPISED those shows. The reason was that the cartoons weren't feeding an adult audience into the late-afternoon news; the station placed zero value on the kiddie audience and did little or nothing to promote or sell the kid block. They were delighted to replace them with judge shows and a pseudo-Oprah sob sister talk show. Sad but true...
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in the early days of the Fox Kids net, many Fox affiliates didn't even have local news, they had sitcom reruns up against local news, during the big network switch of the 90s, most of the the VHF New World stations that got Fox dumped the Fox Kids net to a UHF station that were going to take WB or UPN
Back in the early days, most Fox affiliates lacked local news departments -- and those that did have a news department generally didn't have an early evening newscast. So the audience flow issue of going from cartoons into news just wasn't an issue.
On the other hand, at one time, those afternoon cartoon blocks actually were good from an audience flow viewpoint. Back in the seventies and eighties, independent stations (and, later on, Fox affiliates) had the art down for transitioning as much of that kids show audience into their early evening comedy blocks as possible. They'd go from cartoons into "kid friendly" sitcoms such as "Gilligan's Island" or "The Munsters" into family oriented comedies such as "The Brady Bunch" or "Happy Days", and finally into adult comedies such as "MASH" or "All in the Family". Since the kids block delivered very healthy household ratings, getting that audience into the comedy block helped ensure ratings success for the comedies...and it worked.
But with time, it quit working as well for several reasons. First is that with so much competition from cable for children, the afternoon cartoon blocks no longer delivered all that good of ratings, which meant that even with the best audience flow it wasn't going to contribute all that much to the ratings of the shows running after the block. On top of that, the number of kid friendly and family oriented sitcoms going into syndication has declined with time -- and that means that even if the kids shows could deliver ratings, they weren't generally followed by compatible programming that could hang on to that audience.
Finally, there's the factor that the market for local and spot childrens' advertising declined as well -- and that meant that to the extent that childrens shows could deliver ratings, those ratings didn't really translate into advertising revenue.
While I am saddened by the decline of the traditional independent TV station programming patterns that I grew up with, I do understand why it has happened. And the cold reality is that nostalgia for the way it used to be isn't going to really bring back the sort of programming that so many of us have fond memories of. The only way an afternoon cartoon block could possibly work today would be if it was a block of cartoons with adult appeal -- Bugs Bunny, The Flintstones, The Simpsons, etc...
I don't agree with that. While it is clear the old Warner Bros., Seven Arts, Popeye, Looney Tunes etc., of the 40's and 50's were primarily directed at adults (and movie theater presentations) most of the Hanna-Barbera type drivel of the 60's and 70's was directed at children (psycho advertising to drive cereal and toy sales).
Earlier this week, I was imagining a new syndicated block. It's very complicated.
First, Fox acquires Cartoon Network for a few billion dollars. (based on this rumor http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/01/rupert-murdoch-time-warner-purchase_n_5548358.html)
Next, Fox signs a new weekday afternoon cartoon block deal.
First, Fox acquires Cartoon Network for a few billion dollars. (based on this rumor http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/01/rupert-murdoch-time-warner-purchase_n_5548358.html)
Next, Fox signs a new weekday afternoon cartoon block deal.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
Third, Fox loses money on the new cartoon block. Reread entire thread to see why.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/20...p-talker-for-week-ending-june-22-2014/278710/
The top syndicated kid's show this week is "Weekend Adventure" on ABC, a Saturday morning E/I block, reaching 9 million viewers.
The top syndicated cartoon is "Family Guy" (which isn't for children), reaching 4.5 million viewers (either weekday or weekend).
Since stations make most of their money on advertisements, they should at least promote most of their programming. But cable TV is to blame for the death of weekday cartoons.
The top syndicated kid's show this week is "Weekend Adventure" on ABC, a Saturday morning E/I block, reaching 9 million viewers.
The top syndicated cartoon is "Family Guy" (which isn't for children), reaching 4.5 million viewers (either weekday or weekend).
Since stations make most of their money on advertisements, they should at least promote most of their programming. But cable TV is to blame for the death of weekday cartoons.
http://www.newsmax.com/ErnestIstook/Big-Bird-Romney-grants/2012/10/08/id/459121/
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CashCowFranchise
It would make the most sense for the most popular shows to go back into syndication.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CashCowFranchise
It would make the most sense for the most popular shows to go back into syndication.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
On that point, I agree. The evidence has been presented, both here and in other discussions on the subject.
The slippery slope there is ... who decides what "popular" is when contrasting the big shows of the past with today's potential audience? Do we decide that today's kids are best served by rerunning shows from the 70s? The 80s? The 90s?
Without requoting, the OP included a laundry list of animated programming, some of which goes back even farther (e.g., Dick Tracy was a 1960s series, Woody Woodpecker was largely developed in the 1950s, Merrie Melodies' best output was in the 1940s).
And, as crainbebo pointed out, the rules on advertising in children's programming has changed for broadcast TV in the interim. Absent a station owner's ability to recoup the cost of acquiring the shows and make a profit which is higher than the talk/judge/news programming that presently inhabits late afternoons, the syndicators likely (and correctly) see that they aren't going to get enough takers to even cover the cost of digitizing the masters for distribution.
Sorry, but I have to stand by my original statement, on the basis of television station economics.
Every E/I show I catch on TV doesn't have ANY, not one, ad for a cereal, a kids toy, or a kids movie. Every ad is a direct-response ad for a debt relief company, a face or hair product (think Proactiv or Keranique) or those 10-second "promotional consideration" ads for lawsuits and Gold Bond. If the FCC didn't force the E/I shows on the commercial channels there would be infomercials on Saturday (or Sunday) mornings instead of crappy E/I shows. I don't know why most shows have to be so cheap - and many are OLD reruns. For example, many Fox/CW etc stations air old 1990s reruns of Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures for E/I credit. Most E/I shows don't even make two seasons. Exceptions are ones that have (had) the best ratings - like Jack Hanna or Wild About Animals. Mariette Hartley has been doing that show since about 1994 or 1995. But the real crappy Bellum or Telco ones don't even last that long.
-crainbebo
-crainbebo
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