THE SLOW PAINFUL DEATH OF SATURDAY MORNING TELEVISION CONTINUES

[defrog]

ITEM: Fox is filling two hours of its Saturday morning programming with infomercials instead of cartoons. “Weekend Marketplace”, they’ll call it.

It’s supposed to be a “short term” fix to the problem of needing to fill up air time until they find something to replace 4Kids. But it’s probably as well. Saturday morning cartoons stopped being fun sometime around the 80s when it was all “Muppet Babies” and “Tom And Jerry Kids” and “Baby Dinosaurs” and “Baby Fucking Baby Care Bears From Mars” and other shows that made Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels look like f***ing Reservoir Dogs.

To be fair, TV networks were pretty much forced to make Saturday mornings sucky after censorship groups and other killjoys complained about Bugs Bunny teaching kids to blow up chickens with dynamite. And by the mid-80s, some of the best stuff was appearing on UHF stations in the afternoons after school anyway. And now of course all the good cartoons are on cable TV anyway, and even those compete with DVDs, video games and the Internets.

Still, infomercials?

FUN FACT: I remember when the new Saturday morning TV lineup was an EVENT. I’d watch all the network previews (shown in prime time) to see what new stuff was coming up.

And look how I turned out.

FUN FACT: Some of the greatest Saturday morning cartoons weren’t actually cartoons.

Exhibit A: Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp

Exhibit B: Land of the Lost

Look out for that waterfall,

This is dF

Comments

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

And simultaneously portrayed blonde women as sexpot temptresses so dopey they wouldn't know a shotgun from a can opener. And they said cartoons is not edumacational.