Blog Talkback: Toons of the 2000s: The End of Broadcast Kids' TV - Part 1

Man this is sad real sad. Even though I have accepted the death of broadcast kids programing it is sad to see it die. There are many factors to it's death, the accessibility of cable, 24 hour kids/cartoon channels, channels just not wanted to spend money on that programing when someone else can. It's sad.

To see fox kids and kids WB rise, compete with each other and fall in a relatively short time is sad, as is seeing 4kids stuggling to keep such programing alive in vain.

Well I had some great memories over the years and it was a good run.
 
Yeah, FoxKids and KidsWB have some great memories for me. 4kidsTV and CW4kids were fairly decent as well.

Saturday morning cartoons as we know them are dead. I don't expect 4kids to last past 2010.
 
I was disappointed to see neither of the two dead blocks mentioned in the Headline News entry, but at least they're getting their own feature.

The explanation on how local stations make more money on new and syndicated shows totally explains a lot, although I'm still curious to see how well these things do ratings wise. Or is that factor even less relevant as long as they're selling ad-space?
 
Didn't FoxKids end and FoxBOX premiere in 2002? I vaguely remember a promotional special that was tying in with Spy Kids 2, a movie from that year, and I also remember the ad for Fighting Foodons briefly scared me away from anime before Spirited Away made me a convert in the same year.
 
Yeah, the article mentions that Fox Kids stopped programming weekdays in December 2001, and then that Fox Kids ended in September 2001. The latter obviously should be 2002.
 
What two dead blocks? If it aired on broadcast kids TV in this decade, chances are it'll be covered in the next two parts. I ended up hitting all of the networks and companies that worked on broadcast.


It's a combination of ratings, ad revenue, and demographics, which I didn't get into in the article (but now think should have been touched upon). But even the lowest-ranking show pulls in a decent amount of money for the station and network. CBS may rank third in the mornings with Early Show but it's still profitable.


Yeah, it should be. I missed that. :sweat:
 
I meant that the end of Fox Kids and Kids WB wasn't included in the other blog entry about the biggest stories in animation for the decade. But I think I like this one better, since it seems to be going in-depth into all the reasons broadcast kids/animation blocks are nearly extinct.

Thanks for the explanation on the syndicated shows btw.
 
So...this is basically what killed the network children's block. Yes, other factors contributed as well but that right there is the straw that broke the camel's back.
 
Great article...very well written and it covers all the major keypoints.

Another correction should be that the Kids' WB! Weekday Lineup ended on Friday, December 30, 2005 and not on Friday, January 6, 2006. The Saturday lineup expanded by an hour on Saturday, January 7, 2006, but there was no weekday programming the week of January 2-6, 2006.

Essentially, both Fox and WB programmed their weekday afternoon blocks to run out at the end of the year (2001 and 2005, respectively), so they didn't air anything for those blocks once the new year began (ie: 2002 and 2006).
 
"Director Commentary Track" moment: this was brought up as a possibility for the Top 5 Headlines, but I ultimately decided against it because this is another of those long-term trends of the 00's (along with the growth of anime) that doesn't really lend itself to a single "This is When the Earth Moved" moment the way the five headlines I ultimately selected did.

The fact that I knew this blog post was coming made that an easier decision to make, and I think the fact that this entry needed to be spread out over 3 posts validates my assessment that it's a story that doesn't have a single headline moment.
 
I think it's a perfect storm of advertising, E/I, and cable that killed Saturday Morning - there was no one reason for its death. However, advertising is probably the most significant of these factors. Let's say that ads cost $20,000 on average for a 30 second spot. Due to these limits, you lose 4 minutes of ad time. That's 8 lost advertisements, and most importantly that's up to $160,000 less revenue than non-kids programming.

The loss of particular advertisers also probably hurt. Kellogg's was cited by name as one of the reasons Kids WB dropped weekdays, because they cut advertising once obesity became a top issue. When things consolidate into huge companies, and one company cuts ad spending, it's going to hurt in whatever area they cut the spending.


Okay. That was something that I had conflicting dates on - nobody really listed the actual date that Kids WB would end on, but they did list when Daytime WB started. I just assumed that since Daytime WB began on one day, Kids WB ended the Friday before. There wasn't a hard date like there was with Fox Kids.
 
Also, local stations depend on local ads. When you watch network TV in the middle of the day you're gonna see local ads. It's very rare to see an ad for Pepsi. So, with kids TV, isn't the network the one making the ad revenu as opposed to the affilates?
 
Part 2 was just as good, if not better than part one. The last paragraph also helps explain why networks and cable channels are more reluctant to pick up 3rd party shows. It was pretty apparant at the tail-end of both Fox Kids and KidsWB, when both of them dropped many shows they didn't own (The most notable one is probably Pokemon in 2006 when KidsWB decided to refocus on their own in-house productions) and we're starting to see that with the cable networks, like Cartoon Network funding their own action shows in place of more import shows.

I never really noticed how short commercials during kids programming was. Maybe I'll time it during the Turtles Forever event this weekend.
 
Another bad thing is that the death of syndication and weekday cartoons leads to less episodes. Most cartoons nowadays are limited to around 13 weekly eps a season while syndicated weekday cartoons had as many as 65 episodes.
 
I see the end of broadcast cartoons as a sign of lesser choices. I see it as a sign of less competition.

I'm sad that KidsWB and FoxKids both went under. Now 4Kids is the only survivor left of the broadcast tv era. I hope it lasts as long as it can. Saturday morning cartoons are not dead but they've taken a backseat and are no longer that important in 2009 and will probably be even less important in the next decade.

The FCC, just like the government, has too much control in our lives. I think there is a fine line in regulating and restricting. The FCC has basically helped kill broadcast cartoons because they've handicapped the sponsors and ad support for the cartoon blocks to meet their demands.

I enjoyed reading the articles but it's disheartening at the same time seeing how things ended up for broadcast kid's tv.
 
Honestly I don't think that's really a bad thing, because shorter seasons lead to better, more consistent quality. Going back and rewatching GI Joe and Transformers, it's amazing to see what corners were cut and how lifeless the animation is in comparison to other Marvel shows. I think a lot of that is the high episode count.

Even classics like B:TAS were hurt by this mentality. The original 65 episodes are sort of uneven in quality because they had to use different overseas studios and a wide pool of writers to meet the quota. When they did the newer episodes, they had smaller seasons and could limit to a core group of writers and 2 or 3 of the upper-tier overseas studios.

I'd rather have 13 episodes of a well-animated cartoon over 65 episodes of a mediocre-to-poor animated one.
 
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