Infomercials to Replace Cartoons on FOX

With the affiliates taking over the two hours, the affiliates will most likely:

- Fill in the time with news like the other networks. A sixth day of Fox 59 A.M. folks in Indiana, it's most likely coming.

- Put the required E/I block in the 8-10 slot. Currently I believe here in Indy, Fox carries an hour of Saved By the Bell and an hour of wildlife based shows to fill those slots.

- They'll just air four straight hours of infomercials back to back.
 
The stations don't care if anyone watches. The objective of infomercials is not to draw viewers.

It's straight cash, homey.

But it is the first time I can recall that info's are being run at the network level.
 
Hm... Our affiliate more than likely will run some older cartoons, given how they've handeled the early mornings in the past. I remember they were airing the futuristic Sherlock Holmes cartoon a couple years back. Was kind of nice really. But anyways, as to which cartoons they'll broadcast, I honestly don't know, especially with the E/I requirements.

Still though, this sucks pretty badly. I'm just hoping that maybe by Fall of next year, we may see another company willing to set up a saturday morning block for them, especially since they said this would only be a short term solution. Although, from what they said, expensive wise and the whole E/I issue... That may actually scare off any company wanting to program a block for them. :sweat:
 
My local CW affiliate is already doing this. Channel 54 in Baltimore starts the CW4Kids lineup at 5am so they can show infomercials at 10am. It's clear that the Saturday morning cartoon lineup is on the decline. Networks rarely program their own lineups anymore; instead, they acquire E/I program blocks from outside sources (e.g., Qubo on NBC, KEWLopolis on CBS).
 
Yeah, the whole Saturday Morning cartoon enterprise only made sense as long as everyone else was doing it; on paper, it's rather odd to have kids cartoons air at a time when kids want to sleep in after five days of school, but that was the time they gave them decades ago. Now that cartoons are all over television all day long, having a block like that just doesn't make sense anymore and since no one's watching, why not pocket some paid advertisement money?
 
It doesn't make any sense, especially since there is a real possibility that the CW might be gone by then. If it were actually confirmed true that Fox will run informercials on Saturday morning and the CW shuts down, that would put NBC back in the running to expand it's Saturday morning block to 4 hrs. from 3 hrs. For now, let's wait and see if this is actually confirmed true.
 
Has anyone taken my old word of B.S.? If not, then this story is full of it.

Here's the game plan: cable, and I mean digital and premium, has beaten the Sat morning line-ups to a pulp. We used to have the good old One Saturday Morning, the short-lived Disney's One Too. We had the classics like Fox kids and kids Wb, but it seems that the kids don't want the 'toons anymore. All they want now are a bunch of mediocre reality shows and bad kiddie live-action comedies. I know that we have all said our shared hatred to all things Hannah Montana-ish or maybe even leave the TV off after all of the good shows were gone but this is pathetic. Simply pathetic.

Alas, my dear Sat. Morning Cartoon Line-Ups. How we will miss thee.

I'm serious about that because the only good looking block now is The CW 4Kids and that may not last long if The CW folds within a year's time leaving us with nothing but reruns of dreck on CBS, ABC, and unwatchful little kids dreck on NBC.
 
There's simply no incentive on the networks' part to pour money and effort into a Saturday morning lineup; it's a not a viable commodity anymore. Saturday morning was something worth dealing with for the networks back when Saturday mornings was the only outlet that kids had for animation aside from weekday morning/afternoon syndication. But now that there's cable, satellite, DVD and On-Demand, kids can watch cartoons at any time, day or night, whenever they want. Networks just can't compete with that. The expanding entertainment medium has rendered network Saturday morning and local/syndicated weekday schedules obsolete. Why try to spruce up your gramophone when everybody else is listening to iPods?
 
Sigh...I guess the EI stuff was the beginning of the end. Kids should be learning in school, TV should be mindless fun entertainment ;o)
 
We're talking about kids, not teenagers. From Sunday to Thursday a kid, under a responsible parent, is asleep by 9pm. On Friday by 10:30-11pm the latest. So, by 7 or 8am they'll be awake.



People keep bringing this up even though 24/7 cartoons on cable have been around since the 1980s.



Nick and Disney have been around since the 1980s. The truth of the matter is that by the `2000s there was too many mergers. People blame E/I but I disagree since E/I has a bunch of loop holes. What happened was:

1. CBS dropped it's original line-up in favor of reruns of Nick shows
2. ABC dropped it's original line-up in favor of reruns of Disney shows.

What's the point of waking up to see crap you can watch on cable all day.

Then there was Fox Kids falling apart with crappy shows. And, Kids WB's ratings also began to slip from less than stellar cartoons.

So, it was domino effect that ruined everything. And now networks are too lazy and cheap to restore things.
 
It was an odd business deal to begin with, at least to my untrained eyes. 4Kids was paying FOX Network to show 4Kids programs? It seems that should be the other way around unless 4Kids was receiving the advertising revenue. Then the dispute makes sense since many affiliates were pushing around the program block orfilling the time entirely with local programs.

While the program selection 4Kids has put out has been pretty dismal, it could have been a lot worse. Now what FOX airs will be.

It's just a sad thing, to see what was once a powerhouse of cartoon programming, and still is on Sunday nights, abandoning a marginal audience in favor of NO audience.
 
Agreed. I mean, how DOES the infomercial business make money? Most of the things they try to sell are scam based, or just try to give information and don't actually sell a product.

I mean, who really watches these things? I'd love to see real ratings for infomercial related programing just out of morbid curiosity :).

Personally, I'd love for them to show classic shows that no one wants to air...sort of a viewers choice. For instance, Dangermouse, Mister Wizards World, He-Man 1983, Thundercats, Transformers,etc.
 
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