The Saturday morning cartoons thread!

Ah, yes, saturday morning. When I was a kid, I made it a point to watch either Fox Kids or Kids WB every morning. Of course, these days I can't get myself out of bed that early unless I have to.
 
The ratings probably dropped about three years after the 1997 premiere. ABC went from being #1 on Sat AM in 1997, to #3 in 1999, when Pokemon and Spongebob allowed KWB and Nick to take the top spots.
 
When I was a kid Saturday morning cartoons were great, every network from ABC, CBS, NBC and many other free television networks aired cartoons on Saturday morning (and weekday mornings and afternoons) and there was so much selection that you didn't know which network to flip to next, it was a grand and glorious time to be a kid. These days a lot of the good Saturday morning stuff is on the cable networks with a small bit of goodness crammed into 4Kids on The CW network so the choices have definitly got smaller but the magic of Saturday morning cartoons is still there if you let it be, I choose to let myself enjoy what is out there. Back in the day though I would be up long before the sun to eat sugar coated cereal's and to take over the remote control for the morning and I would continually flip through the channels to find the shows I wanted to watch, before you knew it it was noon time and the cartoons came to an end and it literally felt like mere moments since I began watching my favorite shows, I really miss those days. I still enjoy my Saturday morning cartoons though and I will continue to do so until I am old and grey, however it will never be as good as it once was but there will always be some good to enjoy as long as you make it special for yourself.
 
Heh. I've got most of the folks in this thread beat by a couple of decades. (Just turned 41 this month.) Among my earliest Saturday morning memories were Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch (CBS, 1971), H.R. Pufenstuf (NBC, 1969), The Groovie Ghoulies (CBS, 1971) The Krofft Supershow (ABC, 1976) and The Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine (CBS, 1974). :)
 
Someone should really compile a list of all the different schedules through all the different major networks throughout the years and archive it on a website, that would be pretty cool for reference purposes.

Anyway, the only show you listed that I have ever seen was the Harlem Globetrotter show, I remember some local network back before the days of the WB and UPN aired it at around 5:30 in the morning back in the late 80's when I was really young.
 
There are a few sites on the web that have schedules for old Saturday morning cartoon lineup's, but they are missing whole years and are very incomplete, I will try to find some that I have seen and post a link for everyone at some point today. As to what Silverstar had to say a few posts ago, damn, 41? I thought I was old being in my late 20's, but seriously, it's good to see people in their 20's, 30's and 40's enjoying animation the same as they did when they were kid's, much prop's to you Sir. Silverstar!
 
That's actually precisely what I've been trying to do for some time now. However, I've been working on archiving exactly what episodes of the shows aired as well (for repeats too). As you can imagine, this has not been an easy task by any means. It's now been 6 years since I starting archiving the scheduling history of Fox Kids and that's far from complete. Although, I do have a complete database of all ~17,350 timeslots of shows that aired as part of Kids' WB! between 1995 and 2008. So some networks have been easier to archive than others. Nevertheless, I have complete info for all the broadcast networks for Saturday mornings between 2000 and now except for CBS (missing lots of info for Nick Jr. on CBS).

I've also tried to go beyond the broadcast networks. All in all, I have about 150,000 timeslots of data between 1990 and now for various blocks on broadcast, cable, and digital networks.

My goal is to go back to the origins of Saturday Morning TV, but I'll probably never live to see that happen. It's just too much data to compile for one person!
 
I'm a close second to you, but I got no cigar ;) I'm not 40 yet but here on Radio-Canada (French CBC) and TVA network in the late 1970s-early 1980s, we got reruns of Atom Ant, Secret Squirell, Hillbillies bears, Huckleberry Hound, Top Cat, Quick Draw McDraw, Captain Cavern, Goober and the Ghost chasers, 1967 Spider-man and the 1966 Marvel Superheroes on weekdays, puppet-animated series from the UK like Thunderbirds, Stingray, Fireball XL5 and a big wave a animes with Goldorak (UFO Robot Grendizer), Albator (Captain Harlock), Candy Candy, Mysterious cities of Gold, etc...with CFCF-12 (Montreal's CTV network) affiliate tv station who presented reruns of Rocket Robin Hood very early on SatAM when my family got cable tv in the early 1980s.

Also it might be varied by areas, at the time the Radio-Canada and TVA tv affiliates showed a schedule different from the main stations headquartered in Montreal.
 
Sweet, thanks for the link man! I read through the schedules and it was definatly helpfull but it makes me second guess some of my Saturday morning cartoon memories, for instance in one year it lists Ghostbusters and Pee Wee's Playhouse as being on different networks but on at the same time, but I remember watching both shows all the time and I couldn't imagin skipping one over the other. But then again I was really, really young so maybe my memories aren't serving me pretty well, who knows.
 
You may actually still be correct. Although I haven't gone through and checked for every year, I have noticed errors in many of the listings. Also, some of the lineups didn't last long and changed throughout that year.
 
For me, Saturday morning's were so much more than the programming that we watched, it was the feeling of being a kid and not having to go to school, it was the products that we would see commercials for and how those commercials really made us want whatever it was they were selling, it was the iconic music that went along with promo's and the shows that we enjoyed, it was video games and the fun we had playing them. So many different things factored into the greatness that was Saturday mornings back in the day, I think the feeling can (and still somewhat) does exist today, but we have to let go of how great the past was in order to enjoy whats going on here and now.
 
when I was a kid. I'd eat that sweet cereal as well and sit in front of the TV on Saturday morning. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show; The Godzilla Power Hour and SuperFriends. Oh, by the way anyone remember FangFace?
 
Aah, back in the day my Sat AMs would involve sitting at the TV with cereal or some other breakfast item and watching "Muppet Babies," "Gummi Bears," "Garfield and Friends," or "Smurfs."
 
I remember Fangface. It was the first regular animated program to be produced by Ruby-Spears Productions, back in 1978, and it aired on ABC. Until 1983, Ruby-Spears programs only aired on ABC, especially on its Weekend Special program(If you remember The ABC Weekend Specials, between 1977 and 1997).
 
Starting this Saturday I am going to get serious about enjoying Saturday morning cartoons a little more, lately I have been ignoring some shows because I feel the need to get ready for work or I would make plans to head out and see some friends or something, but not anymore, starting this Saturday I am going to wake up at 7:00am and I am going to enjoy Saturday morning cartoons the same way I did when I was a kid. I'm not going to shower until after cw4Kids is over and I'm not going to make any plans to go anywhere until later in the day, I'm going to bring it back to the old-skool from now on and I'm going to try my best to bring back that feeling of "awesome" to Saturday morning cartoons.
 
When I was a kid there were so many great things about Saturday morning cartoons other than the actual cartoons, for instance who remembers Time for Timer and his PSA's about eating the right snacks? Who remembers the cat who was dressed up like a captain of a boat and he talked to the kids about reading book? How about the "one to grow on" segments, Woodsy, Smokey the Bear or Chow Daddy? These great characters made Saturday mornings something special, these days we don't really have characters or segments like that to really send that wholesome message or to create that fun enviorment, it's a shame. How about all the great and classic commercials that aired on Saturday mornings back in the day, today we have a few really cool ones but it will never be the same as the legendary commercials from back in the day. I mean, who will ever forget "Be Original", the 80's PSA about not taking drugs, or all the classic cereal and fast food ad's of the late 80's?
 
I'm apparently one of the older people on rabroad (clocking in at the ripe old age of... 34, soon to be 35), so my Saturday morning memories stretch back to the very early 80s (pre-explosion-of-half-hour-toy-ads-as-TV-shows).

Re: Saturday morning schedules: Wikipedia's entry as noted above is somewhat useful, though apparently from some of the entries (Bowling?) it's been culled from regional TV Guides (thus I suspect not completely accurate). This website (TV Party) was also pretty useful for older Saturday morning schedules / show descriptions (dating back to the dawn of Saturday mornings-as-we-know-it in the early-to-mid 60s): http://www.tvparty.com/sat.html

-B.
 
Readmore! He was awesome, he appeared in a few of the 80's public service anouncements, I'll always remember him. I remember a lot of these things, a lot of which did make for some memorable Saturday cartoon watching, too bad classic stuff like this isn't done today, though I do admit that I got a kick out of the "feed the pig" spots that I would see on Fox's 4Kids block.

Sometimes it is the non-programming elements that helped to make a special Saturday morning experience and I miss some of this stuff a lot, especially Woodsy Owl, he was one of my favorites.
 
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