With the
second decade of Saturday mornings came some significant changes.
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Ad for an RCA color television. |
Televisions were now in the
majority of American households and people were watching; supplanting radios as
the main source of entertainment. TV also replaced newspapers as the main
source of news; with events like the first televised presidential
debate between John
F. Kennedy and Richard
M. Nixon, the civil
rights movement, Kennedy’s
assassination, the Vietnam
War, and man’s
first landing on the moon. Westerns and sitcoms dominated the airwaves, but
science-fiction was gradually carving out a niche for itself. Although the DuMont Network
didn’t survive the 1950s, ABC, CBS and NBC
were still going strong and were soon to be joined by PBS. While destruction of recorded programs
still happened, it began decreasing in frequency as a greater thought was given
to archiving on the costs of materials lessened. Animation, once regarded as a
serious risk, became the preferred format for kids’ shows when it was realized
that a cartoon episode could be produced much cheaper than a live-action one.
Networks decided to stop hemming and hawing over the concept and finally began broadcasting in
full-color, allowing these cartoons to be seen as their creators intended. And,
most importantly to us, Saturday mornings began to be taken more seriously.
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Comic book ad for CBS' new action-oriented Saturday morning line-up. |
Network
executives realized that on weekend mornings when parents tended to want to
sleep in, kids would be at home without little distractions like school and
homework—meaning there was an entire demographic they could cater to and get
advertising revenue for. Fred
Silverman was among the first; establishing a long-standing relationship
with Hanna-Barbera
and giving Filmation
Associates their start, allowing both studios to practically dominate the
network schedules for years. By the middle of the decade, the Saturday
schedules were mostly animated. By the end of the decade, those schedules were
full of original cartoons; edging out the prime-time reruns that were used to
fill out the time. Saturday mornings were drawing big ratings, and as a result,
were turning out to be very profitable for the networks.
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Ad for ABC's 1977 preview special. |
To promote
their new line-ups, the networks began airing Saturday
Morning Preview Specials. These were annual specials aired typically the
Friday night before the debut of the new schedule. Hosted by cast members from
one or more of the networks’ more popular shows with special guests, they highlighted the offerings
that would be hitting the airwaves that Saturday. Sometimes they were done in a
variety show format, other times they were given a storyline that would lead
the special’s stars to encounter each new show.
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Hanna-Barbera becomes a dominating force on Saturday mornings. |
Of course, this decade marked the
births of some long-running franchises. Hanna-Barbera created their flagship
program, The
Flintstones, which became a primetime success and spawned a spin-off
Saturday morning franchise in the decades to follow. They also introduced the
ever-enduring Scooby-Doo
franchise, which continues to this day with new shows, new direct-to-video
movies, and the occasional theatrical release. Filmation would begin their Archie
franchise based on the comic
book characters, as well as introduce the first African American animated
character on Saturday mornings in The
Hardy Boys. Warner Bros.
packaged their theatrical shorts into The
Bugs Bunny Show, which would find itself running for the next 40 years
under various names.
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Peggy Charren in front of her group's logo. |
Unfortunately,
with more exposure came a greater chance of criticism. Silverman, inspired by
the success of ABC’s Batman
series, loaded up the CBS schedule with action-adventure programs while ABC
and NBC were showing mostly comedies. When CBS pulled ahead in the ratings
because of them, ABC and NBC switched gears and churned out their own action
offerings. Original heroes, licensed heroes, pulp heroes, comedic heroes—the
only black sheep in the bunch was American
Bandstand. All of this action drew the ire of some people like Peggy Charren, Lillian
Ambrosino, Evelyn Kaye Sarson and Judy Chalfen who founded the child advocacy
group Action
for Children’s Television. Their mission was to improve the quality of
children’s television, encourage diversity, and to discourage
over-commercialization. They targeted the action-heavy Saturday morning
programs, leading the networks to cancel all of those shows by 1969 and replace
them with more light-hearted comedic fare.
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