The Swingin’
70s were more of a tightrope walk for animation studios. Racial uprisings, high-profile
assassinations and an unpopular war had made advocacy groups want to ensure
their children had a safe place to retreat from the horrors of the real world.
They chose to make television that place by pressuring networks to ensure all
content geared towards their kids were as harmless as possible. And with only
the three major networks to provide them work, studios had no choice but to
comply.
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Scene from the "I'm Just a Bill" segment of the educational Schoolhouse Rock. |
Gone were
the days of the highly-lucrative action-oriented cartoon. There could be no
punches. No slapstick pratfalls. No deep space battles. There could only be
good, safe, educational content that pushed a pro-social message such as anti-bullying,
anti-drugs, honesty, reading, etc. If it happened to be entertaining in the process,
well, that was just a bonus. Really, only Filmation weathered this
change effortlessly as their content had already been approached in that manner
from the outset. Founder Lou
Scheimer came from a client-based creative background, such as making commercials,
rather than theatrical cartoons like the others involved with television
animation, making him used to producing content via strict guidelines. In response to this, most of the studios took on educational advisors to go over their scripts with fine-toothed combs.
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Famous headline from President Ford to a nearly-bankrupt New York City. |
Another
impact on animation studios was the economic downturn and rampant inflation.
Where once cartoons were the cheaper alternative that made them appealing to
the networks, it suddenly became a reality that live-action programming could
now be made for just as much—if not cheaper—AND quicker. As a result, a
lot more live-action shows made specifically for Saturday mornings appeared
throughout the decade. This proved a boon for Sid & Marty Krofft Productions,
whose unique costume designs on The Banana Splits Adventure Hour earned
them recognition and several shows to their credit. Hanna-Barbera and
Filmation also tried their hands at live-action programming in a combination of
shows and specials. Other cheap alternatives were game shows like Runaround,
educational shows like the revival of Mr.
Wizard, and news-oriented programs like Take a Giant Step (later
Talking with a Giant).
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Filmation's live-action Shazam/Isis Hour. |
The
economy also led to the loss of more animation jobs in America, with
work heading to Mexico, Japan, China, Korea, Australia and other countries. Some
studios had already done this from the outset, namely Jay Ward Productions
and Total TeleVision
with Gamma Productions
in Mexico, while others had to in order to meet increasing workloads, like
Hanna-Barbera with their Australian division
and later the Japanese studio of Wang Film
Productions. Filmation, for the duration of its existence, strove to keep
animation jobs domestic and only outsourced one of their projects, 1981’s
The New Adventures of Zorro, when they found themselves with too much
work at one time.
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ABC's 1970 comic book advertisement. |
But
Saturday mornings kept rolling on and the networks kept investing heavily in
them. Comic and newspaper ads continued to run and the Saturday morning preview
specials became an annual event, with each network airing one almost every
September to usher in their new line-ups. The networks also wooed in celebrities
not usually associated with cartoons or kids’ shows—such as stage and film
actor Charles Nelson Reilly,
musician Rick Springfield, the Harlem Globetrotters basketball
team, boxer Muhammad Ali, musical
group The Jackson 5ive and more—with the
hopes of attracting their existing fanbases to the network and the promise of
those celebrities finding new fans among the regular viewers. Did it work? Well,
you tell us.
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