What happened to Saturday mornings?

Kids have 24 hour access to cartoons now. Used to be a very specialized programming.

Yes it’s kind of sad. Lolly lolly lolly…

I think filmfann has it right. Also, even when my children were young, cartoons were not as fun as when I was a kid. I’ve never seen one that beats Mighty Mouse.

Of course, you could look at it as a positive that kids now prefer to do something other than sit in front of the TV on Saturday mornings. Maybe the parents miss the cartoons more than the kids.

yeah figured as much, just that there is or doesn’t seem to be a very big selection of cartoons on, whenever I change it to one of the cartoon channels it seems like its always the same thing..Pheneaus and Ferb, Chowder, or one of the other random cartoons that’s on. Nothing like when I was a kid.

@thriftymaid yeah well there was just nothing like a dose of Saturday morning cartoons before going to your soccer game or heading outside to ride your bike. You’re probably right I guess it is the parents that miss it more than the kids lol looks around inconspicuously

My new work schedule.

I watched Smurfs and ate a big bowl of lucky charms last Saturday morning. I felt all nostalgic and pleased I got up before noon on Saturday. The Snorks came on the BOOM channel also but it wasn’t as good as I remembered. I just wish I had a channel with Looney Tunes. I love that mean ole Bugs and Daffy Ducks wild and what I believe are P.C.P. induced antics.

TV is a babysitter now, cartoons and children’s programming 24/7

Nothing happens saturday morn. your to hung over to do anything.

Nothing has happened to them – they are right where they have always been – between Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

Turn the TV off if it bugs you. I used to allow my kids a very carefully selected (and approved by parents) ten hours per week of television. At other times it was off. When the new TV guide came out they were very careful to make the most of their viewing allowance for that week.

wow that’s where Saturdays are are? Did not know that /sarcasm off…anyways it doesn’t “bug” me I was just thinking about how Saturday morning were when I was a kid and
how excited I was to have the selection of cartoons available to me.

About the parenting, yeah my daughter doesn’t watch TV hardly at all but she does like to watch cartoons on Saturday mornings while we eat breakfast before her soccer games.

@earthduzt wow that’s where Saturdays are are? Did not know that /sarcasm off

Hey, you are the one who related children and Saturdays to television programming, rather than parental influence.

I’ll be going for round two soon, my grandson is eighteen months going on eighteen years at the moment. He’ll get the same guidelines as his mother and aunts.

(ps – It was meant as humour – not sarcasm.)

Personally, I stopped caring after Loonie Tunes were off the air.

Then again, my Saturday morning consists of getting up, driving my wife to work, returning home, and catching up on the sleep I missed working at the foundry M-F, so anything that happens before noon on Saturday is of no consequence to me.

This answer is going to blow your mind, mainly because of the generation gap between all of us.

You and your children now have a selection of Saturday morning programming that you should be thankful for. this includes your children and yourself.

When i was a child, we had one television station and one choice of programming,,,,,,theirs! on Saturday mornings, we only had The Big Top and Howdy Doody. it was sponsored by Sealtest Ice Cream and Jersey Farms Milk Co.

We did not care back then, because television was brand new and everything we watched was in amazement. to SEE the pictures, instead of just listening to the words.

Remember, television is just a radio with pictures. always has been, always will be.

John

@john65pennington
Tell us about the magic talking device Grandpa, LOL

@john65pennington Actually, it’s more than that. In your day, a TV could also double as a furniture in it’s own right. I had an old, gutted TV console that we used as a kitchen counter in our old 400 sq.ft. cabin.

SeventhSense and Jery. well, i guess i do quality for that word since i am now a great grandfather. cannot believe i said that. and yes, the television had fantastic consoles made of real wood. some had a smell of their own, simply because of the heat from the tubes and the varnish on the wood. i forgot about that.

Everyone always says that cartoons back in their day were better than now.

Well, you’re not a kid anymore, you don’t think like one, so obviously it’s going to seem that way. Interests and mentalities change, and as we grow older, it seems that we naturally tend to resent things which remind us of that.
Don’t forget that cultures change too, what you see as a lack of choice or innovation may be just a misstranslation of changing times. One’s personal perception doesn’t define something as it truly is, especially not when fueled by too much of a personal or inner judgement.
Personally I think Pokemon is retarded, but I’ll just leave it at that.

Sure some companies buy all the stuff, but what’s the big deal? Nick or Teletoon play a vast variety of cartoons, and when I was little we had CKND or wtv it was called and YTV that always had something interesting on day and night. It was pretty much the only two, and when my dad was a kid, he told me he had one channel with one cartoon, Bugs Bunny.

I personally don’t know what you’re talking about. If I want to watch cartoons, there are so goddamn many of them that I wouldn’t know where to start.

What happened is you grew up. Just cuz you can no longer see the magic, it doesn’t mean it ain’t there. :p
I mean, if your daughter asked to watch them, can’t be all that bad, amirite?

@Symbeline Some of my favorite cartoons were not around when I was a kid though, so I don’t know if I agree. There are some that are decent… though most are from Japan. Recess is the only recent American one I know of that I like, unless we want to get into the stuff that you don’t want kids watching, like Squidbillies, The Oblongs, and Drawn Together.

However, it seems that a lot of what the major networks put on on Saturday mornings these days isn’t even cartoons. Hannah Montana? The Suite Life of Zack & Cody? Come on! I’d rather watch Initial D, but like Soccer, it wasn’t nearly as popular here as it was in Japan and elsewhere.

I think that this article is more telling about what killed Saturday Morning cartoons than anything about us just growing up. You are correct that we change and that culture changes, but I think that you are missing the big picture here. And anime is one of the things that killed them.

Anime is ancient though, and while its fanbase is rabid, it doesn’t encompass the entirety of most people who watch cartoons, unless you count shit like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh or DBZ, which in my mind really isn’t anime, not when compared to things like Trinity Blood or Gundamn Wing, anyways.
If cartoons are dead, I’d say video games did it, not anime. But what’s the biggest aspect of the big picture that the article deals with? I agree with some of it, especially the Internet.

@Symbeline It wasn’t any one thing that did it; those are all just contributing factors.