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The Ridiculous History of Saturday Morning Cartoons, Part Two: The Fall of a Grift · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
0:30
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. That's our super producer, Max the
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Speaker 1: Beachhead Williams. That's no Brown and still has a bit
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Speaker 1: of long tresses, uh, which may not last forever. That's
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Speaker 1: Noel Brown. I am ben Bullen.
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Speaker 2: Uh, Noel.
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Speaker 1: Let's let's do uh. Let's do it in the style
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Speaker 1: of Lost or in the style of Saturday Morning cartoons
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Speaker 1: previously on Ridiculous History.
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Speaker 2: Previous Saturday Morning cartoons. How does that leave?
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Speaker 3: There's always like an announcer voice in those programming blocks.
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Speaker 1: And we are coming to you live, hot and ready,
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Speaker 1: just like that viral meme about Little Caesars. With part
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Speaker 1: two of this, because we talked about the halcyon age
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Speaker 1: of Saturday Morning cartoons when there there was a huge
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Speaker 1: loophole that Big Studio saw this was the easiest way
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Speaker 1: to sell merchandise to children and to propagandize children. And
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Speaker 1: they got in a fight with the federal government about
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Speaker 1: what makes a show versus what makes essentially a thirty
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Speaker 1: minute advertisement.
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Speaker 3: For sure, feature length advertisements, I believe is what some
1:52
Speaker 3: of the parenting groups who are lobbying lawmakers and the
1:57
Speaker 3: FCC to kind of crack down on some of this,
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Speaker 3: were referring to those as and they had really the
2:03
Speaker 3: networks this is all on broadcast television, the big three networks,
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Speaker 3: along with a lot of these animation studios who were
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Speaker 3: kind of booed up with some of these big toy
2:13
Speaker 3: manufacturing companies like Mattel were just raking it in hand
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Speaker 3: over fists. They were having a real boom time as
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Speaker 3: far as you know, their profits were concerned, and that
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Speaker 3: is what kind of led to I think what you
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Speaker 3: and I really remember as kind of the golden age
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Speaker 3: of Saturday morning cartoons, at least when we were more
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Speaker 3: like little tykes. But we're going to talk today about
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Speaker 3: kind of the next phase and then what became of
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Speaker 3: the concept of Saturday morning cartoons as we enter, I
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Speaker 3: guess are more like middle school, early teenage years the nineties.
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Speaker 1: So up until the early nineteen eighties, this out if
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Speaker 1: it used to kidnab people, kid nab studios as well.
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Speaker 1: I'm saying kid nab as a delicious pun because NAB
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Speaker 1: stands for National Association of Broadcasters, and they enforced what
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Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier in our previous conversational voluntary guidelines, and
3:22
Speaker 1: those voluntary guidelines said, if we have a show, that
3:27
Speaker 1: we have a series of shows that runs for an
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Speaker 1: hour on weekends, the ad time cannot be more than
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Speaker 1: nine and a half minutes on the weekends, and if
3:41
Speaker 1: it's the weekdays, it can't be more than twelve minutes,
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Speaker 1: which is still a significant amount of time.
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Speaker 2: But we trust you to police yourselves on this.
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Speaker 3: The networks, however, starting in the eighties, under ray again.
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Speaker 3: As we know, this is a huge period of deregulation.
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Speaker 3: The Federal Communications Commission pushed for deregulations, and those NAB guidelines,
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Speaker 3: which were already kind of toothless in the first place,
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Speaker 3: were completely abandoned. So broadcasters were then legally allowed to
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Speaker 3: air as many commercials during kids programming blocks as they wanted,
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Speaker 3: which led to exactly what you were describing ben those
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Speaker 3: program I said feature That was the wrong word. Program
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Speaker 3: length commercials, shows designed purely to sell toys like transformers
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Speaker 3: and Gi Joe's. But as we mentioned, we're kind of
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Speaker 3: now entering the early days of the nineties when the television,
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Speaker 3: sorry the Children's Television Act of nineteen ninety would ultimately
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Speaker 3: begin to change all of that and require broadcast stations
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Speaker 3: to air a lot of educational programming while limiting commercial
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Speaker 3: advertisements directed at kids.
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Speaker 1: Well, someone think of the children.
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Speaker 2: Got to think there are few? Sure, I believe that.
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Speaker 1: It's the easiest way to get evil stuff passed as well.
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Speaker 1: Look at the efforts to de anonymize the Internet today.
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Speaker 3: But this was I think we both can agree that
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Speaker 3: this is beneficial in many ways.
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Speaker 1: Like I was going to say, this is a good
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Speaker 1: faith effort as far as we could tell in our
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Speaker 1: mutual research. And thank you again, Noel for creating this series.
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Speaker 1: This Children's Television Act, this CTA nineteen ninety is a
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Speaker 1: watershed moment because they're saying, Hey, these kids are going
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Speaker 1: to watch the screen no matter what, so why don't
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Speaker 1: we teach them a little something, and why don't we
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Speaker 1: try to ease it off with the dial back the advertising.
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Speaker 1: I cannot help but imagine that there were some parents
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Speaker 1: in Congress who were like, why does my kid will
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Speaker 1: always want the most expensive toy out there? But again,
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Speaker 1: as we set up in our first part of this series,
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Speaker 1: there were loopholes, right, No, there were exemptions.
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Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, and we're going to get into like
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Speaker 3: a whole kind of sea change as far as the
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Speaker 3: landscape of what it meant to be able to bring
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Speaker 3: this kind of programming to kids. This was indeed designed,
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Speaker 3: like you said, in a good faith effort to provide
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Speaker 3: educational broadcast stuff that kids would have to kind of
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Speaker 3: also experience alongside their favorite Saturday morning cartoons. But to
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Speaker 3: your point, them an exemption did allow the five commercial
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Speaker 3: broadcast networks at this point there are five to increase
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Speaker 3: ad time while pretty much abandoning these educational blocks targeted
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Speaker 3: at kids under thirteen.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And according to one of our favorite sources
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Speaker 1: for this, David rob writing for Deadline, this spell the
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Speaker 1: beginning of the end for the age of Saturday morning
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Speaker 1: cartoons in a big deal. A big aspect of this,
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Speaker 1: I should say that we teased previously is the emergence
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Speaker 1: of cable networks cable television. Because while they there were
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Speaker 1: many aspects of cable programming that we're still beholden to
7:24
Speaker 1: these FCC regulations, it was a lot easier for them
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Speaker 1: to get around some of them too, because they weren't
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Speaker 1: on the public airwaves. Yeah, which means they're again, legislation
7:37
Speaker 1: is always reacting to innovation. It's never really It hasn't
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Speaker 1: historically been prescient, it hasn't really figured out the future, right,
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Speaker 1: so it has to react at present. Yeah, yeah, not yet.
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Speaker 1: And so in the early nineteen nineties, as you were saying,
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Speaker 1: we see a significant amount of new players on the field,
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Speaker 1: and they're increasing in not just quantity but in quality.
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Speaker 1: We see Nickelodeon, we see Fox Kids, we see Warner
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Speaker 1: Brothers getting bigger budgets. They're actually snagging cinematic soundtrack scores.
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Speaker 1: And then they're they're letting people like they're actually letting
8:22
Speaker 1: some of the world's most lauded comic book writers start
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Speaker 1: to write cartoons.
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Speaker 3: Giving them a budget and a platform, and they made
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Speaker 3: some incredible work, like the film noir coded Batman, the
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Speaker 3: animated series that I think we all grew up with
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Speaker 3: and really holds up to this day. It's just such
8:44
Speaker 3: an art what would you call that style band kind
8:46
Speaker 3: of art deco noir, like the Angular, you know, Frank
8:50
Speaker 3: Lloyd Wright, kind of buildings of it all, and.
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Speaker 2: Just very very cool and viby stuff.
8:55
Speaker 3: Of course, X Men, which we're gonna get too little later,
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Speaker 3: but has experienced a reboot in the style of the
9:01
Speaker 3: old cartoons.
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Speaker 2: I believe it's called X Men ninety seven and uh
9:06
Speaker 2: this one but little and but a little.
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Speaker 3: I know that was such a hallmark for I think
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Speaker 3: all this Max, I see you popping in.
9:13
Speaker 2: Were you an X Men's kid, X Men's kid? X
9:15
Speaker 2: Men Kid.
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Speaker 4: I'm just gonna say, as of recording today, you know,
9:19
Speaker 4: the first three episodes of season two just drop.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
9:21
Speaker 3: I have not even watched season one, but I really
9:23
Speaker 3: loved it when I was a kid, and I've been
9:25
Speaker 3: meaning to watch it.
9:27
Speaker 4: Well, season one is season one. I mean, obviously I'm
9:30
Speaker 4: not going to judge season two yet because you know,
9:31
Speaker 4: we're only three episodes in. But season one it was
9:33
Speaker 4: like when people told me about it, I'm like, okay, whatever,
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Speaker 4: It's like, this seems like a catch grab. It's it
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Speaker 4: is amazing, like how well ridden and like they let
9:43
Speaker 4: like the show grows up with the audience. It's written
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Speaker 4: for people who watched the nineties cartoon, which.
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Speaker 1: I yeah, very much, very well written and great, great
9:53
Speaker 1: boy Max. And then we got Tiny Toon Adventures and
9:56
Speaker 1: of course it's time for an maniac.
10:02
Speaker 3: Wait, we've got bologna in our Slacks, where Zany to
10:05
Speaker 3: the Max, Who's Bolognian?
10:06
Speaker 2: Yeah?
10:06
Speaker 3: And Tiny Tunes and Animaniacs, if I'm not mistaken, both
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Speaker 3: involved Steven Spielberg. He uh he executive produced both of
10:15
Speaker 3: those shows and actually would make little cameos in both.
10:18
Speaker 3: So the Animaniacs was about the Warner brothers and the Warner.
10:24
Speaker 2: Sister Dot who have been like these.
10:26
Speaker 3: Chaos gremlins who were locked in the Warner Movie Lot
10:30
Speaker 3: water Tower, the famous water tower with that Warner Brothers
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Speaker 3: logo on it, and then they get out and they
10:35
Speaker 3: cause all kinds of craziness. We got Pinky in the brain,
10:38
Speaker 3: the good Feathers, remember the pigeons that were sort of
10:40
Speaker 3: like Mafia gangsters.
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Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I love that show.
10:45
Speaker 1: What I loved about Animaniacs as well is the the
10:50
Speaker 1: phenomenal like geo weirdly astute geopolitical awareness they learn, they
10:56
Speaker 1: name all the countries and the absolute banger song. And
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Speaker 1: then back in Boy Scouts, we used always write these
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Speaker 1: parody lyrics for things we would have instead of ani Maniacs.
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Speaker 1: We had the entire intro song as Pyromaniacs, Nice on Fire,
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Speaker 1: pre Smoke to You, Collapse Romaniacs so well, thank you, sir.
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Speaker 1: So like we're saying, I didn't know the Spielberg aspect there,
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Speaker 1: and like we were saying, these new shows completely ring
11:37
Speaker 1: the bells of all the other pre existing stuff that
11:42
Speaker 1: was treated as templatized cookie cutter, corny cell toys crap. Yeah,
11:48
Speaker 1: this is now like reimagining it all.
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Speaker 3: All those all those shows that we were talking about
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Speaker 3: in the eighties segment or the section were all like
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Speaker 3: quantity over quality. They wanted to make as many episodes
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Speaker 3: as they could. They were all kind of working hand
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Speaker 3: in hand with the toy manufacturers, so they were inherently
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Speaker 3: commercial and they just weren't that creative.
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Speaker 2: Like we were saying, it's like.
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Speaker 3: Magical strong Man a hold sword aloft and fight skeleton monster,
12:16
Speaker 3: you know who lives in a spooky castle. It's like
12:19
Speaker 3: the most basic kind of loreless stuff you could imagine.
12:24
Speaker 3: With Batman the animated series, you're talking about some real
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Speaker 3: hard boiled kind of like edgy, serious detective kind of writing,
12:30
Speaker 3: like of the quality of like a what's it dashiel
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Speaker 3: Hamnet or some of you know, the Multese falcon and
12:36
Speaker 3: stuff and x men as well, comedy writing on tiny
12:39
Speaker 3: tunes and animaniacs top notch. You had all these old
12:42
Speaker 3: Hollywood references that even like adults would get. It really
12:46
Speaker 3: was a new kind of beginning of a golden age
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Speaker 3: of animation. The new shows made that rushed animation and simplistic,
12:53
Speaker 3: moralistic narratives of eighties shows kind of look a little
12:56
Speaker 3: bit hack in comparison.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. So now at this point, your extant five big
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Speaker 1: broadcast studios networks, they are encountering lower advertising rates upon
13:14
Speaker 1: which their business depends, and they're seeing increasing competition from
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Speaker 1: these cable channels which have an entirely different model of income.
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Speaker 3: Whuch that makes sense spend the lower ad rates because
13:26
Speaker 3: there's just more competition, so like there's more opportunities for
13:29
Speaker 3: advertisers to go in different places. So it's almost a
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Speaker 3: buyer's market rather than a seller's market.
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Speaker 1: Right, Right, that's on base. We're also seeing that, you know,
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Speaker 1: a cable channel be not beholden to the same model
13:46
Speaker 1: may seem more interesting to the golden goose. The child demographic, right,
13:53
Speaker 1: the child consumer demographic, which sounds very cold, they call
13:57
Speaker 1: it preteen audience, but I still think it's it's like,
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Speaker 1: treat people as people and recognize when folks or children.
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Speaker 1: Don't treat them as numbers. But that's maybe two leftists.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
14:10
Speaker 3: And it's just not it's not cutthroat enough.
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Speaker 2: Ben, there's no room for morals and empathy and business. No,
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Speaker 2: there should be.
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Speaker 3: But it was really just kind of a little footnote
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Speaker 3: in the Federal Communications interpretation of the Children's Television Act
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Speaker 3: of nineteen ninety that was really kind of the beginning
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Speaker 3: of the end, one of the final nails in the
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Speaker 3: coffin of Saturday Morning cartoons. So, under the agency's interpretation
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Speaker 3: of this law or this Act, broadcast stations were required
14:48
Speaker 3: to run at least three hours of what's referred to
14:51
Speaker 3: as educational and informational children's content every week for kids
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Speaker 3: sixteen and under. And this was a caveat of me
15:00
Speaker 3: able to retain their licenses. You know, the FCC is
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Speaker 3: the one who issues and maintains, you know, a good
15:08
Speaker 3: standing of these broadcast licenses.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's like having a driver's license. Think of
15:15
Speaker 1: it that way, folks. You get a license if you
15:19
Speaker 1: qualify for your driver's test and so on, and you
15:22
Speaker 1: don't have serious prior crimes or serious serious constraints that
15:28
Speaker 1: would disallow you from driving a vehicle, you have to
15:33
Speaker 1: satisfy government requirements. And what we're saying here is that
15:37
Speaker 1: the CTA Act of nineteen ninety said that if you
15:41
Speaker 1: don't have at least three hours each week of intentional educational,
15:48
Speaker 1: non propagandistic programming for kids who are you know, also
15:57
Speaker 1: just about or too young to drive, then you are
16:00
Speaker 1: going to lose your right to broadcast anything the very
16:05
Speaker 1: high stakes. So you also have to limit the amount
16:09
Speaker 1: of advertising that you can do to ten point five
16:14
Speaker 1: minutes per hour on weekend. So again, that's a sixty
16:18
Speaker 1: second increase I.
16:19
Speaker 2: Was gonna ask, Yeah, yeah.
16:21
Speaker 1: And then the twelve minutes per hour on weekdays, which
16:25
Speaker 1: is still a lot of advertising time. Like, I'm sure
16:29
Speaker 1: it is fought against it, but yeah, it's a lot.
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Speaker 2: For sure.
16:33
Speaker 3: And by nineteen ninety six, the government decided to take
16:37
Speaker 3: this even a little bit farther in a package of
16:41
Speaker 3: rules that had been referred to as and I swear
16:43
Speaker 3: when I read this, I think of burger king kids.
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Speaker 2: And I'll tell you why.
16:46
Speaker 3: The kidvid rules by really further kind of becoming a
16:52
Speaker 3: little bit stricter in their interpretation of the children's programming.
16:55
Speaker 3: By implementing a study called the Children's Programming Report, which
16:59
Speaker 3: was full of kinds of new mandates. Do you guys
17:01
Speaker 3: remember Burger King Kids Club? This was the thing in
17:05
Speaker 3: the nineties. They were like these kids, Like there was
17:07
Speaker 3: one name Wheels who was in a wheelchair.
17:09
Speaker 2: I always remember that there.
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Speaker 1: Was one with the cool sunglasses.
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Speaker 2: That's kidvid. His name was kid Vida.
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Speaker 3: And it had to have been a reference to this
17:17
Speaker 3: in some way or I don't know if it's a
17:18
Speaker 3: chicken or the egg thing, but I can't imagine that
17:20
Speaker 3: the SEC named their program after the Burger King cartoon character.
17:24
Speaker 2: But maybe it was around the same time.
17:26
Speaker 3: But yeah, this Children's Programming Report, which you can read
17:29
Speaker 3: in full online if you'd like to check it out,
17:32
Speaker 3: had a lot of these new kind of frameworks for
17:36
Speaker 3: how the FCC felt educational and not educational things should
17:41
Speaker 3: be interpreted, or what their standards were for those things.
17:44
Speaker 3: And this kind of really kicked off a new age demographic,
17:50
Speaker 3: a new range for sixteen and younger. It kind of
17:53
Speaker 3: identified them instead of just generally just you know, kids.
17:56
Speaker 3: And another thing that this did was prohibit the advertising
18:01
Speaker 3: of tie in merchandise for cartoons during the hours of
18:04
Speaker 3: seven am to ten pm, which is one of several
18:08
Speaker 3: what do they called I believe they're called safe harbor periods.
18:11
Speaker 3: That's an FCC concept as well.
18:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, like which words one can use on air, And obviously,
18:17
Speaker 1: folks we think it's we think it's dirty pool to limit,
18:25
Speaker 1: like I'm not saying, teach every three year old all
18:28
Speaker 1: the curse words, you know. But it is imperialistic and
18:34
Speaker 1: kind of gross in general in this country to limit
18:39
Speaker 1: what people are saying or try to police what they're saying.
18:43
Speaker 1: It violates the First Amendment. But the issue here is
18:48
Speaker 1: again the loophole is the existence of children. Right, So
18:52
Speaker 1: you could argue, if you're a studio, you could say, hey,
18:55
Speaker 1: these bullies are trying to tell me what to say
18:58
Speaker 1: and how to say it. But then if you are
19:00
Speaker 1: looking at this, which again I think is well intentioned,
19:03
Speaker 1: they're saying, you guys are going to bleed households dry
19:09
Speaker 1: when you have a Gi Joe show that has Gi
19:13
Speaker 1: Joe expensive toys as the only commercial in the show. Again,
19:19
Speaker 1: I'm a huge proponent of allowing people to say what
19:23
Speaker 1: they want. It's super gross to do otherwise, I mean,
19:28
Speaker 1: including hate speech. It's the first Amendment. But as you're
19:32
Speaker 1: saying there NOL seven am to ten pm, they're clearly
19:37
Speaker 1: mapping out the window where kids would watch this stuff,
19:41
Speaker 1: and they say, Okay, let's teach the children with this
19:46
Speaker 1: amazing technology television, mass broadcasting. And now the makers of
19:54
Speaker 1: Saturday Morning Cartoons on broadcasts and on cable they have
19:59
Speaker 1: to they to figure out how to deal with these
20:01
Speaker 1: kidvid rules.
20:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's complicating things for them, for sure. It's
20:05
Speaker 3: definitely mudding the waters and all the while Cable just
20:09
Speaker 3: is not behold into this stuff. They are not required
20:12
Speaker 3: to fill up significant parts of their programming blocks with
20:16
Speaker 3: educational content. And we played you some of those segments
20:20
Speaker 3: in the last episode, like the hunk of cheese thing,
20:22
Speaker 3: well picture of that, but stretched out to literal, full
20:26
Speaker 3: length kind of programming, more like PBS style stuff. So
20:30
Speaker 3: as the nineties kind of continued on, the era of
20:34
Speaker 3: Saturday Morning Cartoons was really beginning to further kind of wane,
20:39
Speaker 3: with more folks households rather with personal computers, the advent
20:44
Speaker 3: of the Internet. Obviously VCRs had been around where you
20:48
Speaker 3: could record things off of TV, but that wasn't really
20:50
Speaker 3: eating into their market share quite as much. As things
20:53
Speaker 3: like home video DVD players began consoles that could play videos,
20:59
Speaker 3: kids were finding other ways to entertain themselves outside of
21:02
Speaker 3: broadcasts and even cable. But broadcast was really starting to
21:06
Speaker 3: show its age and was starting to become increasingly irrelevant
21:09
Speaker 3: when it came to how kids got their entertainment.
21:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, we're not saying this was a light switch moment, right,
21:17
Speaker 1: This was not a sudden flip. There are a lot
21:22
Speaker 1: of shows that many of us in the crowd will
21:24
Speaker 1: remember tonight, fellow ridiculous historians, things like Teenage Ninja, Turtles, Animaniacs,
21:30
Speaker 1: Bobby's World, of course, Pinky and the Brain earlier mentioned.
21:34
Speaker 1: These are cult classics. They've spawned so many iterations, so
21:39
Speaker 1: many memes. In some cases they've spawned full on film adaptations.
21:45
Speaker 1: And then you have, of course Nickelodeon, the legendary cartoon network,
21:49
Speaker 1: Adult Swim, Disney Channel. Of course, the mouse has been
21:53
Speaker 1: in this game from the beginning. So there are other
21:58
Speaker 1: way they're saying, Okay, I can't do what we want
22:03
Speaker 1: in these specific constraints of the federal government of the
22:07
Speaker 1: United States. We're going to find other ways to sell
22:12
Speaker 1: stuff to children. That's what's happening, and that leads us
22:16
Speaker 1: to one of the quintessential textbook examples of this adaptation,
22:22
Speaker 1: which is Pokemon.
22:25
Speaker 3: Hooke, hm on, you gotta poke that mom pokem on?
22:30
Speaker 3: Man never was my thing. I think it hit a
22:33
Speaker 3: little late for us, I did, I don't know, Max?
22:36
Speaker 3: Did it hit just about the right time for you? Yeah,
22:39
Speaker 3: you're a little younger than us.
22:40
Speaker 1: Where were you at? Next?
22:41
Speaker 5: I want to be the very best. No one ever was?
22:47
Speaker 5: Is my real test? Train them is, buddy?
22:53
Speaker 2: This is this is this peak.
22:56
Speaker 4: It wasn't really a this wasn't really a Saturday Cartoons.
22:59
Speaker 2: I watched it like every day before right, it was life.
23:02
Speaker 4: This was when I was in elementary school. This was
23:05
Speaker 4: the show. And man we talked about commercialized shows. There
23:10
Speaker 4: is nothing like poll COmON.
23:11
Speaker 1: So it's nineteen ninety eight and our young Max Beachhead
23:17
Speaker 1: Williams is grow it up, dealing with all the trials
23:22
Speaker 1: and travails and triumphs of be the child. We see
23:27
Speaker 1: that none other than our super producer is embroiled in
23:32
Speaker 1: something that is a true paradigm shift. It's a sea change.
23:36
Speaker 1: It up ends the viewing habits of children, It accelerates
23:41
Speaker 1: the decline of the big network Saturday morning dominance because,
23:47
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Max, this becomes a show you
23:51
Speaker 1: watch before you go to school every weekday.
23:54
Speaker 4: Correct, yep, every single day. Because there were so many episodes.
23:57
Speaker 4: I think the first season I looked this up at
23:59
Speaker 4: one point was like eighty two episodes.
24:01
Speaker 3: Because wasn't it already It already hit big in Japan,
24:03
Speaker 3: so these are just being repackaged and re dubbed, and
24:06
Speaker 3: it was like just an endless content stream from Japan.
24:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's also kind of a regression. And I
24:14
Speaker 4: remember my dad loved shows like The Animaniacs and stuff
24:16
Speaker 4: like that because he could watch that with us and
24:18
Speaker 4: we find it funny. We actually, on vacation were referencing
24:21
Speaker 4: Tiny Tunes a whole bunch because there's a famous scene
24:23
Speaker 4: in Tiny Tunes where they summer vacation episode where they
24:26
Speaker 4: go spend like forever the whole summer going to amusement
24:29
Speaker 4: park and then they go ride them on a round
24:32
Speaker 4: and leave. That's some making fun of like vacations that
24:34
Speaker 4: are like that. But my parents never liked Pokemon because
24:37
Speaker 4: the actual writing quality horrible. Is it's it's kind of
24:43
Speaker 4: a step back.
24:44
Speaker 2: It's like.
24:48
Speaker 1: They grind out so much stuff. And you guys will
24:51
Speaker 1: see this when you encounter you when you travel to Japan. Right,
24:57
Speaker 1: we're going separately this year, but maybe when you were
25:00
Speaker 1: go together.
25:01
Speaker 2: Uh.
25:01
Speaker 1: The the sheer one piece, right, the One Piece franchise
25:06
Speaker 1: is another example of this. The sheer number of episodes
25:11
Speaker 1: in a thing means a lot of filler. Like I
25:14
Speaker 1: I also remember this was maybe a little bit earlier,
25:19
Speaker 1: maybe around the same time. I remember Dragon Ball Z
25:23
Speaker 1: if you ever saw that one, guys, Uh, most of
25:26
Speaker 1: the episodes are people talking about how they're charging up
25:30
Speaker 1: their power moves.
25:32
Speaker 4: To be honest, my friend Enrika, he's a he has
25:35
Speaker 4: every dragon Ball thing he's done. I've seen all dragon Balls.
25:38
Speaker 2: The I watched.
25:39
Speaker 4: Actually in college, I brought up with the fact that, like,
25:42
Speaker 4: you know, the Freeze of Saga is just Goku doing
25:45
Speaker 4: uh sit ups in a ship for like twenty.
25:47
Speaker 2: Episodes about I'm about to that's it.
25:52
Speaker 3: Ten thousand however, a hundred million or whatever the numbers.
25:56
Speaker 3: I mean, it is so much there you go, it's
26:00
Speaker 3: to corny throw out. And I guess a lot of
26:01
Speaker 3: that comes in the fact that it is translated and
26:03
Speaker 3: they are like you know, having to do the voices
26:06
Speaker 3: of the dubbing, and there is a certain amount of
26:08
Speaker 3: kind of regression that goes into that. It's not until
26:11
Speaker 3: you see like Studio Ghibli and the dubbing and the
26:13
Speaker 3: quality of voice acting in those films that you kind
26:16
Speaker 3: of see a good version of what could be accomplished.
26:19
Speaker 3: But they're trying to churn these things out, so you're
26:22
Speaker 3: gonna have a bit of a throwback or a step
26:25
Speaker 3: back in quality in that department. But what can't be
26:28
Speaker 3: denied is that it was an absolute craze, Dragon Ball,
26:32
Speaker 3: all of the anime stuff that was kind of flooding
26:35
Speaker 3: the zone. But Pokemon in particular, that weekday kind of
26:39
Speaker 3: appointment viewing was really just absolutely eating Saturday morning cartoons' lunch.
26:46
Speaker 1: And I've got to point out I will slightly derail us, guys.
26:50
Speaker 1: I've got to point out on the on the note
26:54
Speaker 1: regarding Studio Ghibli, there is a phenomenal stage adaptation of
26:59
Speaker 1: Spirit Did to Wait that is coming to Yeah, we
27:03
Speaker 1: could watch it online. I had seen previously because it's
27:07
Speaker 1: you know, it's based in Japan, but they're going to
27:10
Speaker 1: have a showing of it in Los Angeles and in London.
27:16
Speaker 1: It's traveling the world. La is probably the closest to us.
27:20
Speaker 1: So I say, we go, are you guys down day?
27:22
Speaker 3: I I've just seen little snippets of it online. It
27:26
Speaker 3: looks incredible, And you say it is streaming. It's available
27:29
Speaker 3: to view online currently, Yeah.
27:31
Speaker 1: Yep, you can find it on Amazon Prime. It's it's
27:34
Speaker 1: a great hangout movie night, you know, because we're I
27:38
Speaker 1: think we're all in love with the innovations of Japanese poetry.
27:42
Speaker 1: This is astonishing. Even if you don't care for plays,
27:45
Speaker 1: if you enjoy hearing about cartoons, this is a live
27:49
Speaker 1: action cartoon. It's way better than it should be. And
27:54
Speaker 1: that thus ends our derailments here, because Noel, I don't
27:59
Speaker 1: want to lose the amazing point you just made, which
28:03
Speaker 1: is that things like weekday morning appointment viewing, they absolutely
28:11
Speaker 1: rock the industry. Advertisers were coming back into the fold
28:16
Speaker 1: because they said, if we can get the kids before
28:19
Speaker 1: they go to school, that we can make you know,
28:23
Speaker 1: instead of two days worth of money on the weekends,
28:26
Speaker 1: we can make seven days worth of money through advertising.
28:32
Speaker 1: And Pokemon also helps normalize and popularize the idea of
28:38
Speaker 1: anime in the West, right outside of the Wiyaboos and
28:43
Speaker 1: using that I'm using that term the way it's meant
28:46
Speaker 1: to be used. We're not trying to cast dispersion. We're
28:50
Speaker 1: just people. Yeah, most people didn't didn't know about, or
28:56
Speaker 1: care about or like this stuff. And I think he
28:58
Speaker 1: nailed an excellent point in that this is a repackaging
29:02
Speaker 1: of stuff that was originally created in Japan, and Japan
29:07
Speaker 1: through the intervening decades of post World War two, they
29:11
Speaker 1: just got so far ahead in cartoon war like just
29:16
Speaker 1: absolutely way better than the US.
29:19
Speaker 2: For a minute, no, no question about it. Ben Oh.
29:22
Speaker 1: And we should point out also when we say weekday
29:24
Speaker 1: appointment viewing an important point here, which is in your research,
29:30
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about that six thirty to a
29:35
Speaker 1: thirty block where kids are getting ready or going to school.
29:40
Speaker 1: We're also talking about immediately after school three thirty to
29:46
Speaker 1: five thirty or what have you, the kids who don't
29:48
Speaker 1: have extra curriculars, who maybe Latchkei kids their main thing
29:54
Speaker 1: is going to be watching TV and waiting for their
29:57
Speaker 1: parents to get home.
29:59
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. So at the same time, some of
30:03
Speaker 3: these new rules were really you know, just absolutely hamstringing.
30:09
Speaker 3: Some of these legacy networks and making them have to
30:12
Speaker 3: air more and more educational content, leaving them far less
30:16
Speaker 3: competitive against some of these really, really, really powerful franchises
30:21
Speaker 3: like Pokemon, Ugo, Digimon, Dragon Ball, all of that stuff
30:26
Speaker 3: across weekdays on cable, and this was absolutely becoming just
30:31
Speaker 3: the death knell for the concept of Saturday morning cartoons.
30:42
Speaker 1: What we're building the case here for folks is that
30:45
Speaker 1: in the two thousands the two thousand, the center of
30:50
Speaker 1: gravity has been shifting decisively to cable. So now the
30:56
Speaker 1: kids are not just saying, what did you see on
30:58
Speaker 1: ABC or CBS, They're saying, oh my gosh, Billy's dad
31:03
Speaker 1: has cable at the house. We gotta go and broadcast
31:09
Speaker 1: networks the old guys are outsourcing their blocks of cartoon programming,
31:15
Speaker 1: or they're shutting it down entirely. They're doing something really
31:20
Speaker 1: interesting that if you and I were kids, we would
31:24
Speaker 1: not have understood at the time. Like NBC is essentially
31:31
Speaker 1: selling real estate to Discovery Kids, They're leasing time to them.
31:38
Speaker 1: It's a similar practice to what we saw with whomever
31:41
Speaker 1: replaced Stephen Colbert's Late night program. I haven't watched it.
31:47
Speaker 2: But I do know what you're talking about.
31:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, they they Essentially.
31:52
Speaker 2: It was a new model where he's like paying to.
31:54
Speaker 1: Be on the air essentially, right, Yeah, and that's what
31:57
Speaker 1: that's It's weird because we hold a new model for
32:01
Speaker 1: late night TV, but in this case with cartoons, we
32:06
Speaker 1: see it is the same model NBC least time to Discovery,
32:12
Speaker 1: Fox had something called Number four Kids TV, and then
32:17
Speaker 1: the CW moves to outsourcing programming. Didn't they guys, correct
32:22
Speaker 1: me if I'm off base here. Didn't they used to
32:25
Speaker 1: be the Country Western Network CWN was that different from CW.
32:30
Speaker 2: I don't know, Ben.
32:31
Speaker 3: There were so many like rebrandings of those like TLC
32:35
Speaker 3: became its own thing, to the Learning Channel, and then
32:38
Speaker 3: it just kind of it's sort of like removing the
32:40
Speaker 3: meaning of the acronym or trying to strip it away,
32:42
Speaker 3: like Kentucky Fried Chicken turning into this KFC, et cetera.
32:45
Speaker 2: So it's hard to keep tracks sometimes, man.
32:48
Speaker 4: It is a fusion dance between the CBS Corporation and
32:53
Speaker 4: Warner Brothers C and.
32:55
Speaker 2: W the phone and fall in knowledge.
33:04
Speaker 5: It's just for you right now?
33:11
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, So, as you were saying, no, CWN is
33:15
Speaker 1: something entirely different, got.
33:17
Speaker 2: It, got it.
33:18
Speaker 3: I was also thinking, there's Country c CTNE.
33:23
Speaker 1: Okay, and then there's CNN.
33:26
Speaker 2: CMT CMT Country Music Television.
33:29
Speaker 1: The one CMT is the one. And then we got
33:32
Speaker 1: Cartoon Network, which later spawns Adult Swim. We've got Nickelodeon,
33:37
Speaker 1: Disney Channel. They're running animation all week. If you don't
33:41
Speaker 1: believe us, check it out now. Uh, And then you
33:44
Speaker 1: have you have the erosion of the appointment television habit
33:50
Speaker 1: because now we can uh, we can record stuff in
33:54
Speaker 1: advance for our kids, right, and we can play it
33:58
Speaker 1: when we want those kids to trackeded by a screen.
34:01
Speaker 1: And it's two thousand and eight, so we're not at
34:04
Speaker 1: the point where every child has a smartphone. We see
34:08
Speaker 1: the I guess, as Gizmotos said it, we see the
34:14
Speaker 1: death knell really coming into play in twenty fourteen when
34:19
Speaker 1: the CW's outfit Vortex with two x's ends. That's right,
34:25
Speaker 1: the last that marks the end of it.
34:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, big time. And as Bob A.
34:31
Speaker 3: Sora Canitch from Gizmoto put it, I'm just going to
34:35
Speaker 3: quote directly from this piece he wrote that came out
34:38
Speaker 3: right after this kind of you know, watershed moment. It's
34:42
Speaker 3: the end of an era, he said, but it's been
34:43
Speaker 3: a long time coming. NBC ditch Saturday Morning cartoons in
34:47
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two, CBS followed suit not long after, and
34:51
Speaker 3: ABC lost this animated weekend mornings in two thousand and four.
34:56
Speaker 3: The CW, he goes on a lower tier broadcast network,
35:01
Speaker 3: was the last holdout in a game that the Big
35:04
Speaker 3: three left long ago.
35:06
Speaker 1: Ouch lower tier.
35:10
Speaker 3: They kind of were, I mean, y, yeah, they were
35:13
Speaker 3: one of those like the WB, you know, the CW,
35:16
Speaker 3: they had some of these kind of you know, lower
35:18
Speaker 3: quality teen dramas, and then they had sort of like
35:21
Speaker 3: I believe the WB is where didn't you have like
35:24
Speaker 3: Buffy the Vampire Slayer on one of those as well?
35:26
Speaker 3: They were they had like kind of a little bit
35:29
Speaker 3: schlockier content, it would seem. I'm not saying Buffy schlocky.
35:32
Speaker 3: Buffy rules people love it, but it was yeah, very
35:35
Speaker 3: very good. But I think it's not an unfair characterization there.
35:40
Speaker 3: And then we finally have Lisa Golombowski who kind of
35:44
Speaker 3: further eulogizing Saturday Morning cartoons in a piece she wrote
35:48
Speaker 3: for Refinery twenty nine in October of twenty fourteen. And
35:52
Speaker 3: I think this is a great way to wrap up
35:54
Speaker 3: this section. The nation mourns today as we witnessed the
35:57
Speaker 3: first weekend in America without Saturday Morning cartoons in more
36:01
Speaker 3: than fifty years. Last weekend, the CW ran the final
36:05
Speaker 3: installment of its vortex with two Axes by the Way
36:08
Speaker 3: animation block, marking the last gasp of the decades long
36:12
Speaker 3: animation domination. The network has replaced it with One Magnificent Morning,
36:17
Speaker 3: which promises all the wonders read boredom of live action
36:21
Speaker 3: educational programming. But not all is lost, Ben, because we're
36:27
Speaker 3: starting to see some really fun kind of reboots and
36:30
Speaker 3: nostalgia baiting but admittedly pretty high quality versions of some
36:36
Speaker 3: of these eighties cartoons that we sort of have this
36:40
Speaker 3: soft spot for in all of our hearts.
36:42
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, a bunch of a bunch of kids
36:44
Speaker 1: who grew up on Saturday Morning cartoons are now big
36:49
Speaker 1: studio moguls and they're chopping their bubblegum cigars and they're sick.
36:54
Speaker 1: Yeah I should do Yeah, let's not waste time on
36:59
Speaker 1: new risky ideas like the phenomenal Pacific rim. Let's look
37:04
Speaker 1: at the old pieces of intellectual property. This stuff I liked,
37:08
Speaker 1: you know, top tough, tough top. They say, let's make
37:11
Speaker 1: Vultron sleeker, sexier, more character driven. Let's get some good writers.
37:17
Speaker 1: Remember how we didn't respect writers. Let's get some good
37:20
Speaker 1: ones for Ductails and reboot that.
37:23
Speaker 2: You know comedians?
37:24
Speaker 3: Do you recognizable comedians doing voice parts.
37:28
Speaker 1: Paton Oswald as Splinter? Why not, guys, Let's think outside
37:34
Speaker 1: of the box. The calculus here is is weaponized nostalgia.
37:41
Speaker 1: It is the idea that you know, the Lago Company
37:46
Speaker 1: is phenomenal with this. It's the idea that your kids
37:50
Speaker 1: that you got early on, the ones you propagandized, the
37:54
Speaker 1: ones you indoctrinated, you got in their heads with it.
37:57
Speaker 1: As they age up into their own adulthood and have
38:00
Speaker 1: their own children, they want to share that story of
38:05
Speaker 1: their own evolution. And they have disposable incomes. So obviously,
38:10
Speaker 1: an eight year old is going to have a hard
38:12
Speaker 1: time convincing their parents to pay three hundred dollars for
38:18
Speaker 1: a Lego set.
38:19
Speaker 3: But if you want to be the cool parent, and
38:21
Speaker 3: you also maybe wanted a little bit for yourself, let's
38:24
Speaker 3: be honest.
38:25
Speaker 1: You know you wanted a hundred a bit for yourself,
38:28
Speaker 1: Let's be honest. Yeah, So that's that is that is
38:33
Speaker 1: part and parcel of what is fueling this new renaissance
38:38
Speaker 1: in Saturday morning cartoons, even if they're not on Saturday mornings.
38:42
Speaker 3: And admittedly Ben and Max too. You know, this doesn't
38:47
Speaker 3: necessarily mean that some of these reboots aren't fun and
38:50
Speaker 3: pretty good. Like The X Men ninety seven is absolutely
38:53
Speaker 3: what you're describing. There is a cynical view of it
38:56
Speaker 3: that could be taken and saying that it's some sort
38:58
Speaker 3: of cash grab, know, to capitalize on nostalgia, but it
39:01
Speaker 3: also is being written and helm clearly by people with
39:04
Speaker 3: a serious affection for the original material and and trying
39:08
Speaker 3: to think it should be true a million percent, dude,
39:11
Speaker 3: And I think that's the case with a lot of
39:13
Speaker 3: these shows. Uh, Teenage Being Ninja, Turtles keeps getting reimagined
39:17
Speaker 3: Masters of the Universe. There's other versions of that that
39:19
Speaker 3: were fun, some of which didn't quite go, including I
39:23
Speaker 3: believe the live action MO two movie that I think
39:28
Speaker 3: was a bit of a flop.
39:29
Speaker 2: But you saw it and said it was a good time.
39:31
Speaker 1: It was a good time. I mean, it's look, are
39:35
Speaker 1: we expecting something like an a war an Academy Award
39:41
Speaker 1: winning thing. No, are we jared leto fans, I'll definitely
39:47
Speaker 1: nah really but but yeah, you're you're nailing it there.
39:52
Speaker 1: It's the sweet spot. As as you said in your research,
39:57
Speaker 1: modern storytelling more inclusive cast links to old themes and
40:03
Speaker 1: Easter eggs, heaps and heaps of merchandise, one of which
40:07
Speaker 1: we have here now. It's a skeletor popcorn cup. It's
40:13
Speaker 1: his brains, yeah, because it opens to the it's so weird.
40:18
Speaker 1: It's not as off footing as that dune sandworton cup.
40:23
Speaker 3: No, or the recent uh Supergirl commemorative soda cup that
40:31
Speaker 3: has inexplicably a flesh colored trench coat on it that
40:35
Speaker 3: when you look at it from behind just kind of
40:37
Speaker 3: looks like a aany a Vaney dome.
40:40
Speaker 1: Georgia O'Keefe, would.
40:42
Speaker 2: Anyone, yes, please more of that? I'll have what she's having. So,
40:47
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess it's been to wrap it up.
40:48
Speaker 3: Saturday Morning cartoons didn't just vanish overnight, like you said.
40:51
Speaker 3: This was kind of a death by a thousand cuts
40:53
Speaker 3: thing that happened over time.
40:55
Speaker 2: They were squeezed out.
40:56
Speaker 3: The cable network started airing animation all week long. We
41:00
Speaker 3: didn't really get into DVRs, because that's not even as
41:02
Speaker 3: relevant anymore. But that was a thing the kind of
41:04
Speaker 3: replaced VCRs and allowed on demand viewing, So the appointment
41:10
Speaker 3: viewing habit really became kind of less and less relevant,
41:14
Speaker 3: and streaming truly finished the job by letting kids watch
41:16
Speaker 3: anything they want at any time. Meanwhile, the FCC educational
41:20
Speaker 3: rules made these legacy broadcasters just absolutely eat into their
41:25
Speaker 3: airtime with hours of educational programming, and of course the
41:32
Speaker 3: toymakers and the advertisers they migrated away to folks like Nickelodeon,
41:40
Speaker 3: Fox Kids and the WB.
41:42
Speaker 1: So the thing is that while this current ritual or
41:48
Speaker 1: this former ritual faded away at the time, and by
41:54
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, the last broadcast holdout ended. As we said,
41:58
Speaker 1: the cartoons themsel elves soldiered on. They simply moved and
42:04
Speaker 1: adapted to wherever the kids already were. I would say,
42:08
Speaker 1: the kids present and the kids past right the kid's former.
42:13
Speaker 1: So if you want, and a lot of people do this,
42:16
Speaker 1: if you ever want to have an excellent binge of
42:20
Speaker 1: something like Captain Planet or he Man and Masters at
42:23
Speaker 1: the Universe or Gem in the Holograms, you can easily
42:28
Speaker 1: go find it and that is a beautiful thing, because
42:33
Speaker 1: as ridiculous as the premises of so many of these
42:36
Speaker 1: cartoons are, they rule and we're super happy that they
42:41
Speaker 1: are there. Big big thanks or super producer mister Max Williams.
42:45
Speaker 1: Big thanks to our research associate for this series, mister
42:49
Speaker 1: Noel Brown. And Nola got to ask you, what do
42:51
Speaker 1: you think Jonathan Strickland aka The Quister's favorite cartoon was.
42:57
Speaker 2: It's a good question.
42:58
Speaker 3: It's probably something sword and sorcery related, maybe some of
43:03
Speaker 3: those maybe some of those O, G, D and D
43:05
Speaker 3: cartoons from being charitable, he also was basically his favorite
43:11
Speaker 3: cartoon character is probably Doctor claw On Inspector Gadget, because
43:14
Speaker 3: that's like they have, you know, the sort of spiritual
43:17
Speaker 3: commonalities there.
43:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say his favorite cartoon characters himself.
43:22
Speaker 3: I did not walk right into that one, and I
43:24
Speaker 3: should have. Well, well, well said Ben, and you know what,
43:27
Speaker 3: let's just say I'll who's thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka
43:29
Speaker 3: The Quister, A J. Mohammas Jacobs, the Puzzler, Rachel Big,
43:32
Speaker 3: Spanish Lance, the Doctor, the Underwater Doctor herself.
43:36
Speaker 1: Big big thanks as well to the rude dudes of
43:38
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime if you dig us, you will love them.
43:43
Speaker 1: We can't wait to we can't wait to announce when
43:46
Speaker 1: we have them back on a collaboration. We also and
43:51
Speaker 1: I guess we should tease it here even though we
43:54
Speaker 1: don't have to. We're also taking to our super producer
43:58
Speaker 1: Max and our pal Matt Fredrick, along with a few
44:01
Speaker 1: compatriots on a tour of the High Seas for different shoes.
44:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true, we are doing that.
44:09
Speaker 3: We're going to Bermuda by way of the Port of
44:13
Speaker 3: New York, one of many.
44:15
Speaker 2: It's not just one.
44:16
Speaker 1: We're so mystified by the toured authority too.
44:19
Speaker 2: I know that's pretty it's the thing. Yeah, and why
44:21
Speaker 2: do they run the bus terminals? I don't understand what
44:24
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly.
44:26
Speaker 3: So where are we gonna be doing that? With Virgin Voyages?
44:29
Speaker 3: You can if you just look up what is it
44:31
Speaker 3: stuff at sea? You can book yourself a cabin on
44:34
Speaker 3: that journey with us. What we'll be hanging out? That's
44:37
Speaker 3: when has that been? Early October is when the actual
44:39
Speaker 3: voyage takes place.
44:40
Speaker 1: That's right, it's October two to the seventh. We hope
44:43
Speaker 1: to see you there. And Noel, I had a great
44:46
Speaker 1: time with this. I knew you've got to go watch
44:49
Speaker 1: another episode, but I'm gonna be honest with you guys.
44:53
Speaker 1: More and more often, I've been working out too old cartoons.
44:57
Speaker 3: So many amazing super cut of them on YouTube that
45:01
Speaker 3: you can watch.
45:02
Speaker 2: Pretty freely as well. So try that yourself.
45:04
Speaker 3: Pump some iron, take a page out of the book
45:07
Speaker 3: of Ben and do some squats to some old he
45:10
Speaker 3: Man cartoons.
45:12
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, folks.
45:20
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
45:24
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.