The State of Saturday Mornings

If you were like me when you were younger you woke up Saturday morning and sat down in front of the TV to watch cartoons. For me, that was my Saturday. Wake up, eat breakfast, watch cartoons all morning then do whatever afterwards. Some people got out of watching cartoons as they got older, not me. I continued to watch them well into my teens. Part of it was due to the fact that I always got up early each day and Saturdays would be no different. The only difference was that I didn't have to get ready for school on Saturdays. It was my day.

I had my routine down pat. I knew which shows were on which stations at a given time so I could plan my cartooning accordingly. The three main stations I watched were Fox Kids, Kids WB and ABC's One Saturday Morning. For most of my live-action shows I would turn to TNBC. I would watch shows like "Hang Time", "City Guys", "California Dreams", "Saved by the Bell". One Saturday Mornings had my favorite shows like "The Weekenders", "Recess" and "Fillmore!" but it wasn't my go-to station. Kids WB and Fox Kids were my real time wasters. They had the shows I used to watch religiously: "Eerie, Indiana", "Digimon", "Bobby's World", "Power Rangers", "X-Men", "The Tick", "Animaniacs", "Batman & Superman: The Animated Series", "Pokemon", "Static Shock", "Jackie Chan Adventures"...the list goes on and on. I don't really watch cartoons anymore except for "The Simpsons", "Metalocalypse" and "South Park" and a few others but those are clearly not suitable for Saturday Mornings.

A few weekends ago I was feeling a bit nostalgic and decided to see what cartoons were on TV. I started at the beginning of the networks: CBS. They used to carry shows, but I never watched them. Now they carry shows like "Noonbory and the Super 7" (huh?) and they rerun One Saturday Morning's old "Sabrina the Animated Series". NBC has ditched the teen-oriented live-action shows for cartoons named "Turbo Dogs" and "Shelldon", among others. Kids WB, now called The CW 4 Kids is still going strong in the cartoon department and has a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show and a bunch of other Japanese-style anime cartoons, including reruns of "Yu-Gi-Oh!". ABC's One Saturday Morning is now ABC Kids. They ditched the cartoons and now broadcast Disney Channel shows like "Hannah Montana" and "The Suit Life with Zack and Cody" they also added on other former cultural phenomenon to their lineup: "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers". Only, they've dumbed it down. They put title bars under nearly everything. For example, when they morph into their ranger forms and call their zords we see a title pop up saying the name of the zord. As if they didn't just hear it! They also added ka-pows and zany sound effects when people fall, which are useless. Fox Kids is gone and now the network shows some "Saved by the Bell" reruns on top of documentary-style wildlife shows.

I think a lot of the missing content is due to the huge impact cable and satellite programming have made. Now it is more accessible for kids to watch cartoons elsewhere because there's an entire network devoted to cartoons. When I was growing up not every kid had cable, me included, so I made good with what I had and loved it all the way. What bothers me is that kids today are very impatient. If they don't see something on TV they like, they change it immediately because they know they can find something else. I never had that option, it was either watch a "Doug" rerun I'd seen a dozen times on ABC or Creflo Dollar and I chose the former.

What's happened to Saturday Mornings? Maybe this is me being nostalgic but the stations I used to love watching now show shows that are horribly written/animated (there seems to be a high volume of computer animated shows now because it's cheaper, and it shows), they are boring, and extremely uninspiring. Not to mention that almost every network is showing a rerun of a popular show from the past: "Sabrina", "Hannah Montana", "Saved by the Bell" and "Yu-Gi-Oh!". Most of the best content is now on cable and satellite channels making the network Saturday morning schedule thinner than in the past.

The state of Saturday mornings is dire. Comic book fans will remember the critically acclaimed "Batman: The Animated Series" as being expertly crafted in all aspects, and it was developed with Saturday mornings in mind. "Animaniacs" was an over-the-top zany adventure every week filled with entertainment references about Rob Reiner and "Citizen Kane" I wouldn't get until I was older but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I look at the characters in these new shows and I ask: Where's the TJ Detweiler from "Recess" I wanted to emulate? Where's the sense of whimsy I got while watching Tai and Agumon journey through the Digiworld in "Digimon"? It seems to be missing from these new shows, or maybe I'm just not young enough to watch them in the first place. Maybe the shows of my era were looked on as bad by the older generation. Maybe I am a part of a cycle that will repeat itself when the kids watching the shows now get older. A part of my believes that but another part thinks that these new shows are just plain terrible.

With the ever-expanding TV landscape making it easier for Saturday morning programming to be found every day of the week, the niche Saturday morning programming of cartoons and shows are no longer special. It is now commonplace to find cartoons and oddball kid sitcoms on TV any time you want. This does not mean the death of Saturday mornings but they seem to have just become another morning.