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The Children's Television Act didn't have anything to do with it? My understanding is that that's what brought in the E/I programming that fills (filled? it's b

The Children's Television Act didn't have anything to do with it? My understanding is that that's what brought in the E/I programming that fills (filled? it's been a few years since I looked) the space Saturday morning cartoons used to occupy on the broadcast networks. I've no doubt the other things the author lists contributed too, but it's surprising to either see E/I omitted or to learn that it had no noticeable causal effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulations_on_children%27s_television_programming_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulations_on_children%27s_te...

giantrobot 1y ago
I was surprised as well. It seems the CTA really helped kill kids programming on broadcast stations. In the LA market there was Saturday and Sunday morning cartoons. By 2000 both NBC and CBS (IIRC) had stopped Saturday morning programming and ABC's entertaining content had been replaced by E/I dreck.
- qingcharles 1y ago
  Everyone here is shitting on E/I, but I really enjoyed a lot of that programming. It still goes out regularly on broadcast TV.
cogman10 1y ago
From what I recall in the 90s (and this is just my own memory). I remember enjoying the cartoons even with the E/I regulations. None of the cartoons I got were really the GI Joe style advert cartoons. But what I also remember is that the broadcast networks over the years started reducing the number of cartoons they broadcast. I remember watching cartoons until like noon in the heyday. By the end of our broadcast cartoons, they were strictly a 1-to-2-hour event. I suspect that part of the reason for that is cartoons became a lot less lucrative with advert requirements. It wasn't until my parents got satellite TV (which got a LOT cheaper over my childhood. The old behemoth dishes were a sight to behold) that I experienced cartoons more like the GI Joe period. Cartoon network, nick, disney all had hours of unregulated cartoon nonsense with hours of kid targeted commercials. And, by then, Saturday morning was dead as a cartoon time. Why wake up early for cartoons when you could simply turn on the cartoon channel?
- reactordev 1y ago
  Prior to Cartoon Network, and computer animation, there was: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X-Men Doug David The Gnome Care-bears My little pony Hello Kitty He-Man Garfield The Littles Duck Tales Thundercats Simpsons Today we have: Family Guy Bobs Burgers South Park King of the Hill Simpsons 3D animation took over and if you can do 3D, why make it look like a cartoon? obviously there’s more… but just pointing out the shift away from cartoon.
  - LocalH 1y ago
    It's very interesting how the industry spent decades refining the art of 2D animation, only for most of them to throw it all away when 3D became cheap and good. Especially Disney.
  - cogman10 1y ago
    What do you mean by 3D animations? AFAIK, there's still a ton of cartoons produced using 2d animation techniques for children/teens, they are simply all done using computer animation.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    > King of the Hill In case it's not yet widely known, KOTH is available on archive.org https://archive.org/details/king-of-the-hill_202103 https://archive.org/details/king-of-the-hill_202103 and coming back for another season on Hulu https://youtu.be/GleTI7jDWOs https://youtu.be/GleTI7jDWOs
  - autoexec 1y ago
    Today there are still cartoony cartoons like The Dragon Prince, Miraculous, and Bluey but generally the decline in animation quality because of "3D" is noticeable. I keep hoping that Disney will make a comeback and bring us more shows like amphibia, owl house, and gravity falls (Hailey's on it was pretty good too). Cartoon network had adventure time, steven universe, infinity train, over the garden wall, Craig of the creek, Iyanu, etc. Streaming services like netflix put out cartoons too like Kipo and Hilda. The cartoon landscape is different now, but it's not gone and if you wanted to you could easily wake up early on a Saturday morning and binge great cartoons all day.
jghn 1y ago
This is interesting. Even as an adult I was always a big fan of Saturday morning cartoons. And I have a very distinct memory of somewhere around 1999-2001 that fading out of existence and being replaced by the sort of schlock you describe.

giantrobot 1y ago

I was surprised as well. It seems the CTA really helped kill kids programming on broadcast stations. In the LA market there was Saturday and Sunday morning cartoons. By 2000 both NBC and CBS (IIRC) had stopped Saturday morning programming and ABC's entertaining content had been replaced by E/I dreck.

qingcharles 1y ago
Everyone here is shitting on E/I, but I really enjoyed a lot of that programming. It still goes out regularly on broadcast TV.

cogman10 1y ago

From what I recall in the 90s (and this is just my own memory). I remember enjoying the cartoons even with the E/I regulations. None of the cartoons I got were really the GI Joe style advert cartoons. But what I also remember is that the broadcast networks over the years started reducing the number of cartoons they broadcast. I remember watching cartoons until like noon in the heyday. By the end of our broadcast cartoons, they were strictly a 1-to-2-hour event. I suspect that part of the reason for that is cartoons became a lot less lucrative with advert requirements. It wasn't until my parents got satellite TV (which got a LOT cheaper over my childhood. The old behemoth dishes were a sight to behold) that I experienced cartoons more like the GI Joe period. Cartoon network, nick, disney all had hours of unregulated cartoon nonsense with hours of kid targeted commercials. And, by then, Saturday morning was dead as a cartoon time. Why wake up early for cartoons when you could simply turn on the cartoon channel?

reactordev 1y ago
Prior to Cartoon Network, and computer animation, there was: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X-Men Doug David The Gnome Care-bears My little pony Hello Kitty He-Man Garfield The Littles Duck Tales Thundercats Simpsons Today we have: Family Guy Bobs Burgers South Park King of the Hill Simpsons 3D animation took over and if you can do 3D, why make it look like a cartoon? obviously there’s more… but just pointing out the shift away from cartoon.
- LocalH 1y ago
  It's very interesting how the industry spent decades refining the art of 2D animation, only for most of them to throw it all away when 3D became cheap and good. Especially Disney.
- cogman10 1y ago
  What do you mean by 3D animations? AFAIK, there's still a ton of cartoons produced using 2d animation techniques for children/teens, they are simply all done using computer animation.
- fragmede 1y ago
  > King of the Hill In case it's not yet widely known, KOTH is available on archive.org https://archive.org/details/king-of-the-hill_202103 https://archive.org/details/king-of-the-hill_202103 and coming back for another season on Hulu https://youtu.be/GleTI7jDWOs https://youtu.be/GleTI7jDWOs
- autoexec 1y ago
  Today there are still cartoony cartoons like The Dragon Prince, Miraculous, and Bluey but generally the decline in animation quality because of "3D" is noticeable. I keep hoping that Disney will make a comeback and bring us more shows like amphibia, owl house, and gravity falls (Hailey's on it was pretty good too). Cartoon network had adventure time, steven universe, infinity train, over the garden wall, Craig of the creek, Iyanu, etc. Streaming services like netflix put out cartoons too like Kipo and Hilda. The cartoon landscape is different now, but it's not gone and if you wanted to you could easily wake up early on a Saturday morning and binge great cartoons all day.

jghn 1y ago

This is interesting. Even as an adult I was always a big fan of Saturday morning cartoons. And I have a very distinct memory of somewhere around 1999-2001 that fading out of existence and being replaced by the sort of schlock you describe.