The War on Saturday Morning

I came across this Newsarama article today. According to the article, 4Kids will end it’s association with Fox and will no longer maintain a Saturday morning line-up. Instead, your local affiliate will air more infomercials and local content. (Mostly infomercials, I’ll bet.) What the heck is wrong with Fox?

When they created the Fox Kids Saturday morning lineup, that was fine, but then they pushed syndicated cartoons out of the afternoon, and the stations dropped any morning cartoons in favor of more infomercials, and a second airing of Jerry Springer and Maury Povich (what, once a day isn’t enough?). Not to be outdone, the WB also had a weekday Kids WB! line-up created, but both dropped their weekday lineups. Nobody was distrubuting cartoons in syndication anymore because all the local channels are now part of a network. I’m surprised there are any live-action (non-kid friendly and not family programming) shows made for syndication these days.

Then it gets worse. Fox almost dropped Saturday mornings as well, since “they” didn’t want to be bothered once Haim Saban sold his library (and the top money making Power Rangers franchise) to Disney. (Disney moved the show to ABC, and aired the series on ABC Family’s “Jetix” block, later dropping all animation over on Toon Disney, who will occasionally air non-cartoon programming, as does Cartoon Network, but that’s for another time.)

The other networks can’t be bothered, either. NBC started airing teen sitcoms and dropped cartoons altogether. Later on, they let Discovery Kids air their programming, and started a stream of outsourcing their Saturdays. (NBC Saturdays are now produced by Qubo.) CBS put their line-up in the hands of DiC Entertainment, and ABC just airs stuff you can already find on Disney Channel and the latest version of Power Rangers. The WB held out for a while, but eventually the CW just let 4Kids handle them as well.

I’m not privy to the details as to why 4Kids took over two stations, or why their deal with Fox ended (the final 4KidsTV broadcast will be in December, with some of their shows moving over to CW 4Kids or canceled outright–probably the ones without new episodes like Sonic X), but I’m disappointed that Fox isn’t even going to bother with Saturday morning TV.

I don’t know about you, but the best part of Saturday morning was getting up to watch cartoons. While only a handful of–ok, actually only two at this point, The Spectacular Spider-Man and TNMT: Back to the Sewers, one of the shows that already moved over from Fox after the not-up-to-snuff Fast Forward (the point where a new animation studio seems to be continuing the series, but smartly keeping the save VAs). However, I’m an adult, but an adult who remembers the joy of Saturday morning, and the networks used to come up with some great shows. Just check You Tube and other video sites. Even if they don’t impress you now, you know they did then. Now you have to go to cartoon-only (most of the time) networks for cartoons after school (if you can get Mommy away from the soaps), which just isn’t the same. Saturdays and after school were your time. For a few hours the networks or local stations cared about you, and gave you TV to call your own. Now they’re slowly giving up Saturdays altogether. If it wasn’t for Discovery, Qubo, DiC, or 4Kids, they’d be gone altogether, and at least for the last three, they’re kids show producers. If kids don’t watch TV, they’re out of business.

I just feel like kids are missing out, and they may miss more just so you can watch half-naked, barely-attractive women beat the snot out of each other to win some guy who looks like the ugly stick was on a sugar rush, or another “great invention” show that is really just trying to push a new kind of cleaner.

I see the writing on the wall, and I weep for the kids. No wonder they’re turning to video games (which can be awesome depending on the game, but that’s not the point, is it?:))