Saturday Cartoon Fun Time!

 

Saturday Cartoon Fun Time!

In late Summer/early Fall, all my comic books would blare out in double-page spreads the brand new Saturday morning cartoon schedules coming to one of the big three networks shown on your spectacular TV (if you were lucky enough to get all three broadcast networks).  

I would gather them together and plot out my morning cartoon strategy.  Unlike some of my peers, I was not afraid to get up and turn the channel once in a while.

They would run from as early as 7 in the morning and on through early afternoon.  The later you got, the more likely they were to be live-action, or, even worse, try to be educational (blech- that's what school was for!).

Today's comic books do not promote such things.*  Because such things no longer exist,  Saturday morning broadcast networks are now filled with extended news programs, infomercials, and maybe a show about pets or sports.  Cartoons are GONE.

Cable networks are now devoted almost entirely to cartoons and related programmings, such as Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon.  But they also do a lot of wandering into other formats, and if they have a special dedicated Saturday morning schedule, I don't know about it.

No, we didn't sit around and watch cartoons every Saturday morning from 7 AM to noon.  But it was there when we wanted it.  

And thanks to those double-page ads in the comics, I knew what to watch and when.

I knew when to change the channel, and I was man (boy) enough to do it.

*truth be told, there are very few ads in comic books today.  Most are in-house ads promoting other things their corporate owners sell.  Marvel has been subsumed by Disney, DC by Times/Warner. Ain't oligopolies grand?