Saturday Morning Cartoons

From the start of Animation, the medium was traditionally created and distributed throughout Cinemas, often consider the lesser or poor version of cinema, deemed less sophisticated and aesthetically complex. During the mid 1910's, however, one of the first animated icons, Felix the Cat, grew in popularity. Pat Sullican Studios created these animated shorts in 1915, intended to be a part of Paramount's newsreel Screen Magazine. Felix the Cat soon established itself as a recognisable character and series, being the first to break into the highly lucrative character goods/licensed merchandise industry.

More progress in animation was made by Walt Disney and his streamlining of the animation process, allowing for more complex works, characters and backgrounds to be drawn and painted. The use of model sheets were adopted to keep characters looking uniform between different shots and different artists working on the animations. As well as this, Walt popularised teams dedicated to different purposes within the pipeline, making many artists into experts within their part of the pipeline. Walt Disney popularised an assembly line type approach to animation, commonly still used today throughout the film, animation and game industry. Animation now switched to a focus of narrative and having a more realistic visual style.

The rise of television also brought great change to the animation industry, as well as the dismantlement of the old Hollywood studio system, allowing more freedom and less monopolies within the industry. The first demonstration of a television took place in the UK, in 1926. Several decades later the Television made its way to the US, with the first commercial broadcast happening in 1941. Technology was slow to make its way to New Zealand, however, which didn't receive its first television broadcast until 1960.

Some of the earliest broadcast programs included Crusader Rabbit from 1950-1952. The show was pitched by Jay Ward and Alex Anderson, wanting to make the shift of animation in cinema to animated television shows. The animation was notably limited, at point frames only changing once every 4 seconds to reduce costs on the show. It was also heavily marketed towards children, as its air time ran according to data from peaks in children tuning into radio throughout the day. 

The studio went on to produce a number of other animated shows off the success of Crusader Rabbit, including: Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, Mr Peabody and Sherman, Fractured Fairy Tales and Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties.

Animation still proved to be a more expensive medium, and was often cast aside, instead studios preferring live action shows such as Acrobat Ranch. While  few Animated TV shows were being produced, animations were no longer being played in cinemas, and so Paramount opted to sell 1800 of their old shorts to be redistributed. Terrytoons purchased these for $5 million dollars and began airing them under the Mighty Mouse Playhouse name in 1955.

During the 1930s, MGM's Cartoon department created the beloved characters Tom and Jerry, who were originally created for shorts before films. The duo proved to be so popular they even featured in a major live action film in 1945, titled Anchors Aweigh. After MGM closed their animation department in 1957, Hanna and Barberra formed their own animation company, with now only $2700 worth of budget to create a 5 minute short, down from their budget of $35,000+ working for MGM.

Despite having to cut corners and resort to limited animation, the popularity of their shows grew, including titles such as The Ruff and Reddy Show, The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Josie and the Pussy Cats, and debatably the most popular, Scooby Doo.

Filmation was another studio with a growing popularity, which came into existence in 1962. Filmation creating shows such as DC Justice League, The Archies, Star Trek: The Animated series and He-man and The Masters of the Universe. At the time cartoons were often criticised for being active commercials for children, disguised as entertainment. To combat this, Filmations shows often had fourth wall breaks at the end of the show to highlight a moral lesson demonstrated within that episode to meet demands and avoid criticism.

During the 1990s, CNN decided to create a space for the ever growing popularity and catalogue of the saturday morning cartoon, and Cartoon Network, a 24 hour childrens animation dedicated network was launched in 1992.