Saturday morning cartoon

Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the typical television animation programming that was typically scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks since the mid 1960s. This genre is often referred to by its critics as "illustrated radio", because of its focus on voice performances, music, and sound effects over animation and visual quality.

Criticism

Although this broadcasting convention meant steady work for animation companies, most animation fans consider the resulting cost to American animation to be ruinous to the art. In their view, this programming block "ghettoized" animation programming and severely harmed the artistic reputation of American animation, portraying it as a substandard art fit only for children. They cite the fact that children, specifically ages 6-11, were not considered an attractive audience demographic by the networks due to their obvious lack of disposable income. As a result, the programming presented in that time had typically low budgets, which critics complained meant poor production values and animation. They also complained that network practices aggravated the situtation by typically only commissioning or renewing their series at the beginning of the year, which meant a 6 month schedule at best to produce hours of animated programming. The critics conclude that this tight schedule allowed for extremely little time for refinement, let alone experimentation in the material. The result, in their opinion, was rushed and often poorly written and animated productions.

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A high-quality theatrical feature may use 24 different drawings per second of finished film, sometimes even more, if several characters are on the screen simultaneously. Saturday morning cartoons are produced with a minimum amount of animation drawings, sometimes no more than 3 or 4 per second. In addition, the movements of the characters are often repeated, very limited, or even confined to mouths and eyes only. This led to the derogatory term "Illustrated Radio" for these cartoons.

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