LOL! I remember vividly. Looking back....the best years of my life.
...in terms of not having a care in the world.
Heck, they ran those shows even when I was a kid. I witnessed the downfall of the Saturday morning cartoons before my very eyes.
If you want a good example of government meddling ruining something great, the Saturday morning cartoons are a great example. When the educational mandates hit in the late 1990s, it DESTROYED anything good on Saturday morning TV. And not just swiftly—it was a slow, agonizing erosion. In my day, the hits were
Garfield and Friends and
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on CBS, of course
Looney Tunes reruns and
Schoolhouse Rock! on ABC, and I really didn't watch NBC (their Saturday lineup was already dead by this point anyway and I could watch the only show they had that was worth anything,
Saved by the Bell, during the week). But then the government decided that three hours every week had to be educational, which of course squeezed out all the non-educational shows (the best ones) on most of the stations.
Fox, which never came in at my house (and we didn't have cable), apparently held out a few years longer.
Now that regulation makes even less sense, as broadcast networks begin to specialize. Want to run a 24/7 news and weather channel on one of your subchannels? Too bad. You have to carry the three hours of educational children's shows, even though that demographic would have no interest in your channel anyway and probably doesn't like those shows anyway.
