I've read that Saturday morning several action-adventure shows were canceled in the late 1960s-early 70s due to parental opposition to violence in childrens' programming, among them Space Ghost, The Herculoids, Fantastic "4", and the reruns of Adventures of Jonny Quest. Any information on this issue?
shareThat's not exactly correct. The show orders for these series were usually only one season's worth of episodes, though some did get additional orders. A Saturday morning series order was between 13 and 16. Series like Scooby Doo got orders for additional episodes.
There was a backlash at the end of the 60s, from PAC (Parents Advisory Council) a "watchdog" group who attacked the levels of violence in some cartoons, as well as the lack of educational content. Space Ghost was done before that became an issue, but one of the big targets was the Filmation Adventures of Batman (part of the Superman/Batman Hour). In those cartoons, Batman & Robin actually punch crooks, and there were the requisite death traps. Jonny Quest had been made for prime time, where standards were different. The networks reacted to the attacks by having their Broadcast Standards and Practices departments demand changes in content, which led to restrictions in violence and a requirement for more educational content. This had a couple of effects. It was harder to do adventure shows without physical conflict, so the studios shifted to pitching more comedy and mystery shows (such as Scooby Doo and the various knock-offs) and shows with more educational content, such as the ecological concerns at the heart of the original Super Friends show (the one with Wendy & Marvin). ABC was able to juggle the education requirement when they bought the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons, inserting them between shows (and requiring the studios to trim time off their cartoons to accommodate the Schoolhouse Rock segments). CBS added "In the News" to meet educational requirements, as well as their Chidren's Film Festival series.
So, you still had adventure shows, but they were more about exploration and solving problems, rather than fighting villains and there were definite restrictions as far as violence. This got worse and worse until you had the Looney Tunes cartoons edited until the jokes were gone and you have things like GI Joe, where no one ever gets hurt and everyone ejects before the missile hits. At least Jonny Quest showed that when you fired a gun at someone, they would at least be hurt, if not killed.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"
So we can assume that some of these programs, fetishized nowadays by late Boomers and early Gen Xers, died from lack of viewership, as opposed to parental uproars?
Also, Filmation's "Batman" didn't appear until 1976. By then, I believe that much of the furor had dissipated. I'm aware of JQ's origins, so it's curious to me that it hung on to Saturday morning as late as '72, considering the amount of bloodletting in the show. Of course, the parents eventually were mollified, and by '79, action-adventure cartoons returned to their roots, as evidenced by Flash Gordon(1979-82) and the restoration of JQ to NBC's Saturday morning schedule. Also, Superfriends, in its later iterations, introduced the Legion of Doom, and its pro-social, violence-free format was abandoned.
Obviously, you watched regularly during the 1970s, arguably the 'Golden Age' of Saturday morning kids TV, at least in terms of program variety, social influence, and audience size. Have you read the book Saturday Morning Fever?
Read Saturday Morning Fever; good book, pretty accurate.
You are confusing Filmation Batman cartoons. I'm talking about the Batman/Superman Hour, which debuted (in that format) in 1968. Superman began as The New Adventures of Superman, a few years earlier, then was joined by Aquaman in the Superman/Aquaman Hour, and by Batman for the Batman/Superman Hour. Superman featured reruns of old episodes and some new cartoons, but Batman was all new. This was the first place where Olan Soule and Casey Kasem voiced Batman and Robin, respectively. Ted Knight voiced just about everyone else and Batgirl was along for the ride; but, there was no Bat-Mite. You are confusing it with the later New Adventures of Batman, which featured Adam West and Burt Ward voicing the Dynamic Duo, plus producer Lou Scheimer as Bat-Mite, and no Ted Knight (Lennie Weinrib did some of Knights old characters). The later series reused models from the 60s series.
I'm not saying the shows died due to lack of viewership. Space Ghost and the Herculoids did big numbers, which is why they were brought back in the late 70s, and a new series was launched in the 80s, the Space Stars. However, very few shows were produced for more than one season or two. Instead, the studios would pitch new shows. In some cases, they were just slightly reworked versions of the same show, such as the various Scooby Doo cartoons and the Super Friends. In other cases, they were completely different. For instance, Hanna Barbera produced the Harlem Globetrotters cartoons, where they travelled the country in a bus, playing games and having adventures. Several years later, a new Globetrotters cartoon came along, The Super Globetrotters, where the team members were secretly superheroes. Part of this was because of the belief (right or wrong) that kids would start to outgrow series, so they would retool them or launch new ideas to attract a new audience, or keep the existing one interested. Even in the 60s and 70s, kids had short attention spans (however, we could sit through 5 to 6 hours of cartoons without exploding into hyperactivity).
Yes, you started seeing more adventure shows by the late 70s and 80s, mostly as a result of Star Wars. Filmation stuck with the adventure format longer, producing Star Trek, Space Sentinels (originally the Young Sentinels), the New Adventures of Batman, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (and the later Tarzan and the Super Seven), Flash Gordon, and the New Adventures of Zorro. Hanna-Barbera stuck more with humor and mystery, but did relaunch Space Ghost and Herculoids with Space Stars, produced a pilot for a Lost in Space cartoon (shown on the Saturday Superstar Movie), Devlin (originally pitched as an Evel Knievel cartoon), Valley of the Dinosaurs, and the various Super Friends show. Ruby-Spears, a company formed by some ex-HB guys, brought us Thundarr and a few other adventure shows. Depatie-Freleng, who did the Pink Panther cartoons, launched some, including cartoons with Spider-Man and the Hulk (who had both just been in live action series).
If you notice, though, in these adventure series, no one was allowed to punch or kick a villain and and only robots were destroyed. For instance, in Flash Gordon, Ming's ships were robot controlled and his soldiers were robots. However, Arboria's ships were disintegrated and shown to be piloted by humans and the Hawkmen were hit by rays and disappeared, so they presumably died (though that is never stated or shown). Zorro never stabs anyone, always disarming his opponent (though the same was true in the Disney series). In the Superfriends, Batman always used a gadget to capture the villains, he never fought them hand-to-hand. There was a Planet of the Apes cartoon (Return to the Planet of the Apes), but no one is ever shot or killed, despite threats. Thundarr never kills anyone with the Sunsword and the villains are only destroyed by their own acts (or the consequences of those acts). Jonny Quest looked like a Tarantino movie, by comparison.
The 60s shows came to an end via a combination of completing their episode orders and because of the success of Scooby Doo. Once something was a hit, everybody jumped onboard. However, the attention from the watchdogs at the end of the 60s also led to the networks demanding changes and the studios deciding that the old adventure shows caused too many problems. They did rebroadcast Jonny Quest and Space Ghost, but they did start to make edits, though not a many as they did when they launched the syndicated showcase The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera. Looney Tunes started seeing more and more cuts and cartoons completely removed from rotation.
I wouldn't use the term "fetishizing" in relation to the popularity of many of the 60s cartoons. They were a lot more exciting than much of the 70s material and some of the 80s stuff, and they had some great design work, from people like Alex Toth. They had great musical scores from people like Hoyt Curtain and some pretty good voice acting. By the 70s, you had more laugh tracks and a lot of the same old voice actors, plus endless knockoffs of Scooby Doo, variations on the Archies, and many licensed shows, some good, some bad. The 80s shows often seemed like toy commercials, with little plot. GI Joe, He-Man, and Transformers had some good plots, but the animation looked really stiff, compared to some of the Toth stuff, and no one ever got hurt (which was really ridiculous in GI Joe, in my opinion). From that era, I preferred Thundercats, Robotech, and Voltron. For the 70s, nothing beat Battle of the Planets (the Americanzed Gatchaman).
Believe me, in the 70s, we would have killed to have Batman the Animated Series, while the watchdogs would suggest we would kill as a result of Batman the Animated Series. I always felt Jonny Quest to be superior to something like GI Joe because it treated the viewer like they were intelligent, introducing science to them and showing that people often acted violently, and that there were consequences to that violence. In contrast, no one ever got hurt in GI Joe, so kids were brought up to believe war is bloodless and therefore never question the use of military force to settle international conflicts. My generation had cartoons where people got hurt and saw newscasts of casualties in Vietnam. Seems to me that in "protecting the children," they did more harm in the long run.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"
Yes, I love Saturday Morning Fever! Stumbled across the book in a public library some years back, but more recently purchased my own copy. When I discovered it, I felt as if I'd been searching for it my entire adult life, but didn't know I was looking, 'cause I didn't know it existed!
I was unaware that 1960s editions of DC-based cartoons even existed, but it makes sense. Marvel exploded out of nowhere during that decade, and when they moved into television, it made sense for older DC to follow, although their live action Superman predates American animated TV. Superfriends, sadly, was my introduction to animated DC characters. Loved the show as a child, but it's only good for camp laughs now. Although, as the writers of SMF point out, it improved in its later iterations. What other program can one say that about?
I only became acquainted with Space Ghost and The Herculoids via afterschool reruns in the 70s. Did you say that updates of these shows were produced later on?
Yes, Star Wars was a massive pop culture volcano, and so much 'lava' appeared in its wake. Far as I'm concerned, the campy G-Force/Battle of the Planets only made it to American TV due to the success of the George Lucas film. I remember otherwise macho boys at my middle school wetting their pants over this cartoon!
I guess the action-adventure shows of the late 70s weren't particularly violent, but they were a great advance on Superfriends. Flash Gordon was a definite fave, and one of the last Saturday morning kid shows I watched, as I turned 13 in 1980. JQ was decidedly un-campy, but also riddled with political incorrectness and occasional racism, none of which I recognized at the time. It was very pro-WASP American; definitely a product of its era.
I wasn't downing the 1960s action-adventure programs when I used the term "fetishize". Surely you realize by now that I loved those shows. And yes, the themes and incidental music were great. There's a growing cult of fans for the musical scores to Ralph Bakshi's Spiderman series, yet nobody seems to be able to determine the origin of the pieces.
It is the regretful truth.😞
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