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captain_slinkyIt is generally accepted and agreed upon that THIS SHOW was "The Beginning Of The End" for Saturday Mornings. Up till this point the Parental Watchdog Groups, Marketing Executives and Overzealous Censors had only had an effect on NEW cartoons being produced... but at 8:00 Saturday morning in 1985 on ABC, a precedent was set that changed the entire dynamic of Saturday Morning Cartoons FOREVER.
After numerous years of volleying the Looney Tunes cartoons back and forth between CBS and ABC (resulting in a few seasons where there were Looney Tunes cartoons on both channels under different names), CBS finally backed out of the bidding and let ABC snatch up the exclusive network broadcast rights - but at a cost. Marketing, Censors and Watchdogs had just a few simple requests...
No Speedy Gonzales (because he was racist), and no Tweety Bird (because he was GAY).
Speedy was racist because he spoke with an accent, and Tweety was Gay because he spoke was pretty and spoke in a high voice.
Despite the ludicrous accusations, ABC went ahead and pulled the Speedy and Tweety cartoons that had been running for the past 15 years without question or hesitation. The Censors had their foothold - NOTHING was safe from this point forward.
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Date: 2013-09-11 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-11 05:12 pm (UTC)It was a different time! I think the actual note from S&P was "Homosexual and/or deviant undertones".
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Date: 2013-09-13 07:31 am (UTC)I'm just glad UHF channels ignored most of the censors during that time and still ran most WB and MGM cartoons (in Oklahoma) and later things like the Disney Afternoon came along.