What happend to our Saturday Mornings & Broadcast Cartoons in the last decade?

Any kid from the 80's can tell you that Saturday Mornings were the programming highlight of their week. But over the last decade, we have seen the plethora of Saturday Morning & syndicated/broadcast cartoons decline.
Why?
Well Toon Zone offers an interesting & insightful 3 page article that you can find here.

But ultimately it boils down to this one excerpt from "Toon Zone."

"The FCC not only imposes a quota on educational programming, but also restricts the amount of advertising allowed for all children's programming - E/I (educational / informative)or not. Advertisers, hamstrung by both these regulations and strong cultural pressures on what gets marketed to kids, cut their ad spending. Stations aren't making much profit from cartoons, so they turn to programming that makes them money. If the stations aren't airing cartoons and E/I programming, then the networks have to, and since they're not making much money anyway, they sell that responsibility to the highest bidder.

That's the root of all of this. Money. The television business lives and dies by the advertising dollar. As that advertising dollar shifted away from broadcast kids' TV, the stations began dropping it. There was alternate programming readily available elsewhere which generated more money than cartoons.

Essentially, the broadcast kids' TV business became unprofitable. And that's depressing."

And this is why the 80's & (& some of the 90's) were such magical decades for US TV animation. The rules have changed on the business & the rules end, & because of which, kids & cartoon fans take the hit.

On a positive note...one fan's fun look at their personal favorite animated themes of the golden era of animation for your enjoyment!! One of the many reasons why we love this stuff!!