Culture Shock 10.09.14: It's the end of Saturday morning as we knew it

Print advertisement for NBC's 1983 Saturday morning cartoon lineup. It was the
debut season for "Mr. T" and "Alvin and the Chipmunks," while "Thundarr the
Barbarian" moved to NBC from ABC, where it had aired the previous two seasons.

For as long as I can remember, "children's advocates" have hated children's television.

They always said the same thing: Children's television was too violent, too dumb and too commercial. And because kids watched "too much" of it, it was, by implication, too entertaining.

Not anymore. Mark your calendar, for this is a date that shall live in infamy: Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014, was the first Saturday since the 1960s when there were no Saturday morning cartoons on broadcast network television. For those of us who were kids during the Golden Age of Saturday morning cartoons, in the 1970s and '80s, it's Saturday mourning in America.

At last, the self-appointed children's advocates have slain their dragon.

In place of the animated cartoons that Generation X and the millennials grew up with are a bunch of live-action "educational and informational" programs. They're designated by the little "E/I" logo on the screen, which means the broadcaster is counting every second of them toward its government-mandated quota of E/I programming. It doesn't matter if anyone watches; it just matters that it's there and that it's "quality," as defined by the children's advocates.

Kids, meanwhile, have responded just as you'd expect. Those who can have flocked to cable TV and the children's section of Netflix, both of which operate blessedly free of the dictates of the Federal Communications Commission, for the most part. For now, anyway.

How did this happen? How did children wake up in a world with no Saturday morning cartoons?

It started 24 years ago when Congress passed the Children's Television Act of 1990. The act was the culmination of 20 years of agitation by activist groups such as Action for Children's Television, founded by Peggy Charren, who became the go-to talking head whenever the national news media needed someone to pontificate about kiddie TV, because why would you ever ask a kid?

The Children's Television Act limited advertising during both cable and broadcast children's programming and mandated that broadcasters devote a set amount of airtime each week to E/I shows.

The act's first victims were the cartoons that aired after school each weekday. The ad restrictions made them less profitable, which was the kiss of death in the highly competitive broadcast syndication market. Stations quickly dropped cartoons and added more talk shows and TV judges. Indirectly, we have the CTA to blame for Judge Judy and her ilk.

The CTA's full impact didn't hit Saturday mornings until later, as the FCC "clarified" the act and spelled out exactly what "educational and informational" meant, always tightening the screws.

NBC was the first to fall. The proud peacock that once had aired "The Smurfs" and "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" farmed out its Saturday morning airtime to corporate sibling NatGeo.

Print advertisement for CBS's 1982 Saturday morning cartoon lineup.

CBS and ABC were next, followed by Fox. When the end came, only The CW was still airing cartoons, all of them Japanese imports. It was a painful, lingering death. Saturdays deserved better.

The image of children getting out of bed at the crack of dawn to watch Saturday morning cartoons along with a sugary cereal chaser has become a cliché. But it's no less true. My generation looked ahead to Saturday mornings — filled with Superfriends and Snorks — as if each were a mini Christmas. The networks trumpeted their new Saturday morning lineups each fall with preview specials in prime time. It was a big freaking deal.

Sure, kids still have Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and the Disney channels, but Saturday morning's passing matters. Maybe those old cartoons weren't "educational" in the approved sense, but they were a springboard for our imaginations. More than that sugary cereal, those cartoons fueled us, not just for the rest of the day but for life.

"Scooby-Doo," for one, taught us real-life lessons. We learned not to worry about scary-looking ghosts, because the odds were those ghosts were just con men trying to pull a fast one.

With cartoons teaching lessons like that, it's no wonder Congress was so eager to replace them with FCC-approved boredom.

TV violence latest excuse for FCC power grab

Under the guise of protecting children, the Federal Communications Commission wants to treat everyone like children, adults included. And this time, it has an ulterior motive.

Last week, the FCC issued a report in which it asks Congress for the authority to regulate TV violence in the same way it regulates sexual content.

The report dances around the main issue, which is the supposedly harmful impact of TV violence on children. As The New York Times reports, the FCC found that “research on whether violent programming had caused children to act more aggressively was inconclusive.”

That is the best the FCC’s pro-censorship chairman, Kevin J. Martin, could come up with.

So, the FCC latched onto one study that claims violent entertainment is associated with increased short-term aggression in children.

The qualifier “short term” is crucial.

A short-term increase in aggressiveness is not the sort of thing that leads children to shoot their classmates. It’s a normal reaction, given that our brains are wired to deal with flight-or-fight situations, even fictional ones. Once the “threat” is over, our normal brain processes resume.

But even if TV violence were the problem Martin makes it out to be, that wouldn’t make the FCC’s report any less insulting.

Prodded by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, broadcast and cable channels began rating their programs using a system similar to the movie industry’s. Since 2000, the FCC has required all TV sets to include “V-Chip” technology, allowing parents to block programs based on those ratings. This, however, isn’t enough for the FCC.

The agency cites a study claiming that nine out of 10 parents don’t use the V-Chip and less than half use the industry’s ratings system. The technology and ratings are available, but parents don’t care.

The FCC concludes that parents cannot be trusted to protect their children from TV violence. But not to worry; the FCC will be a better parent than you are.

I have a different theory. I think most parents aren’t really worried about TV violence, even if they tell pollsters they are. Parents lie to pollsters because people like Dr. Phil McGraw say they should be worried about TV violence, or else they’re bad parents.

And why aren’t parents really worried? Because they grew up with violent TV, too, and they turned out OK, right?

But the FCC’s desire to regulate TV violence has little to do with TV violence.

One of Martin’s pet causes is forcing cable companies to offer channels on an à la carte basis. Consumers would pay only for the channels they want. Regulating TV violence is a means to an end, by which Martin can say à la carte cable would give parents greater control over what their children see.

It may seem pro-consumer to force cable companies to offer their customers only the channels they want to pay for, but it’s a bad deal.

The beauty of cable TV is that it supports channels that target small, niche audiences. Many of those channels would disappear under an à la carte system. Even if you think your cable TV company gives you a lot of worthless channels, chances are you watch at least one channel most of your neighbors think is worthless, too.

Besides, it’s doubtful that à la carte cable would save customers much money. The price of cable per channel would go up, and consumers would get far fewer choices for their dollars.

Whenever the FCC proposes more regulation, it’s up to no good. But between trying to regulate content and kill niche channels, it’s up to twice the usual mischief.