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80s TV Time Capsule

CBS Saturday Morning Cartoons: The Complete 80s Run

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CBS spent the first four years of the 1980s running a Saturday morning built almost entirely out of a cartoon library it already owned. Then it found a show that worked, and for the rest of the decade, whenever something else on the schedule failed, it reached for more of that same show rather than build something new.

CBS's Saturday morning cartoon block in the 1980s opened on reruns and a licensed cartoon library, then rebuilt itself around Muppet Babies from 1984 onward. When a companion show failed in 1985, and again when Garbage Pail Kids was pulled days before its 1987 debut, CBS solved the hole in its schedule the same way both times: more Muppet Babies. Pee-wee's Playhouse and, from 1988, Garfield and Friends became the network's other anchors.

1980 to 1983: the library and a legacy show in exile

CBS opened the decade running Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle, the Tom and Jerry Comedy Show, and a ninety-minute Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, all drawn from cartoon libraries CBS had held for decades, on its 1980 schedule. 1981 restocked the same shelf rather than replacing it, adding the Kwicky Koala Show, Trollkins and Blackstar around the same Bugs Bunny and Popeye holdovers. Captain Kangaroo, CBS's long-running weekday morning fixture, spent these years in exile from its old slot: cut to thirty minutes and retitled Wake Up with the Captain that same fall 1981, shunted to 6:30 am the following spring, then moved to CBS's Saturday morning at a full hour that fall, appearing on the 1982 and 1983 grids. It did not last there either: cut back to a half-hour again in fall 1984, then cancelled by CBS at year's end after Bob Keeshan's contract expired, closing a program CBS itself no longer knew how to place.

Saturday Morning Fall 1981 logo the Super Friends line-up

1984: Richard Pryor's brief show, and Muppet Babies arrives

1984 brought two very different experiments. Pryor's Place, a live-action children's show built around comedian Richard Pryor, ran on CBS Saturdays at 11:30 am for exactly thirteen episodes, September 15 to December 8, before CBS replaced it with Land of the Lost reruns. Muppet Babies premiered the same September 15, at 9:00 am, going head to head that season with NBC's own established anchor, the Smurfs. It would outlast every other new CBS show of the decade.

1985 to 1986: a wrestling cartoon, Storybreak, and the first Muppet Babies patch

1985 added Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling, built on WWF stars of the day who did not voice their own animated characters. Its arrival was skeptically received in the trade press before it even aired: the Orlando Sentinel ran a piece that April headlined "Wrestling Cartoon Puts Hold On Taste." That same fall, CBS gave Muppet Babies a companion show, Little Muppet Monsters. It was canceled after three episodes, and CBS filled the vacated half-hour with new, then rerun, Muppet Babies episodes rather than commission a replacement. CBS Storybreak also debuted that spring, a half-hour literary anthology hosted by Bob Keeshan, the same man CBS had just finished cutting loose as Captain Kangaroo, and the network's first in-house cartoon since the original Terrytoons. By 1986, Pee-wee's Playhouse had arrived, a live-action variety show built around Paul Reubens' theatrical character, alongside Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling and an expanding Muppet Babies.

1987 to 1988: the Garbage Pail Kids pull, and Mighty Mouse returns

1987 is the year CBS's Saturday morning became a genuine controversy. The network had ordered and heavily promoted a Garbage Pail Kids cartoon for its fall lineup, then pulled it days before the debut after protests from Action for Children's Television and a Christian Leaders for Responsible Television coalition, plus advertisers including Nabisco, McDonald's and Crayola withdrawing support. CBS's fix was the one it already knew: Muppet Babies expanded to ninety minutes to fill the hole, the same solution it had used on Little Muppet Monsters two years before. The same season brought Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, born from an April 1987 meeting in which animator Ralph Bakshi told Judy Price, the head of CBS's Saturday morning block, that he held the rights to Mighty Mouse. He did not, and while researching who did, he learned CBS itself had acquired the entire Terrytoons library in 1955 and forgotten about it. "I sold them a show they already owned, so they just gave me the rights for nothin'!" Bakshi said. CBS's first Saturday cartoon broadcast in stereo, it continued into 1988 alongside Pee-wee's Playhouse and Muppet Babies.

1988 to 1989: Garfield becomes the hub

Garfield and Friends premiered September 17, 1988, announced that April alongside The Adventures of Raggedy Ann and Andy and Superman as a trio of new additions. Built on Jim Davis's comic strip, which CBS had already adapted into a television movie and a run of specials earlier in the decade, the new series became, in animation historian Hal Erickson's phrase, "the hub around which the rest of CBS' morning lineup was built." By 1989, Garfield and Friends, Muppet Babies, and Pee-wee's Playhouse anchored the block together, with CBS Storybreak still closing it out.

The honest bottom line

CBS spent this decade's first four years running a Saturday morning built on shows it already owned, and its two real successes both came from buying a proven outside creative voice, Jim Henson and then Paul Reubens, rather than building a toy tie-in from scratch. When something failed, the network's instinct was never to gamble on a replacement. It reached for more Muppet Babies, twice, in 1985 and again in 1987, the second time covering for its most notorious single decision of the decade. That is not a network with a bold creative strategy. It is a network that found one reliable show and leaned on it whenever anything else went wrong.

Sources

Part of the Saturday morning 80s time-capsule series. Read the other two networks: ABC Saturday Morning Cartoons and NBC Saturday Morning Cartoons.

CBS kept reaching for the same reliable show whenever anything failed, and honestly, the room keeps a slot open.

Frequently asked

What cartoons were on CBS on Saturday mornings in the 1980s?

The decade opened on library reruns: Mighty Mouse, Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny. From 1984, Muppet Babies became the network's anchor, joined later by Pee-wee's Playhouse, Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling, Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, and, from 1988, Garfield and Friends.

Why did CBS pull the Garbage Pail Kids cartoon?

CBS had ordered and promoted a full season, then pulled it days before its September 1987 debut after protests from Action for Children's Television and a Christian Leaders for Responsible Television coalition, along with several advertisers withdrawing support. CBS filled the hole with an expanded, 90-minute Muppet Babies.

Was Captain Kangaroo ever on CBS's Saturday morning lineup?

Yes, from fall 1982 through 1984, after CBS had already cut it from its long-running weekday morning slot. It was reduced to a half-hour again in 1984 and cancelled at year's end.

Was Muppet Babies popular on CBS?

Yes. It premiered in 1984 competing directly with NBC's Smurfs, won seven Daytime Emmy Awards and a Humanitas Prize, and was CBS's fallback fix twice, expanded to fill programming gaps left by a canceled companion show in 1985 and by the pulled Garbage Pail Kids cartoon in 1987.

What was Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling?

An animated CBS Saturday morning cartoon that ran from September 1985 to October 1986, built around WWF wrestlers of the period, including Hulk Hogan and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, though the wrestlers themselves did not voice their own cartoon characters.

When did Garfield and Friends premiere on CBS?

September 17, 1988, announced that April alongside two other new CBS additions, The Adventures of Raggedy Ann and Andy and Superman. It quickly became the show the rest of the network's Saturday morning lineup was built around.