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80s TV Time Capsule

NBC Saturday Morning Cartoons: The Complete 80s Run

NBC Saturday Morning Cartoons logo

NBC came into the 1980s with the thinnest Saturday morning of the three networks, two of its half-hours filled with straight reruns. It left the decade having built, on that same real estate, the show that would define its next one. In between sat nine straight years of a single blue cartoon anchoring almost everything else the network tried.

NBC's Saturday morning cartoon block in the 1980s was built around one long-running anchor, the Smurfs, which premiered in 1981 and held its slot every single season through 1989. Around that constant, NBC cycled through Alvin and the Chipmunks, Gummi Bears, ALF and Fraggle Rock spinoffs, and toy and video-game tie-ins, before closing the decade with a live-action sitcom, Saved by the Bell, built to replace the format entirely.

1980: the weakest morning of the three

NBC opened the decade running the Godzilla/Dynomutt Hour, Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo, and Batman and the Super 7, but two of its 1980 half-hours were reruns outright: Jonny Quest, and the Jetsons, which NBC patched with a new show, Drawing Power, after just three weeks. It was, by its own schedule's admission, the network fixing its Saturday morning next.

the Super Friends line-up

1981 to 1983: the Smurfs take over

NBC found its answer on September 12, 1981: the Smurfs, adapted from Peyo's Belgian comic by Hanna-Barbera, premiered in an hour-long slot and, according to one academic account of the era, became "one of the few hits to emerge from the Silverman era" and "one of the most successful and longest-running Saturday morning cartoons in television history." It won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Children's Entertainment Series for the 1982-1983 season and did not leave NBC's Saturday schedule again until the decade did. Around it, 1981 also introduced the Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam! and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. 1982 gave the Smurfs a full ninety-minute footprint and added the Incredible Hulk and Amazing Spider-Man hour. Alvin and the Chipmunks premiered September 17, 1983, on NBC's 1983 schedule, a revival of the Chipmunks built by their original creator's own production company, running alongside Mister T, a cartoon built on the Mr. T persona from The A-Team.

Saturday Morning Fall 1981 logo

1984 to 1986: the toy shelf, built around the Smurfs

1984 added Snorks, Pink Panther and Sons, and Kidd Video, all running in the Smurfs' shadow. 1985 was the busiest addition year: Adventures of the Gummi Bears premiered September 14, 1985, and It's Punky Brewster, an animated spinoff of NBC's own live-action sitcom, joined the same fall. 1986 brought Kissyfur, produced by NBC's own production arm with DIC Animation City, reviewed harshly by the Los Angeles Times that October: "all that's missing is the imagination, wit and draftsmanship... the directors time the comedy material so badly that the jokes land with a thud." It was NBC's only new show that critics singled out for review that season, evidence of how much of the network's Saturday morning identity by then rested on shows already several years old.

1987 to 1988: spinning off NBC's own hits, and the Smurfs start to shrink

1987 leaned on NBC's own other properties: ALF: The Animated Series, a prequel spinoff of NBC's hit prime-time sitcom, and Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock, an animated version of the Muppet property, though Fraggle Rock lasted only one season, ending December 5, 1987, after starting September 12. By 1988, the Smurfs table entry itself had shrunk from a ninety-minute footprint to sixty, still present but visibly smaller than at its mid-decade peak, even as Gummi Bears completed its fourth and final NBC season and ALF's cartoon gave way to ALF Tales, a fairy-tale-themed retooling.

1989: NBC builds its own replacement

1989 is where NBC's Saturday morning stopped being only a cartoon block. Gummi Bears left for ABC after four NBC seasons. In its place, NBC added Captain N: The Game Master, an animated show built on Nintendo characters, and The Karate Kid, an animated adaptation of the film franchise, both premiering September 9. But the year's real departure aired August 20: Saved by the Bell, a live-action teen sitcom built from the wreckage of a canceled Disney Channel show, Good Morning, Miss Bliss, at the direction of NBC's own programming chief, Brandon Tartikoff. It was placed in the Saturday morning slot deliberately, and it went on to become the flagship of NBC's TNBC lineup into the 1990s, the format that would eventually replace Saturday morning cartoons on the network altogether. The Smurfs was still airing that same fall, in its most reduced footprint yet, machine and replacement running side by side on the same schedule.

The honest bottom line

For most of this decade, NBC's Saturday morning was not really nine different lineups. It was the Smurfs, present and central every single year from 1981 to 1989, with a rotating cast of shorter-lived shows filling in around it, several of them, like Fraggle Rock, gone within a single season. The network's most notable trade-press review that decade, of Kissyfur in 1986, was not kind. What actually ended the era was not a cartoon at all: a live-action teen sitcom NBC built on purpose to succeed where the format eventually would not. The Smurfs outlasted every other show on this page. It did not outlast the network's decision to build something else.

Sources

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

Nine straight years of one blue anchor is its own kind of company, come sit through the Smurfs years.

Frequently asked

What was NBC's biggest Saturday morning cartoon in the 1980s?

The Smurfs, which premiered September 12, 1981, and aired every season through 1989. It won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Children's Entertainment Series for 1982-1983 and is described in academic accounts of the era as one of the most successful Saturday morning cartoons in television history.

Did NBC have Alvin and the Chipmunks on Saturday mornings?

Yes. Alvin and the Chipmunks premiered on NBC September 17, 1983, and ran there through the end of the decade, introducing the female Chipettes in 1986 and getting renamed The Chipmunks in 1988.

What happened to Gummi Bears on NBC?

It aired on NBC for four seasons, from its September 1985 premiere through the 1988-89 season, then moved to ABC for the 1989-1990 season, paired with The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

Did NBC replace Saturday morning cartoons with Saved by the Bell?

Saved by the Bell premiered August 20, 1989, in NBC's Saturday morning slot, built from a canceled Disney Channel sitcom at the direction of NBC programming executive Brandon Tartikoff. It became the flagship of NBC's TNBC lineup afterward, the live-action teen-sitcom format that eventually displaced Saturday morning cartoons on the network.

What new cartoons did NBC add in the late 1980s?

ALF: The Animated Series and Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock in 1987, both spinoffs of other NBC or Henson properties, followed by Captain N: The Game Master and The Karate Kid in 1989, both built on existing franchises rather than new characters.

Was the Smurfs on NBC the whole decade?

Yes, every season from its 1981 premiere through 1989, though its footprint shrank from a ninety-minute block at its mid-decade peak to sixty minutes by 1988 and 1989.