Saturday Morning Fall 1989: The Full ABC, CBS, and NBC Cartoon Lineup

Fall 1989 is the morning where the decade quietly ends and the next one starts to show through. A live-action teen sitcom landed in the middle of NBC's cartoons, a Nintendo character got his own show, and the Smurfs, the giant that had anchored the morning since 1981, was shoved out of its longtime slot. The cartoon store was still open, but the shelves were being rearranged.

On Saturday morning in fall 1989, NBC turned toward live action and video games with Saved by the Bell, Captain N: The Game Master, Camp Candy, and the Karate Kid, ABC added Beetlejuice from the hit Tim Burton film, and CBS ran the Claymation California Raisin Show alongside Garfield and Friends and Pee-wee's Playhouse. The Smurfs, in its ninth year, had been pushed out of its anchor slot to mid-morning.

ABC · fall 1989

ABC kept its hour-block structure and added the season's splashiest new cartoon. Beetlejuice, adapted from Tim Burton's 1988 movie, turned the ghoulish comedy into a kid-friendly animated series and became a signature late-80s and early-90s show. Disney paired the Gummi Bears and Winnie the Pooh into a shared hour, Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters kept its hour, and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo opened the morning. College football again claimed the afternoon in the fall.

CBS · fall 1989

CBS bet on brand crossovers and a hot animation technique. The California Raisin Show brought the Claymation raisins from their famous commercials to Saturday morning, riding a merchandising wave, while Garfield and Friends held its hour and Pee-wee's Playhouse continued in what would be its final stretch. Rude Dog and the Dweebs came from the Sun Sportswear mascot, and Dink, the Little Dinosaur opened a morning that leaned on reruns at the back end.

NBC · fall 1989

NBC made the boldest structural move of the decade's last season. Saved by the Bell, a live-action teen sitcom, landed inside the Saturday morning cartoon block and became a defining hit that pointed straight at the live-action-heavy mornings of the 1990s. Captain N: The Game Master turned the Nintendo craze into a cartoon, Camp Candy built a show around John Candy, and the Karate Kid adapted the movie franchise. The most telling detail sat at 10:00: the Smurfs, in its ninth year, had been pushed out of the anchor position it had held all decade, with the front of the morning handed to new personalities and video-game tie-ins instead.

What changed from 1988

The morning turned toward live people and video games. Saved by the Bell put a laugh-track sitcom in the cartoon block, Captain N and the Karate Kid mined a movie and a game console, and Camp Candy and Camp-style star vehicles pushed the animated toy shows toward the edges. ABC's big new name, Beetlejuice, came from a live-action movie too. And the Smurfs losing its anchor slot after eight years there was the clearest sign of all: the shows that had defined 80s Saturday morning were being cleared out to make room for what came next.

The honest bottom line

Fall 1989 is the sound of the 80s Saturday morning machine winding down. Nearly everything new pointed somewhere else: a sitcom that belonged in prime time, a cartoon built to sell a game console, a Claymation act lifted from a commercial. The toy-and-movie engine that had run all decade was still turning, but the freshest energy was in live action, and Saved by the Bell would help pull the whole institution in that direction. And yet Pee-wee was still there in his last laps, Garfield still held an hour, and Beetlejuice was genuinely fun. The decade did not end with a bang on Saturday morning. It ended with the furniture getting moved.

Sources

• Wikipedia, "1989-90 United States network television schedule (daytime)", Saturday section. The half-hour grid on this page is parsed directly from that article's wikitext, by colspan and rowspan, for exact slotting; the wikitext was saved verbatim at gate time. Wikipedia's own cited underlying archive for the network daytime pages is curtalliaume.com, via Internet Archive captures.
• Method note: only the three broadcast networks' Saturday morning grids are reproduced here. No independent, UHF or cable lineup is claimed for this season.

Part of the Saturday morning 80s time-capsule series. Previous year: Saturday Morning Fall 1988. The decade started here: Saturday Morning Fall 1980.

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