Casting my damaged memory back 30+ years, I used to actually get up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons, where the animated fruits of the network's imaginations were fed to kids like some national electronic breakfast. I especially loved the music cartoons like the Banana Splits, Archies, Beatles, Fat Albert, and on and on.

For a variety of reasons, the Saturday morning ritual is no more:

Six key factors have led to children watching less Saturday morning cartoons: more recreational sports, the introduction of cable and satellite TV, the Internet and video games, a poorer quality of animation, and a greater emphasis on family time. These factors are rather self-explanatory with the exception of the latter: the divorce rate of Americans now stands at 49 percent, and time on the weekends has become more precious for children as many commute between parents' houses. For parents who only have limited access to their children due to either divorce or career advancement, plopping them down in front of the television for five hours on a Saturday morning is no longer a viable option. Among most parents, divorced or not, there is a new emphasis on "quality" time. Consequently, taking one's children to the theater, mall, museum, event, zoo or beach on the weekend is deemed more appropriate to being a "good" parent, than letting kids sit and watch cartoons.

....The success of Nickelodeon and the other cablers during the week has led to their own shortcomings on Saturday mornings. That is to say, Nickelodeon and the others are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; there is no draw card for children to watch at any specific time or on any specific day. It is always there! A child who never knew the phenomenon of Saturday morning cartoons sees no reason to watch cartoons on Saturday mornings rather than on Wednesday nights or Sunday afternoons. Nevertheless, according to some studies, when a child sees the color orange, the first word the child associates with that color is "Nickelodeon." Today's children are being raised as brand loyal to Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network's signature checkerboard. These brand loyalties form as early as two years of age.i Needless to say, this brand loyalty demonstrates that despite Nickelodeon's not earning comparable ratings to broadcast networks in the '80s on Saturday mornings, Nickelodeon and the others are doing something right.

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