One of the best places to catch cartoons in the 20th century was on the coveted time slot of Saturday mornings. It was the kid’s primetime block that introduced generations to such series as Super Friends, Transformers and Pinky & The Brain just to name a few. With cartoons airing on Saturdays for all the major networks, every kid was able to catch these programs from the richest kids with cable to the poor ones with rabbit ear antennas. But now those days are over. Vortexx, one of the last Saturday morning cartoon blocks on network television (The CW), has now ended. The block aired several new and syndicated animated series that included Cubix, Sonic X, Dragon Ball Z and Kai, Digimon Fusion, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Transformers Prime and Justice League Unlimited among others. The CW will replace the block with a series of live-action educational programs.
Of course, it’s seemed like Saturday morning cartoons have been dead for quite some time. NBC got out of the game early in 1992, CBS followed in the late 90’s and the rest soon followed as new content slowed to a crawl. Partial blame could be given to the FCC mandated E/I act in which a certain number of educational programs, usually aimed at kids, had to be aired on the major networks. Most networks found it easiest to place this programming on their Saturday time slots. It was therefore easier to simply acquire a few syndicated educational programs to slap on the morning block rather than produce expensive animated cartoons. A few E/I blocks may exist with some animated programs in some areas, but there won’t be any new content specifically aimed at kids in the form of animation blocks.
Thus ends an unforgettable era of television animation.
Source: Slashfilm