Saturday-morning cartoon

A Saturday-morning cartoon was the colloquial term for the original animated television programming that was typically scheduled on Saturday mornings in the United States on the major television networks. The genre's popularity had a broad peak from the late 1960s through the late 1990s; after this point, it declined in the face of changing cultural norms, increased competition from formats available at all times, and heavier regulations. In the last two decades of the genre's existence, Saturday morning cartoons were primarily created and aired to meet educational television mandates. Minor television networks, in addition to the non-commercial PBS in some markets, continue to air animated programming on Saturday while partially meeting those mandates.

In the United States, the generally accepted times for these and other children's programs to air on Saturday mornings were from 8 a.m. to noon Eastern Time. Until the late 1970s, American networks also had a schedule of children's programming on Sunday mornings, though most programs at this time were repeats of Saturday morning shows that were already out of production. In some markets, some shows were pre-empted in favor of syndicated or other types of local programming.Canadian Saturday morning cartoons were largely defunct by 2002. At least one U.S. broadcast television network still aired non-E/I animated programs on Saturday mornings as late as 2014; among the "Big Three" traditional major networks, the last non-educational cartoon (Kim Possible) last aired in 2006. Cable television networks have since then revived the practice of debuting their most popular animated programming on Saturday mornings on a sporadic basis.

An animated feature film may use 24 different drawings per second of finished film, sometimes even more. Due to lower budgets, Saturday morning cartoons are often produced with a minimum amount of animation drawings, sometimes no more than three or four per second. In addition, the movements of the characters are often repeated, very limited, or even confined to mouths and eyes only. An exception to the 24-frames-per-second rule is when animation is "shot in twos" in which 12 drawings per second are used and the switch to 24 frames per second is for quick events such as explosions or "wild takes".

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