The 1970’s were a dark time in the history of childrens TV cartoons. While Saturday morning did have re-runs of Looney Tunes and Scooby Doo, there were a whole lot of just really bad, really cheap crappy cartoons. Still, that was when I was a kid, so Saturday mornings began early by plopping my keister before the TV, turning the volume waaaaay down so as not to wake the ‘rents, then watching several hours of brain rotting animated rubbish. And then Solid Gold came on, and I knew the good times were over, and off the TV went.

Since then, TV has seen the rise of cable and satellite. Back In My Day, we had five channels: three major networks, one PBS station and a public access channel that sorta came in if the wind was right and blew the radio waves in our direction. Now, there are a billion channels, including several devoted to 24/7 cartoons. When you an dial up childrens TV and cartoons whenever you like, including Netflix and YouTube, the novelty of Saturday morning cartoons fades.

And thus, the metaphorical triumph of Solid Gold:

Traditional Saturday Morning Programming Ends This Fall as Saban Brands Pulls the Plug on the Vortexx

In short: very soon there will be no more Saturday morning kids programming. The last existing block of such will be replaced by a new block of “family friendly” stuff including “The Dog Whisperer” (“here, let’s look at a dog with severe psychomological issues”) and Dr. Pol (“Hey, let’s put down this dog with a tumor.”)

Since I haven’t watched Saturday morning cartoons since, what, the early/mid 1980’s, it’s not a particular loss. Just more of a “well, there’s more of my childhood flushed down the memory hole.” There’s lots of good ‘toons on these days, but the Saturday morning ones from my youth have either proven horrible in the bright light of maturity (“Grape Ape,” “Fat Albert,” “Jabberjaw” and the rest), or have been crapped on by their successors. “Scooby Doo” objectively was probably crap, but in the original incessantly-run series, every single instance of the supernatural was shown to be rationally explainable as just trickery. Since then, the various re-incarnations of the show have featured actual ghosts and vampires and whatnot. Grrr.

Oh, well.