Children's Television Series - History

History

Children's television is nearly as old as television itself, with early examples including shows such as Play School, Captain Tugg, The Magic Roundabout, Howdy Doody, Ivor the Engine, Clangers, Noggin the Nog, Bill and Ben', Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. In the United States, early children's television was often a marketing branch of a larger corporate product, such as Disney, and it rarely contained any educational elements (for instance, The Magic Clown, a popular early children's program, was primarily an advertisement for Bonomo's Turkish taffy product). This practice continued, albeit in a much toned-down manner, through the 1980s in the United States, when the Federal Communications Commission prohibited tie-in advertising on broadcast television (it does not apply to cable, which is out of the reach of the FCC's content regulations). Though there is some debate on the intended audience, later non-educational children's television programs included the science fiction programmes of Irwin Allen (most notably Lost in Space), the fantasy series of Sid and Marty Krofft, and the extensive cartoon empire of Hanna-Barbera.

In the United States, from the 1960s through approximately the 1990s, children's programming was primarily concentrated on the Saturday morning cartoon block. All three of the major television networks carried Saturday morning cartoons and various other children's programming during this time. While most shows had short, 13-week runs, others could last for decades (an example is Scooby-Doo, which ran on a near-continuous basis in numerous incarnations from 1969 until 1991). A combination of factors led to the collapse of Saturday morning cartoons; some include the near concurrent entries of Cartoon Network, Fox Kids and Nickelodeon (with its Nicktoons) into the animated market in 1992 with cartoons in non-traditional time slots, the implementation of the Children's Television Act educational television mandate in 1996, and a general erosion of sponsorship base and viewership for broadcast programs. These factors, however, were a boon to animation studios in Canada, where subsidies for Canadian content were aids to the continued production of animated series there (particularly the newly in-demand educational series).

Many children's programs also have a large adult following, sometimes due to perceived quality and educational value, and sometimes among adults who watched the shows as children or with their own children and now have a nostalgic emotional connection (an example is the continuing popularity of programming from Nickelodeon, which prompted the network to launch The '90s Are All That, a late-night block featuring reruns of 1990s Nickelodeon shows). The relatively low-cost nature of much early children's programming has given it a campy reputation, which is a second source of entertainment for adults who, as children, were unaware of the medium's limitations.