The Battle For Cartoon Airtime

Every once in a while, some cartoon fan will say “They should have made a cartoon series with J. Evil Scientist or Maxie Chickenhawk” or “Why didn’t they spin so-and-so off into his own cartoons?”

There’s a pretty good reason. Several, actually.

While fans view cartoons as entertainment, the people in charge of making them see things a little differently. A cartoon studio manufactures little films it wants to sell. To do that, it needs to find a distributor for its cartoons. The distributor needs to find enough TV stations to run the cartoons to make a profit. TV stations only have a limited amount of air time and need to run something that’ll bring it the most revenue. Now picture a whole bunch of studios and distributors all trying to do the same thing, fighting for the same limited air time.

And all this is contingent on whether there are enough animators around to make the cartoons in the first place.

Obviously not everything is going to make it.

1961 was a year of glut. There was a glut of potential cartoon shows on the market. Hanna-Barbera had been incredibly successful with The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Flintstones. Others wanted a piece of the action. Here’s Weekly Variety of February 1, 1961 explaining the situation.

Off-Network TV Cartoons Seen Syndie Natural
Pattern of a network ride followed by a syndication run will grow to further embrace made-for-tv cartoons is the forecast of some savvy vets in the cartoon field.
Reason for this predicted pattern stems from a number of factors:
1. Unless a syndicator has an established character, or a pre-sold property, he has a tough road to hew in the market-by-market route.
2. There are currently about 30 cartoon making now the market-by-market rounds, with only about one out of 10 of the newbies successful, according to some estimates.
Plenty of product isn’t felt in the seven station markets such as N.Y. and Los Angeles, but in the three station situations, the very markets which are needed to put a syndie show in the break-even or profit margin.
Success of “Flintstones” in the adult category, and other kiddie cartoon shows on the webs assures a growing supply from that source. There also is the national spot field, closely akin to networking, now riding with the success of “Huckleberry Hound,” et al. When these shows come down the pike into syndication, they will have a wide acceptance.
In syndication, new cartoon properties with established characters, such as “Popeye” and “Mr. Magoo,” are doing fine. Others are finding the field tougher, although a few of the other newies also are successful.
Last two years has seen many new made-for-tv limited animation cartoons placed on the market. For a period, with the supply of theatrical oldies drying up, there was a real need to fill it. That vacuum in syndication now is said to have been filled to a large extent.
One of the big bottlenecks in distribution is the less than four-station market situation prevailing throughout the country. Cartoons usually are sold on a two or three-run basis to station, with unlimited plays. In the less than four market situations, once the stations have bought their limited cartoon needs, new packages just go whistling for want of an outlet.
A made-for-tv cartoon without a highly recognized character can make gross from $5,000 to $8,000 per five-minute episode the first time around nationally, in a successful sell. Others fall short of that mark.
Overseas potential for many cartoons is severely restricted if there’s too much violence in the series. Overseas markets are much more severe about violence in kiddie shows than their counterparts in the U.S.

But, as we mentioned, there had to be a viable market for cartoons, meaning finding airtime on enough stations to make producing them profitable. That wasn’t easy. Not only were cartoons competing against live-action syndicated programming, networks were trying to take up more and more affiliate time to make their programming more attractive to buyers. And the networks themselves were flooded with distributor/studio pitches for “the next Flintstones.” Here’s Weekly Variety again from June 21, 1961.

Everybody’s Got a Cartoon Series, But Webs Less Than Enthusatistic
Everybody and his brother seem to have a cartoon series for sale and airing during the season after next. This would suggest that the only thing that might slow boom in animation is the somewhat less than enthusiastic response of the networks.
One network source unhappily estimated that in the last few weeks, some 20 cartoon ideas, storyboards, rough sketches and film “samples” had crossed his desk. Among those making the rounds of ’62-’63—since the coming season’s programming is already inked and, because it takes at least nine months advance warning before an animator can successfully or comfortably turn out a full series are:
An idea for an Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy cartoon, ditto Fibber McGee and Molly, “Duffy’s Tavern” and Frances Langford and Don Ameche, all of which have their roots in old radio formats or old radio personalities. Then there is “Shrimp,” a sample being peddled by William Morris, a Jay Ward-Bill Scott entry based of Sampson and Delilah, and two King Features; “Krazy Kat” and “Barney Google.”

“The Three Stooges,” now seen on local tv via live-action syndication (taken from the old theatrical short subject library), is also being proposed to ABC, CBS and NBC.
While there are to be several new half-hour animations on the networks this coming fall, the webs have decided to move cautiously in preparing additional shows of this genre for seasons beyond that. Among other fears, the networks say they’re afraid they’ll again kill a good thing (cartoon shows have been reasonably successful so far) by overexposure.
Meantime, Coast producers are pouring out about $35,000,000 worth of product, none of which is included in the list of 20 or so subjects designed for network airings in ’62-’63. Most of the Hollywood product appears to be for the immediate consumption by the networks or in syndication to the tv stations. Beyond Hollywood’s present output, there is a thriving animation business in N.Y., headed by Peter Piech’s Production Associates of Television and his Leonardo TV Productions, which right now have “Rocky & His Friends,” “The Bullwinkle Show” and “King Leonardo” in network time slots. Piech is associated with Jay Ward Productions in some of his ventures.

The bottom fell out of the cartoon market by the end of 1961 as all new animated series failed in prime time. Within a few years, studios would regroup and take aim at the one time period when people watched cartoons enough to reap profits—Saturday mornings.