It's never as in-depth as I'd like it to be, and I'm always running late, but I really enjoy doing this. I hope you all enjoy reading it.
Anyway, I was thinking the other day that I was kinda lucky, growing up when I did. In addition to Saturday mornings on the networks, there were a number of independent stations who fed my insatiable appetite for animated action.
Of the five stations, I believe only one of them is still an independent, and sadly, in place of the afternoon cartoon goodies, there's "Matlock."
Progress, shmogress.
Back in the day (I know I sound old, but I'm only 27, honestly), I grew up on the outer edge of the Bay Area in California.
Channel 44 (then KBHK-TV) would show a healthy dose of the Superfriends after school. They also changed things up a little with the "Superman/Batman/Aquaman Show."
They'd also show one of the SF shows on Sunday morning, too - usually "Challenge of the Superfriends."
Channel 36 offered a little afterschool competition with its rotating (and eclectic) selection that included "The New Fantastic Four," "The Mighty Hercules" and a boatload of the Marvel Superheroes cartoons.
Channel 2 offered up the 60s incarnation of "Spider-Man" for a long as I could remember. I also used to watch "Creature Features" on Channel 2 a lot, but I digress.
Why am I mentioning this? Am I trying to pad out a skimpy idea in place of a "real" column? Not exactly.
It just occurred to me when I pined yet again for my cable company to offer the Cartoon Network's sister channel, Boomerang - it's almost impossible to find many of these cartoons anymore.
"Superfriends" is on Boomerang, as is "Fantastic Four," "Centurions," as well as a few others.
There have been rumors of the old He-Man cartoons turning up on the Hallmark channel, but for the most part, it's nearly impossible to see the old cartoons.
Now, Cartoon Network is an AOL Time Warner company, and they should have access to a bunch of these cartoons. I mean, a kajillion of them were either Hanna-Barbera or Ruby-Spears productions. Other production companies are probably either defunct or have been swallowed by bigger conglomerates. It seems to me (and I speak with absolutely no idea how it works) that Cartoon Network could drop maybe one or two showings of "Scooby-Doo" to make room for a show that had a rotating roster of superhero cartoons.
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