The History of Looney Tunes on Television (Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon) - Nick Knacks Episode #073

[Music] [Music] and now it's time for the show this video is brought to you by patreon patreon do the space jam while nickelodeon has spent the majority of its existence under the umbrella of viacom the channel began in 1979 as a property of warner communications the parent company for warner brothers this allowed for some shows on nickelodeon that took advantage of warner's various assets for example warner owned and still owns dc comics so here's a show called video comics where various dc comic properties are read to kitties at home will i be able to do this as once i used to do it hits the monarch of motion now it's touching me starting to go in but in all of this there is an absence felt a property strongly associated with warner brothers that you think would be a no-brainer to include on the first cable network for children where are the looney tunes the comedic escapades of bugs bunny daffy duck sylvester and tweedy wiley coyote and roadrunner would have had recognizable marquee value with even the most modern of 70s kids and in its earliest years nickelodeon was built around licensed short content you had foreign animation on pinwheel educational shorts on hocus focus concert films on special delivery looney tunes would fit in easily with the channel's early format right and like dc comics looney tunes would have cost virtually nothing for nickelodeon right looney tunes is warner brothers nickelodeon is warner brothers it's simple right yeah it's not that simple and looney tunes wouldn't era nickelodeon until 1988 well into the viacom era the relationship between looney tunes and television as a whole is surprisingly complicated and fractured a mess of writes and syndication packages that wouldn't get shored up until another cable network for kids showed up in the 1990s so let's explore this let's take a deep dive into the history of looney tunes on television before we begin though i'm sure some of you were hoping for a massive comprehensive history of looney tunes as a whole unfortunately we just don't have the time for that in fact instead of focusing on the creative side of looney tunes we're going to be getting into the business side really dig through the tax paperwork here and while i promise i'll do my best to make it interesting this isn't going to be another love letter to chuck jones and mel blank fortunately anime youtuber kaiser beams can fill in the gap for you i strongly recommend their series the merry history of looney tunes it's very detailed and very well researched and does go into the creative side of things and to give you a sense of the scale here this documentary series is up to four episodes three whole hours of content and it covers just the first 20 years of looney tunes if you like knickknacks you'll love the merry history of looney tunes there's a link in the description below so with that let's begin [Music] well if it's the captain's mess let him clean it up let us turn the wayback machine to the mid-1950s these were the formative years of television where it rose from a technological novelty to the main form of entertainment in the united states it was also the middle of a decline for the hollywood studio system according to the u.s census bureau weekly attendance for movies had dropped from 90 million in 1946 to 60 million in 1950 and would continue to decline to 40 million in 1960. television is usually named as a cause of hollywood's mid-century decline and it certainly was one of the factors but there were a dozen major things involved for example the post-world war ii economic expansion saw many families mostly white moving away from city centers and into these new fangled suburbs meaning that going to the movies took more effort there was the rising concern of communism that led to the mccarthy investigations threatening to give hollywood an anti-american reputation and directly affecting much of its talent pool but perhaps most significantly there was the federal government cracking down on anti-trust violations within the studio system for decades major film studios were allowed to also own their own movie theater chains monopolizing film distribution and allowing for collusive practices between studios so that they didn't compete head-to-head with each other in 1948 paramount studios was taken to the supreme court and found guilty of violating anti-trust laws a decision that rippled out to the other major studios forcing them to divorce production and exhibition this also had a direct effect in how hollywood would interact with the new television market the majority of television studios were controlled by hollywood studios prior to this decision afterwards federal law allowed the government to deny tv licenses to companies that have been convicted of monopolistic activities aka every major hollywood studio basically shutting hollywood out of this new market the hollywood studio hit the hardest during this decline was warner brothers with net profits falling from 22 million dollars in 1947 to 2.9 million dollars in 1953 a near 90 percent loss in just six years like its fellow studios warner brothers ran through a series of expansions and gimmicks to the moviegoing experience to try and draw audiences back new aspect ratios coloring processes and 3d well there's someone with a bag of popcorn close your mouth it's the bag i'm aiming out not your tonsils here she comes in fact jack warner head of production was so convinced that 3d was going to transform cinema completely that he tried the process out on looney tunes the first 3d looney tune short lumberjack rabbit premiered on september 25th 1953 but this was just a normal animated short converted part way into production and didn't fully take advantage of the technology in fact here's every bit of 3d jump out of the screen gimmickry the short had that was it the logo that's all the 3d in the entire short with underwhelming results and director chuck jones not caring for the gimmick it seemed like 3d looney tunes probably wasn't an avenue worth exploring and jack warner agreed so he shut down the entire animation department mr warner believed in 3d so much that he would rather get rid of his studio's iconic cartoon series than have them remain 2d now this closure was very brief warner reopened the department and rehired everybody after about four months but this moment tells us two things one how hesitant warner brothers was to embrace the new post-television market and two how little warner valued the looney tunes brand reportedly jack warner didn't even know where the animation studio termite terrace was on his studio lot and jack's older brother and warner brothers then president harry warner was under the misconception that they made mickey mouse cartoons while the big hollywood studios couldn't own their own television networks yet they could of course still license out their libraries and produce television shows of their own first out of the gate was columbia pictures and their new television subsidiary screen gems who assisted in the production of the anthology show ford theater back in 1951 walt disney famously recognized the marketing potential of television and premiered disneyland in 1954. warner brothers came in relatively late jack warner felt threatened by the television market despite his son's insistence television was a dirty word to jack warner and he refused to even allow a tv set to appear in a film scene even after they'd become common pieces of furniture in 1950 i went to my father and suggested warner's get into television his reaction was to jokingly order me to stop using the word television in his presence if you say that word again i'll have to wash your mouth out with soap he said eventually jack warner relented and put his son jack horner jr in charge of warner brothers new television subsidiary sunset productions then and this is wild jack warner opened a second television subsidiary warner brothers television and they made all of warner brothers television shows leaving junior and sunset productions to handle minor projects and licensing agreements i could use only properties already owned by the studio and was forbidden to shoot any pilot films i was angered outraged is more like it by the bypassing of my department and what i saw as a deliberate slap in the face administered by my father warner brothers television began production in 1955 finding solid success with shows like cheyenne maverick and 77 sunset strip as for sunset productions with little else they could do the subsidiary licensed out 191 of warner brothers cartoon shorts on a long-term contract to guild films in 1955 for the price of one million dollars a production and distribution company guild films was best known at the time for bringing liberace to television in 1952. these 191 cartoons consisted of all of the black and white looney tunes from 1930 to 1943 as well as all the black and white merry melodies minus the merry melodies directed by hugh harmon and rudolph eisling with the exception of the very first one 1931's lady player mandolin what this meant was a lot of bosco looney tunes first main character a lot of porky pig a solid amount of daffy duck but not a single bug's bunny while warner brothers maintained the copyrights on these shorts they also wanted to distance themselves from them re-editing them to remove the warner brothers logo and replacing it with a sunset productions card warner brothers was worried that distributing to television under their own name would lower the value of their brand for theater distribution this distancing even carried over to the print advertising as the shorts began to air on tv these are the renowned cartoons made by leon schlesinger creator of bugs bunny for a major hollywood studio and released for the first time in television through guild films guild films offered the shorts on an unlimited use basis to individual local stations for two-year rental periods these shorts were usually often part of a larger show with live action segments starring like a clown or a cowboy or something and that host would try to sell you things like hostess pies or toy trucks and then lead into a cartoon and now here we go with a great big looney tune so it's all aboard jackie oh come on all aboard [Applause] oh yeah [Music] and so this was how looney tunes was introduced to television but it didn't stop there oh no we've only just begun our tale for there are many looney tunes shorts still to be claimed roll forward one year to 1956 and enter associated artists productions or aap founded in 1948 by elliot hyman aap was one of the first film distribution companies to pivot to television distributing western movie packages and shows like candid camera and in 1956 aap went up to warner brothers and bought just all the stuff and i'm not just talking shorts aap bought warner brothers entire pre-1950 film library and they didn't buy the distribution rights they bought the copyright films like casablanca the maltese falcon the adventures of robin hood mildred pierce the treasure of the sierra madre the films that made the warner brothers name were no longer owned by warner brothers sold for a simple 21 million dollars warner brothers president harry warner was devastated by this reportedly lamenting this is our heritage what we worked all our lives to create and now it is gone if you haven't picked up already the warner family didn't get along very well shortly after the aap purchase warner brothers let word out that they was ready for a buyout the three warner brothers harry albert and jack were ready to retire and live off their legacy and so someone bought warner brothers and his name was jack warner in a final backstab to the rest of his family jack secretly organized a syndicate to buy the studio for 20 million dollars oh look here's 20 million dollars we can spend then revealed himself as the majority shareholder took the role of president from his brother flipped the rest of his family deuces and shut the company door on them there's so much more here but this is about looney tunes not the warner dynasty so let's roll back to associated artists along with the film library aap acquired the copyrights of every pre-august 1948 short that guild films didn't get this included all the color looney tunes up to hair devil hair all the color merry melodies up to the shell shocked egg as well as the black and white mary melodies directed by harmon and isaac minus lady player mandolin of course for a total of 337 shorts while there's a lot of animation history and some real gems in the guild film shorts the aap collection is what people had come to think of and really still think of as looney tunes the early shorts of bugs bunny elmer fudd tweedy sylvester yosemite sam voghorn leghorn and pepe lepi and big chungus since they owned the shorts outright aap didn't have to concern themselves with warner brothers paranoia and they kept the wb logo along with an additional card for associated artists around the same time aap also acquired the rights of 234 popeye cartoons those made by flesher studios and at the time owned by paramount pictures that's a pretty substantial cartoon library to help catalog it aap hired former looney tunes director and benny and cecil creator bob clampett which is something to get back to when we get to the red and stimpy episode everything is connected time is a web of nonsense and so this was the state of things going into 1957 with looney tunes split three ways the guild films collection over here the associated artist collection over there and warner brothers broke and no longer a family business but still retaining ownership of their post 1948 shorts and still making new shorts for movie theaters however all of this wouldn't stay the status quo for long if there's one constant when it comes to looney tunes on television it's that there's no constant at all hey smaller vision we places television holy mackerel where's my rifle so let's take these three factions one at a time starting with associated artist productions because they did not last long the company had gotten a bit spent happy in the mid 50s in january of 1957 aap went to metro goldwyn-meier home of tom and jerry and tried to buy all of their shorts as well before this deal could be finalized however aap found itself dealing with an internal power struggle with shareholders trying to buy each other out and taking each other to court after the dust had settled associated artist productions was bought by united artists an older production company founded in the silent film era by some of hollywood's first big names d.w griffith charlie chaplin mary pickford douglas fairbanks aap was officially defunct and united artist television now united artists associated held all of aap's assets including all these cartoons that aap barely even got the chance to use one interesting thing associated artists kicked off and united artists continued with was in a sense home video releases black and white silent with subtitles looney tunes shorts on reels of eight millimeter sold in department stores these were produced well into the 1970s until the advent of vhs made it quite the inferior home video format guild films was also not having great time they filed for bankruptcy and shut down in 1961. their assets were sold off and the television rights to the black and white sunset production shorts were bought by seven art productions a production company founded by elliot hyman again man this guy gets around oh and sunset productions also shut down in 1957 which just leaves warner brothers and finally they started realizing hey why are we letting other people put our stuff on tv why don't we just do it ourselves so on october 11th 1960 the first official warner brothers produced looney tunes show made its premiere on abc [Music] this folks is a warner brothers television production [Music] the bugs bunny show [Music] this is it [Music] [Applause] the bugs bunny show was a half hour prime time program consisting of three looney tunes shorts joined together with original linking segments which were produced and directed by chuck jones frizz freelang and robert mckimson with mel blanc returning to do basically all the voices this marks the first looney tunes product produced for television something very much needed as theatrical shorts were just going out of fashion so this was keeping the cartoon studio in business at least for a little bit longer the bugs bunny show sees bugs and daffy co-headlining a theatrical production an idea originating from the 1957 short show biz bugs and with its large cast of crazy characters and vaudeville shtick it in some ways feels like an early draft of what jim henson would attempt with the muppet show and hey now we can have bugs bunny sell stuff here's what i'm after instant tang boy this cold mountain water makes tang taste like it just came out of the refrigerator which is the way i like paying best for breakfast or any old time and tang gives me so much pep i feel like a new rabbit oh hold on there you furry varmint take my tang will [Music] after three seasons the bugs money show aired its final new episode on august 7th 1962 and shortly thereafter began re-running as a saturday morning program at this same time termite terrace was seeing dark days in july chuck jones was found in violation of his exclusivity contract and was fired and then near the end of the year warner brothers decided to shut down the animation studio again once projects already in the work were finished warner brothers cartoons officially shut its door in 1964. not that they stopped making looney tunes oh no they just outsourced production now starting in 1964 with pancho's hideaway most of these new looney tunes were being made by depatty freeland enterprises with the exception of some of the roadrunner shorts which were handled by format productions 1964 also saw the premiere of another looney tunes show on abc the porky pig show around the room [Music] that's me folks the opening closing and linking segments were animated by hal seeger a flesher studios animator who later created milton the monster and bat fink look at how tiny and cute yosemite sam is i want to pick him up and put him in my pocket running for 26 episodes the porky pig show featured a lot of the shorts the bugs bunny show never got around to in 1966 cbs finally got a loom tunes program to call their own the roadrunner show [Music] tv [Music] then in 1968 cbs grabbed the rights to the bugs buddy show and edit it together with the roadrunner show to make the bugs bunny slash roadrunner hour the two networks would play hot potato with the shows in the 1970s in 1971 these shows were split apart again and abc got the roadrunner show while cbs kept the bugs bunny show until 1973 then abc got both shows and then cbs took both shows back in 1975 and would hold on to them until 1985. oh this doesn't even factor in the merry melody show in 1972 or the sylvester and tweety show in 1976 the daffy duck show in 1978 look there were a lot of these things okay let's roll back to the 1960s and check in with warner brothers the company wasn't doing amazing but it was doing better than it had been in the 50s thanks in part to some successful films like my fair lady and who's afraid of virginia woolf however come 1966 jack warner was 74 and looking to retire on november 14 1966 he publicly announced that he would sell his 1.6 million shares one third of warner brothers stocks to another company seven arts productions the two companies officially merged in july of 1967 becoming warner brothers seven arts this meant a lot of things but for our purposes seven arts decided to bring looney tunes production in-house again reopening the animation studio many looney tubes fans find this unfortunate with the seven arts era dropping most of the regular cast of characters and introducing a bunch of new characters that failed to catch on cool cat merlin the magic mouse bunny and clawed rapid rabbit and the quick brown fox equal trade-off for getting rid of bugs bunny right of course this merger also meant that warner brothers could finally bring the 191 sunset production shorts back home and that's nice and all but their value for television broadcast was rapidly declining as colored television was becoming the standard all three networks were broadcasting completely in color prime time programming by 1966. and by 1972 more u.s households would have color sets than black and white sets black and white just wasn't trendy anymore and every single one of the 191 sunset production shorts were black and white so warner brothers 7 arts brought on fred ladd a producer who specialized in localization of foreign films and television particularly the localizations of early japanese animation imports like astro boy gigantor and kimba the white lion in 1967 he also began experimenting with colorization and in 1968 was tasked with colorizing 79 of these black and white shorts primarily the porky pig ones and by colorizing what we really mean is tracing the original frames and redrawing the entire cartoon with color cells the quality of these redrawn cartoons varied but however you might feel about them they are far from authentic to save time and effort backgrounds were simplified character designs were changed timing was adjusted and frames of animation were removed making the cartoons feel jerkier and cheaper than they originally were and the color choices get as much bright pink and yellow as you can in there yeah these are inferior products but thankfully we haven't lost any of the black and white originals making these an ugly curiosity instead of an outright sin to the looney tunes name if we can jump ahead in the timeline a bit these cartoons would be colorized again in 1992 this time digitally while just as unnecessary as the 68 attempt at the very least the original animation is preserved here and the colors don't feel nearly as unnatural [Music] hot tamales hot tamales if you see them boiling in the pot hot tamales or hot tamales get them while they're good and hot [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hot tamales hot tamales i see them boiling in the pot there was another reason for these colorizations besides black and white not being cool anymore beginning in 1958 a large number of the older looney tunes were falling into the public domain due to unrenewed copyright jack warner famously didn't give a crap about animation why should he care if the rights lapse by 1971 120 looney tunes and mary melody shorts produced from 1930 to 1943 entered the public domain making them free to be used distributed and sold by anyone if you're of the age to have grown up with a vcr you probably recall the glut of low quality vhs tapes with horrible looney tunes art on the box that's thanks to these public domain shorts not gonna lie i love these things the vhs market was the wild west now these colorized versions these were considered a whole new product something warner brothers could maintain the copyright on and control so now we have these 120 cartoons floating around in the ether for television stations to grab as if things could get any more complicated oh hey warner brothers 7 arts closed down the animation studio this time for good the final theatrical short engine trouble premiered on september 20th 1969 ending the classic era looney tunes with a racist whimper [Music] oh and seven arts was out after just a few short years they weren't getting what they hoped for out of this relationship and sold themselves off to the conglomerate kinney national company and here we get into stories already told i'm gonna do an oversimplified speed run version of the history here but if you want to know more about this part of warner brothers history i recommend watching the video comics episode of knickknacks so yeah mob owned parking garages merges with funeral home starts a talent agency buys warner brothers for 64 million dollars in 1969 splits the entertainment side of the business off into warner communications in 1972 warner communications by zatari in 1976 president steve ross is inspired by an interactive television system in a tokyo hotel to create the interactive cable network cube in 1977 cube's children's channel spins off into a basic cable channel called nickelodeon in 1979 atari releases an et video game in 1982 and destroys everything warner sells nickelodeon and other cable assets to viacom through the 70s and 80s and into the 90s there were four distinct syndication packages for looney tunes three of which were distributed by warner in whatever form the company happened to be taking at the time first you have the top tier package exclusive to the three major networks for weekly saturday broadcast this is where the bugs bunny show and road runner show live along with a bunch of the studio's more iconic cartoons then you have the secondary package lots of good shorts but perhaps not the cream of the crop and the everything else package both syndicated out to individual television stations these weren't static packages however and every two to four years a bunch of the shorts got shuffled around freshing up each syndication package and making sure everyone got a chance at everything and of course you still had united artists associated in their cartoons allowing channels to do things like pair up their cartoons with unfunny chimpanzee spice moves by the way in my lancelot link video i included footage of wiley coyote and roadrunner which was an error on my part lancelot link used the united artists syndication package and united artists never had any road runner united artists would merge with mgm in 1981 becoming mgmua alright i think we're caught up to nickelodeon with all of this history in mind what exactly was nickelodeon's relationship with bugs bunny i'll rob him of his gold and give it to some poor unworthy slob that'll prove that i'm robin hood hmm so let's get back to the original question why didn't nickelodeon air looney tunes when both were owned by warner they technically could have though with limitations that top tier syndication package was by design for network television only and airing the current incarnations of the bugs bunny show on nickelodeon would have been a direct opposition to warner's relationships with the network if they wanted the mgmua cartoons nickelodeon would have to pay up and while it wasn't the most expensive syndication package in the world it was still money spent in a time when nickelodeon was already losing money not to mention the embarrassment of a company having to buy the broadcast rights to cartoons they made that just left the two secondary syndication packages and i guess they could have aired those on nick without conflict there's no issues i could find in my research so yes nickelodeon almost certainly could have aired looney tunes at no cost themselves from day one albeit with a truncated selection the issue then was if looney tunes fit in with what nickelodeon was trying to do and for the first four years the answer to that was a resounding no nickelodeon was a channel that had kicked off with a charming but blatant sesame street clone and built from there into a home for educational and or cultured content the green vegetables pbs you paid for channel for kids that kids largely avoided looney tunes was not educational and it was terribly common having spent the previous 25 years being syndicated filler for local stations animated shorts from europe oh this is a fine meal imaginative and whimsical and nice looney tunes reruns this is teeth rotting candy simple and violent and played out our programs have got to have something beyond entertainment value they have to have some other substance literary informational we try to do things that have a positive role model in them we screen out anything that's violent or that contains racial sex or age stereotyping oh yeah and that's another thing some of these cartoons had some really crappy stuff in them and as what was considered socially acceptable for general audiences changed some of the warner brothers cartoons were challenged and removed from circulation in 1968 united artists removed 11 cartoons from their syndication packages mostly for racist imagery of african and african-american characters while those were among the worst warner brothers produced there was still enough racist content in the cartoon library down to the very last one in 1969 that taking them on from a good for you children's channel perspective would require a lot of auditing and a lot of editing there's a lot more work and consideration here than just slapping looney tunes on nickelodeon for free and obviously when nickelodeon switched from warner to viacom it would have to pay for any looney tunes syndication package no getting around that under the leadership of jerry laborden beginning in 1984 the channel's philosophy shifted away from the educational and cultured into someplace more clearly fun and empowering to children which included a new emphasis on animated programming however in layborne's initial years there was also a focus on delivering shows you couldn't get anywhere else such as foreign imports or obscure programs that almost never got syndicated looney tunes did not fit in with that modus operandi the cartoons were still easy to find on network television and were as marketable as ever however this philosophy changed in 1988 with the surprise blockbuster success of their first original game show double dare nickelodeon had real spending money for once and budget was no longer a concern when it came to picking syndication packages for the channel in 1987 layborn properly stepped away from the unwritten obscurities only rule by grabbing inspector gadget a popular modern mainstream cartoon that was still airing in most markets in the united states so if we're allowing for mainstream shows on our channel that can still be easily found on network television and if money is no object heck why not grab some daffy duck and porky pig and put them on the schedule the looney tunes are coming to nickelodeon and to celebrate we're giving you three hours of the looniest tunes we've got back to back this sunday starting at 9 8 central let's start a party that's right nickelodeon the network that knows what you want is giving you more daffy more speedy more porky more looney tunes than you'll get anywhere else pretty good be there as nick goes lonely and celebrates looney tunes on nickelodeon this sunday beginning at 9 8 central for three straight hours brought to you by galoob on nickelodeon the only network for you looney tunes on nickelodeon premiered on sunday september 11th 1988 with a three-hour marathon from nine a.m to noon called nickelodeon goes looney afterwards it aired as a half hour block of cartoons at 5 pm on weekdays and 6 30 p.m on the weekend seven days a week in some very prominent after homework time slots under a two year agreement the shorts originated from one of warner's secondary syndication packages which was composed of a mix of classic color cartoons redrawn and colorized porky pig cartoons and bosco poor poor bosco look there's a lot to love about the black and white rubber hose animation of the 20s and 30s but it's also just a totally different kind of thing from what looney tunes would become known for less reliant on character and clever comedy leaning much harder in rapid fire absurdism and also bosco and characters like him are steeped in the aesthetics of minstrel shows a character design derived from blackface not that little kids picked up on that but they certainly could sense that this was a very dated thing and speaking of dated things yes some of these shorts did receive trimming and editing and altercation to bring them to a more modern sensibility racist content pre-haze code profanity [Music] and behavior easily replicable by small children were all exercised however nickelodeon barely touched any of the cartoon violence something you could not say for most network airings which made looney tunes on nickelodeon a somewhat more authentic experience nickelodeon figured hey it's a lot better than the violence on he-man and g.i joe the violence in looney tunes is based on comic situations and fantasy it's surreal it is definitely not a dramatic cereal based on international violence and massive destruction planned by warriors and carried out with 21st century laser ray guns and roadrunner and the coyote are not toy based characters it's a classic cartoon now there is an additional boon in getting looney tunes and that's the cross generational appeal something nickelodeon was very invested in following the creation of nick at night programming that would grab the attention of baby boomer parents and offer a shared experience as something grown-ups could pass down to their kids looney tunes certainly worked better for this than some stuffy 50 sitcom and it goes even further back for kids watching in 1988 not only did their parents grow up with looney tunes there's a solid chance their grandparents grew up with looney tunes so it probably comes as no surprise that beginning on april 8th 1989 nick and knight also aired looney tunes on the weekends for four straight years up until march 28 1993. i'm tired [Laughter] [Music] so how well did it do exact viewing numbers aren't available but all accounts point to looney tunes being a highly watched program in 1989 for nickelodeon's 10th anniversary warner brothers made this print ad to celebrate warner brothers congratulates nickelodeon on its 10th anniversary and more than doubling its ratings with looney tunes this is somewhat deceptive it sounds like it's saying that looney tunes doubled nickelodeon's overall ratings which is not remotely true what they actually mean is that looney tunes did twice as good in ratings than the previous show in the pm time slot which for the record was nick rox this is such a backdoor brag from warner brothers oh congratulations on doing so well with our show looney tunes as a whole was seeing an uptick in popularity and production around this time on top of its perpetual television presence the first new theatrical short the dr cyst was released on november 20th 1987 which would become part of the compilation film daffy duck's quack busters in 1988 who framed roger rabbit placed bugs bunny and daffy duck alongside mickey mouse and donald duck in a celebration of classic animation and became one of the highest grossing films of that year and then the 90s happened the 1990s loved looney tunes 1990 marked the 50th anniversary of the first bugs bunny cartoon a wild hair and so bugs bunny's birthday was celebrated with books merchandise and an hour-long special on cbs 1990 was also the premiere of tiny toon adventures a show about young tuned characters being mentored by the original looney tunes this collaboration between warner brothers and steve spielberg was so successful that it spun off a series of well not looney tunes shows but looney tune adjacent shows like animaniacs and pinky in the brain all of which we'll be getting to on knickknacks with time plus actual looney tunes based shows like tasmania and the sylvester and tweety mysteries all the while the classic cartoons were still being syndicated on abc in the form of the bugs bunny and twee show also space jam happened it's hard to say exactly how much nickelodeon contributed to looney tunes late 20th century popularity or how that popularity affected the channel but it maintained a solid viewership well into its run one of the few relevant nielsen ratings i do have are the cable ratings from 1996. outside of a few sporting events nickelodeon absolutely dominated these charts and right in the middle of the pack is looney tunes that's not bad at all it was even doing better than new episodes of rocko's modern life and if this still hasn't convinced you of its success there was also that time looney tunes on nickelodeon nearly ruined the first iraq war okay so beginning on february 11th 1991 nickelodeon ran a three-week promotion nick's looney tune lookout sweepstakes how it worked was during regular daytime programming a looney tunes character would randomly walk across the bottom of the screen when that happened the kid watching was to run to the phone and call the given 1-800 number if they called quick enough they were in the running to win some free toys the promotion was very successful an estimated 5 million calls were being made to this 1 800 number every day on february 18th presence day a federal holiday no school 11 million children called during a three-hour period nickelodeon was drawing millions of children in with looney tunes characters but there was a problem we were in the middle of the first iraq war the gulf war operation desert storm phone communications for the army were managed by at t but at t services were getting jammed up millions of children were calling through their phone lines because they saw elmer fudd on their tv and they wanted their free toys a looney tunes on nickelodeon promotion was actively harmful to u.s troops you can't make this up because of this the promotion was abruptly ended on february 19th two weeks earlier than planned looney tunes of nickelodeon kept on trucking part of looney tunes on nickelodeon's longevity came from rotation remember how i said warner brothers would shuffle up their syndication packages every two to four years well that finally happened in 1992 bringing in more bugs bunny and daffy duck in getting rid of the really old stuff and nickelodeon wanted you to know if you think you've seen everything every every every [Music] take a closer look at nickelodeon closer closer hello baby no closer because now nick's got more of the looney tunes you want more bugs more dappy and no bosco sorry bosco get a better look at the looney tunes you want every weekday on nickelodeon the cartoon selection was shuffled again in 1995 and 1998 so things never got too stale this period also took advantage of the new computer colorized shorts superior to the redrawn shorts in every way these versions of the shorts were a collaboration between warner brothers and the company leading the charge in colorization technologies turner enterprises oh yeah we should probably talk about ted its rotation of syndication packages nickelodeon got to air just about all of the warner brothers owned cartoons at one point or another but they never did get to touch the 337 shorts still owned by mgm mgmua that represented the middle portion of looney tunes history of course part of the reason for that was that when looney tunes on nickelodeon started mgmua didn't own those shorts anymore ted turner did one of the more colorful characters in television history robert edward turner iii took over his father's billboard company in 1963 and then purchased his own uhf station in 1970 dubbing it the turner broadcasting system which later became a staple of some of the earliest cable packages he then co-founded cnn the first 24-hour cable news channel in 1980 and then in 1983 rupert murdoch crashed his yacht into turner's yacht causing turner to challenge murdoch to a televised fistfight in las vegas this is true on march 25th 1986 ted turner and the turner broadcasting system purchased mgmua ua for 1.5 billion dollars five months later turner realized oh crap i just spent 1.5 billion dollars and now i don't have any money and so he sold part of mgm back to the original owners namely the brand names and the studio lots however turner kept the film television and cartoon library founding the turner entertainment company to manage it this included the 337 looney tunes and mary melody shorts originally purchased by associated arts productions way back when as well as the flesher studios popeye cartoons and mgm's original cartoon properties like tom and jerry droopy red-hot riding hood and screwy squirrel boy i sure have a lot of cartoons if only there was a network to put them on 1986 was also when ted turner tried to kick off his film colorization project taking the movies he had acquired like casablanca and citizen kane and painting all over them everybody hated it but turner stuck out his tongue and went neaner neener the last time i checked i owned the films that were in the process of colorizing i can do whatever i want with them and if they're going to be shown on television they're going to be in color besides i like things in color we see in color shut up about color did murdock put you up to this anyway it was incredibly unpopular and turner knocked it off after a few years but it did develop the technologies used for looney tunes in the early 90s in 1991 turner purchased the hanna-barbera library giving him access to scooby-doo yogi bear the flintstones and the jetsons with that there was more than enough content available to start an all cartoons all the time cable channel and development of such a channel was announced on february 18th 1992. it slices it dices it stirs and fries it's the world's first and only cartoon network and it will do almost everything but that's not all you'll get a 24-hour supply of scrolling bags and splats yes you'll be talking tune in no time flat but wait there's more you'll get tons of top tune stars plus the mark of quality acne products how do we do it volume volume volume every time you turn around another tune it's all the viewing excitement your family deserves and more yes you can begin enjoying delicious cartoons from your new cartoon network on october 1st of that year the world was introduced to cartoon network and the very first thing they played was the fris freeland directed bugs bunny plays the piano cartoon rhapsody rabbit while initially being available on a very limited number of ko packages by the third quarter of 1994 nielsen ranked it as the fifth most popular cable network and its star would only keep rising with the introduction of their own original animation projects it wasn't long before cartoon network was the first meaningfully direct competitor to nickelodeon yes the disney channel premiered nearly a decade earlier but it being a premium cable channel made it a lot less accessible and it took a while to catch up cartoon network they came to play ball meanwhile oh boy more companies buying other companies in 1990 magazine publisher time incorporated merged with warner communications and became time warner then to help re-enter the cable television market time warner bought the turner broadcasting system on october 10th 1996 giving ownership of cartoon network and the entire turner cartoon library to time warner which means for the first time in 41 years warner brothers owned and had access to the entire looney tunes and merry melodies library and here with warner brothers they have remained there have been some additional purchases and mergers since but looney tunes have not been split apart since and probably never will be again the effects of this merger weren't felt overnight as pre-existing syndication contracts were still active but once those contracts reached their deadline none of them were renewed looney tunes on nickelodeon aired its last on september 11 1999 11 years to the day from its premiere to this day looney tunes remains the longest running non-original animated program in nickelodeon's history and it probably would have kept going for some years if time warner had allowed it the bugs bunny and tweedy show aired its last on abc on september 2nd 2000 marking the last time any of the three major broadcast networks aired looney tunes for the next 20 years looney tunes would exclusively air on cartoon network and its spin-off channel boomerang what was once everywhere became a more walled-off exclusive product sure lots of people got cartoon network i got cartoon network and many of the best cartoons have been made available on all sorts of home video formats but cable television is an expense one people are less willing to pay in our current world of streaming services what this means is that there's no easy way for children to just casually discover looney tunes anymore the age of being four years old flipping through channels that came free over the air finding a half-finished sylvester and tweety cartoon on your local abc affiliate and going huh i wonder what this is that's all over you have to be lucky enough for your parents to have bought into warner brothers walled garden to see what buzz bunny and daffy duck were all about that is until very very recently my instructions clearly stayed up to feed you twice a day and entertain you with cartoons which by the way i have one all queued up it's a great one from 1955 directed by the legendary chuck jones with elmer fudd in the biggest role of his career i think you'll see what i mean what um is he like a giant or something he's a giant right bill that's what you're saying you just have to ruin everything toony don't you come on that was a spoiler on january 4th 2021 me tv a newer broadcast television network that focuses on syndicated reruns of classic television much in the spirit of nick and knight and tv land premiered a new children's show called tune in with me hosted by a guy named bill and a fish named toonie the show airs classic cartoons such as tom and jerry popeye and yes indeed looney tunes me tv is not owned by warner which means quietly warner has started syndicating their old cartoon library again and these old cartoons are airing on free over-the-air television again that gives me a little hope in a world of ip monopolies and walled gardens companies willing to share their toys is rare and younger generations having easier access to the art of generations past is always always always a good thing nick nick nick nick nick nick nick next time that big orange cat from the funny pages that's not garfield comes nickelodeon and creates a whole lot of furries in its wake this is one of my bigger research projects so instead of giving you the core source i pulled from here's a rapid fire list of all the books used in the making of this video bugs bunny 50 years and only one gray hair joe adamson 1990. that's all folks the art of warner brothers animation steve schneider 1989 chuck amuck the life and times of an animated cartoonist chuck jones 1989 of mice and magic a history of american animated cartoons leonard moulton 1980 hollywood be thy name the warner brothers story cass warner spurling 1998 the clown prince of hollywood the antic life and times of jack l warmer bob thomas 1990 hollywood tv the studio system in the 50s christopher anderson 1994. thank you all for watching if you'd like to support knickknacks and other popularity projects consider contributing to my patreon every dollar goes to research materials production values and clean socks you can also support the channel by liking the video leaving a comment subscribing hitting that bell icon for notifications sending a one-time donation through paypal or coffee following me on twitter and sharing knickknacks with all your friends thank you for watching and black lives [Music] matter [Music] you

Channel: poparena

Views: 96,188

Keywords: Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martin, Tweety, Sylvestor, Wile E Coyote, Roadrunner, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe le Pew, Bosko, television, TV, Warner Bros, Sunset Productions, Guild Films, Jack Warner, Associated Artists Productions, AAP, United Artists, MGM, Seven Arts, Ted Turner, TBS, Nickelodeon, Nick, Cartoon Network, cable, history, cartoon, animation, documentary, video, essay, episode, Viacom, syndication, colorization

Id: Xxxqg0XHxTw

Length: 57min 42sec (3462 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 28 2021