Weekday cartoons began as far back as the early 1960s on commercial independent station in the major US media markets.
In the 1970s, additional independent stations signed on running such programming (such as WUAB in Cleveland, Ohio; WXNE-TV (now WFXT) in Boston, Massachusetts; WKBS-TV, WTAF-TV (now WTXF-TV) and WPHL-TV in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
The first cartoon series to be produced for first-run syndication were He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Inspector Gadget, both premiering with 65 half-hour episodes in the fall of 1983.
Currently, any advertisement for a tie-in product within the show, elsewise the entire program will be classified automatically as a violating half-hour infomercial according to the FCC's definition, even if one second of a show's character or reference is seen in an advertising;[2] this clause in Children's Television Act puts the station at risk of paying large fines should the program violate this rule.
Fox stations also carried other syndicated cartoons in addition to those offered by the Fox Kids weekday block, while independent stations aired Disney-produced cartoons, including The Disney Afternoon block, and other syndicated animated series.
After 1994–1996 United States broadcast television realignment with New World Pictures to switch several ABC, CBS and NBC-affiliated stations to the network in 1994,[3] the network's new affiliates under New World opted to decline carriage of the Fox Kids lineups, replacing them either with talk and reality shows or additional local newscasts.
In the affected markets, the local rights to Fox Kids programming went to an independent station, and eventually an affiliate of either The WB or UPN.
In 1996, the United States Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 – which was signed into law by then-President of the United States Bill Clinton; among the changes to broadcast regulation incurred by the passage of the law included the relaxing of radio and television ownership limits, and it would also regulate children's television substantially.
All broadcast television stations would be required to air three hours of educational and informative ("E/I") children's programming on a weekly basis.
Warner Bros. would stop syndicating its vintage theatrical and made-for-TV cartoons to local stations that year, relegating them to cable television.
Beginning in 2000, an increasing number of television stations stopped airing cartoons on weekday mornings and/or afternoons.
Fox affiliates for the most part had used the morning time period to run local newscasts or infomercials and only ran children's programs during the afternoon hours.
One Saturday Morning was replaced by ABC Kids, which would run until August 27, 2011; when it was replaced by a teen-oriented block ran and operated by Litton Entertainment entitled "Weekend Adventure" On August 29, 2003, UPN discontinued the Disney's One Too block after it chose not to renew its contract with Disney, resulting in the network dropping children's programming entirely.
This had left Kids' WB as the only children's program block to air weekdays on broadcast network television.
In September 2006, Ion Television launched Qubo, which was a three-hour block of programming (and accompanying digital subchannel) that originally aired exclusively on Friday afternoons – the E/I-compliant block has since moved to other time periods, and since settling on Friday mornings (airing from 8:00 to 11:00 am.
By the start of the 2010s, the traditional entertainment-based variety of children's programs that had been popular for years had vanished from broadcast television, which was now being replaced by mostly unscripted (and less profitable) E/I-compliant programs; however, the decreasing number of more entertainment-based children's shows – due largely to tighter regulations on educational and advertising content has led to a substantial erosion in the audience for children's programs on commercial broadcast television overall due to its limited creative options for producers.
Many of these local stations still have to air a bare minimum of the weekly three-hour requirement of E/I rated programming that was to be reported to the federal government to qualify for their license; mostly in the early morning periods (on weekdays, this is most commonly between 7 and 9 am), or once-a-week on Saturday mornings just to have the bare minimum of content that needs to be set.
Cable television channels specializing in children's programming such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney Channel (by 2014, the channel's weekday lineup would consist solely of its live-action sitcoms) as well as video on demand streaming media such as Netflix, Hulu, iTunes and Amazon Prime Video, Redbox, television video on demand services and other video rental outlets that also provide alternative ways of distributing children's programming at any time of day or week, without restrictions placed on such programming that an FCC-licensed broadcast station must honor to stay in business or the need for advertising to fund it.
[citation needed] From 2012 to 2016, MundoMax aired one cartoon during late weekday afternoons in Spanish making it one the only two commercial networks to air cartoons while adhing the mandates, and the only Spanish network that was non-E/I though it broadcast its E/I programming during weekday mornings and weekends.
Due to the network closure of MundoMax and Qubo, this leaves only some local low-power independent TV stations to air cartoons during the weekdays while adhering to mandates.
This had marked the end of an era in weekday children's programming (including cartoons) going back to the early 1960s.
All traces and mentions of Qubo Kids Corner were eliminated the week after, on March 5, despite the block still airing on Friday mornings.
Other cable networks specializing in family-oriented and children's programming have similarly cut back on animated series on weekdays, though nowhere near the level of that done by broadcast television in the 1980s and 1990s.