Drawn to Television: Prime-Time Animation from The Flintstones to Family Guy M. Keith Booker PRAEGER Drawn to Television Recent Titles in The Praeger Television Collection David Bianculli, Series Editor Spy Television Wesley Britton Science Fiction Television M. Keith Booker Christmas on Television Diane Werts Reality Television Richard M. Huff Drawn to Television PRIME-TIME ANIMATION FROM The Flintstones TO Family Guy M. KEITH BOOKER The Praeger Television Collection David Bianculli, Series Editor Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Booker, M. Keith. Drawn to television: prime-time animation from The Flintstones to Family guy / M. Keith Booker. p. cm.—(The Praeger television collection, ISSN 1549–2257) Includes index. ISBN 0–275–99019–2 1. Animated television programs—United States. I. Title. PN1992.8.A59B66 2006 791.45'3—dc22 2006018109 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2006 by M. Keith Booker All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006018109 ISBN: 0–275–99019–2 ISSN: 1549–2257 First published in 2006 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America ∞ TM The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Skylor Booker Who taught me to appreciate cartoons . Contents Introduction: A Very Brief History of Prime-Time Animation ix 1 Animation Comes to Prime Time: The Case of The Flintstones 1 2 The Sixties Animation Explosion: The Flintstones Fallout 21 3 Animation’s New Age: Meet The Simpsons 47 4 Family Guys from King of the Hill to American Dad 69 5 Beyond the Family Sitcom: Prime-Time Animation Seeks New Formats 103 6 You Can’t Do That on Television: The Animated Satire of South Park 125 7 Pushing the Animated Envelope 157 Postscript: Prime-Time Animation in American Culture 185 Index 187 Introduction: A Very Brief History of Prime-Time Animation Animated programming has been a prominent part of American popular culture since at least the 1930s, when the first feature-length films from the Walt Disney Studios began to appear along with the first animated shorts from Warner Brothers (in the “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies” series). It was thus only natural, as the new medium gained popularity in the 1950s, that animated programming would come to television. Animated programming has been an important element of American television ever since, no doubt in large part because animated programs, mostly aimed at children, have been a crucial part of the experience of American childhood. The most successful of these programs have had staying power far beyond the norm for television, maintaining a strong nostalgia value even as the children who watched them grew into adulthood. Such children’s programs have typically aired on Saturday mornings or weekday afternoons—at times when children would be expected to constitute a larger-than-usual percentage of the viewing audience. A number of programs, however, have been aimed at adults from the start (or at least at a mixed audience of children and adults), and these programs have often aired in prime time. The following volume traces the development of this phenomenon through a discussion of the most important prime-time animated programs in American television history. The history of prime-time animation begins with the airing of The Flintstones in the fall of 1960. This series would go on to provide some of the x Introduction: A Very Brief History of Prime-Time Animation most familiar images of American popular culture in the remainder of the twentieth century, and it remains well known to both children and adults well into the twenty-first century. Its immediate success triggered a brief explosion in prime-time animated programming in the early 1960s, with Hanna-Barbera Productions, makers of The Flintstones, leading the way. In the next few years, programs such as Matty ’ s Funday Funnies, Bugs Bunny, Calvin and the Colonel, Top Cat, The Alvin Show, The Bullwinkle Show (aka Rocky and Bullwinkle ), The Jetsons, and Jonny Quest could all be seen in prime time. None of these programs was particularly successful, however, and all soon disappeared from the prime-time lineup, though several had second lives as Saturday-morning programs and many are still well known today, more than 40 years after their demise in prime time. The failure of these programs to draw large audiences in prime time, accompanied by a decline in the popularity of The Flintstones itself, led to a widespread perception in the television industry that animated programs could succeed only as children’s fare on Saturday mornings. As a result, with the removal of The Flintstones from prime time in 1966, animated pro- gramming disappeared from prime time and remained in a state of exile from the evening schedule for more than 20 years. (It is worth noting that the animated shorts that had been shown in theaters prior to feature films since the 1930s also disappeared during roughly this same time period.) All of this began to change at the end of the 1980s. For one thing, The Simpsons, which would ultimately go on to become the most successful animated pro- gram in American television history, premiered on the fledgling Fox network in 1989. For another, the rapid proliferation of cable systems for the home delivery of television programming was by this time beginning to provide important new venues on which much of the subsequent prime-time and adult-oriented animated programming of the coming years would appear. Like The Flintstones, The Simpsons is essentially an animated version of the family sitcom, a staple of American television from the very beginning. Not surprisingly, then, many of the programs that followed in the wake of the success of The Simpsons adhered to this same format. However, perhaps remembering the failures of the 1960s, network executives were hardly anx- ious to jump on the animation bandwagon, and it was not until 1997, with the premiere of King of the Hill, also on Fox, that The Simpsons had its first major successor in this format. The subsequent success of this series (still on the air as of this writing in early 2006) demonstrated that The Simpsons was not a one-of-a-kind phenomenon. On the other hand, most of the animated family sitcoms that appeared in the next few years were, like the flurry of animated programs in the early 1960s, short-lived. Programs such Introduction: A Very Brief History of Prime-Time Animation xi as The Oblongs and God, the Devil, and Bob were quickly canceled, though Fox’s Family Guy lasted somewhat longer, despite veering into highly con- troversial territory. Still, Family Guy was canceled in 2002, after the end of its third season on Fox. However, the subsequent popularity of that program in syndication on the late-night “Adult Swim” block of the cable Cartoon Network, accompanied by hefty sales of DVD releases of the program, led Fox to bring Family Guy back onto prime time in the spring of 2005, accom- panied by American Dad, an even edgier program, if only because the subject matter was more political , from Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane. In the meantime, the landscape of prime-time animated programming had been radically changed by the appearance of a number of series that did not adhere to the family sitcom format. This phenomenon was particu- larly aided by the proliferation of cable networks, though the first major non–family sitcom animated program to appear in prime time was The Critic, which aired for one season on ABC and one on Fox in the period from 1994 to 1995. Cable then made its first major original contribution to prime- time animation with the appearance of Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, which ran on the Comedy Central network from May 1995 to December 1999, for a total of 78 episodes. New broadcast networks such as UPN and the WB also joined the fray by the end of the 1990s, airing (briefly) such programs as Dilbert, Home Movies, and Mission Hill. Clerks, based on the Kevin Smith cult film of the same title, ran even more briefly on ABC in the spring of 2000. The rapid failure of this succession of programs, reminiscent of the quick demise of most of the prime-time animated programs of the 1960s, might have suggested to network executives that the non–family sitcom animated program was not really a prime-time winner. It should be mentioned, how- ever, that the animated science fiction spoof Futurama (from the creators of The Simpsons ) was moderately successful on Fox from 1999 to 2002. In addi- tion, the most important animated program to come on the air in the late 1990s, Comedy Central’s South Park, also departed from the family sitcom format. By far the most successful animated program ever to air on cable, South Park established once and for all the importance of cable as a home for animated programming. For one thing, the program managed to draw a substantial audience as well as significant and serious critical attention, despite running on a relatively obscure cable network, which South Park itself ultimately made much less obscure. For another, the brash, intention- ally outrageous style and subject matter of South Park , which would almost certainly not have been allowed on network television in 1997 when the series premiered, established cable as an important site for groundbreaking animated programming.