Fan Page: Saved By The Bell

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BEHOLD THE HARBINGER OF THE SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON APOCALYPSE! "Saved By The Bell" debuted on Saturday Mornings in 1990 and the landscape of Saturday Mornings were changed forever. The next few seasons saw an ever increasing amount of live-action teenage sit-coms such as "Guys Next Door", "California Dreams" and "CityKids", as well as non-animated offerings like "Saturday Morning Videos", "NBA Inside Stuff, "Beakman's World" and "Bill Nye The Science Guy". Local stations started selling their Saturday Morning programming slots to Real Estate infomercials and religious programming, or filling it with cheap syndicated re-runs of sit-coms and old movies. Saturday Morning as we knew it... was dieing :(

This trend spread like a Cancer through the Children's Entertainment Industry. The Disney Channel started filling their hours with shows like Lizzie McGuire and That's So Raven instead of actual Disney cartoons. Nickelodeon started their "SNick" line-up of original programming aimed at teens. Soon, the only place you could find cartoons on Saturday mornings were a fist-full of pay cable channels and FOX Television Network, the final outpost of Saturday Morning Cartoons in an apocalyptic wasteland that was once a lush Garden Of Eden full of ripe cartoons that could be picked and consumed at our leisure.

Personally, I think it can all be blamed on Jessie having taken those pills...

Agree or disagree, have an opinion, feel free to leave it in the comments below. And if Saved By The Bell is for some reason one of your favorites, don't forget to go vote for it in our new-and-improved Best New Show Of The 1989/1990 Season Poll!