Cable gave animation free license to develop adult fare like South Park. © Comedy Partners, Inc. All rights reserved.

Television would change all of this, but not immediately. The first true series animated for television did not appear until 1949 with Jay Ward's Crusader Rabbit, and televised animation remained sporadic until the late 1950s. Much of what was seen was recycled theatrical material, some of it decades old. Still, television proved to be a prodigious method of delivery to the public. Of prime importance is the fact that when television was entrusted to keep animation in the public consciousness, it performed admirably. Series such as Ward's Rocky and His Friends, Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil, and Art Clokey's plucky plasticine star Gumby are fondly remembered today, as is Gene Deitch's Tom Terrific. The impact of these shows along with the Hanna-Barbera limited animation revolution laid important groundwork for animation's cultural future. Had these shows failed to find an audience (some of which was decidedly adult), television would have failed as a mode of transmission and the history of animation in America would have turned out much differently.

Television proved that the film industry was not needed in order to produce animated stars. Rocky, Bullwinkle, Yogi Bear, and Huckleberry Hound never had to appear on the big screen in order to gain fans (or cut licensing deals). As animation prospered under the auspices of the new medium, it also proliferated. Historian Charles Solomon noted that during the 1980-81 television season the Filmation Studio alone produced the equivalent of twenty-five animated features (roughly 38 hours of animation, close to double the output of all seven theatrical studios in 1940). This was not because the staff of Filmation was imbued with some variant of Chemical X; the audience available was far wider than the moviegoing audience of 1940 and television needed the hours in order to fill programming slots. Thus, in the case of television, the delivery system itself dictated the amount of commodity to be produced; this was not true of the theatrical method of transmission. It is an important realization that animation, by the 1970s, was in a symbiotic relationship with its chosen medium of delivery, and that the parameters of this relationship would expand to other forms of presenting cartoons to their consumers. The consumers, in turn, would undergo changes that would ultimately result in an increasingly sophisticated audience for animation.

Cowboy Bebop broke animation boundaries via home video. Now early next year, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie will grace U.S. big screens as well. © Bandai Entertainment.

Bringing More Outlets Home
The next expansion of delivery systems took place during the mid-1970s when the first reliable VCR technology became available for home use. The VCR as we know it dates from 1972, but with Sony's first home model (1975), Americans could enjoy movies that were not broadcast by TV. The second part of a powerful one-two entertainment punch was delivered in 1984, when the Cable Act deregulated the cable TV industry. Although cable TV had existed since 1948, the Cable Act helped to make this delivery system more attractive than ever; by 1989 the number of subscribers tripled. Both of these systems were ideal transportation vehicles for the transmission of cartoons to an eager public. Between the video market, cable TV and network TV programming, animation fans now had access to nearly the entire history of animated cartoons. It is no coincidence that some of the first and most revered animation fanzines came into existence, and that the seminal animation historians began their careers at this time. This phenomenon was noted by author Hal Erikson in his fine book Television Cartoon Shows (An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 through 1993). Erikson believed that this explosion of presentation technology created a savvy viewership which in turn created the impetus for the production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), widely hailed as the first salvo in the current toon boom.

Erikson is correct, but he omits some important points. The state of animation in 1988 was not an enviable one. In many ways, the newly "cartoon literate" viewership had meager pickings from which to choose. For example, Warner animation was a dead issue by the time Roger Rabbit was saving Toontown. Much of what was available on network TV and cable was commercialized and heavily tied to toy promotions. New pro-social guidelines and "educational" proscriptions saddled cartoon scripts. Erikson also overlooks the fact that Disney animation kicked its rusty engines back to roaring life a few months later with The Little Mermaid; this film also played no small part in the animation boom. The proliferation of presentation technology did create animation-hip fans, but it also opened possibilities for new series, new people, and creator-driven product. This was simply because there were so many hours of programming to fill and so much profit to be made from the VHS market (as the Japanese had already proven).