Butt-head and Beavis on the set of their landmark feature debut, Beavis and Butt-head Do America.

In the meantime, MTV's sister company Nickelodeon is going ahead with a movie based on its popular Rugrats show from Klasky Csupo, which is most definitely kid friendly.. This conceivably could be followed by a version of Jon Sciesak and Lane Smith's wacky children's book, The Stinky Cheese Man, to be directed (or at least co-directed) by Smith; like Beavis and Butt-head Do America, this is would be done in New York (and possibly other animated features to be done by Nickelodeon). If so, the city will have finally reestablished itself as a major regional production center, a cachet it lost with the demise of Famous Studios, Terrytoons and the shift of animated commercial production to Hollywood in the 1960s.

In the meantime, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks are actively pursuing the Holy Grail of Disney-style animated blockbusters with their own in-house units. Warner Bros. Feature Animation, fresh from its rescue operation on Space Jam and bolstered by new talent absorbed from Turner Feature Animation, is betting on The Quest for Camelot, which will do battle during the Christmas season with Don Bluth's Anastasia, being done in Phoenix, Arizona, at Fox's new animation facility.

Klasky Csupo's Rugrats feature based on the popular TV show will be Nickelodeon Movie's first animated feature.

DreamWorks SKG is mounting the most ambitious assault on fortress Disney, with four animated features in the works, starting with the an epic-scaled biography of Moses, The Prince of Egypt, for 1998. The company is strongly hinting that it will not necessarily indulge in the excess of merchandising hype and tie-ins that seem almost de rigeur for any major animated film these days. If this is really so, it would be a refreshing change and perhaps indicates DreamWorks' hopes that the film would be taken more seriously.

The company, spurred on by the success of Toy Story, last year bought a 40% interest in Pacific Data Images, a major computer animation house, and immediately put it to work on&nbspAnts,the voice of Woody Allen; also in CGI is a version of William Steig's book, Shrek, to be done by DreamWorks Feature Animation itself, which will also use motion capture techniques. Warner Bros. will also chime in on the CGI front with a version of Ted Hughes' Iron Giant&nbsp(Iron Man), which has been in development for several years.

Television
The announcement that the CBS will give up programming animation on Saturday mornings was remarkable only for the way it was almost treated as a nonevent. With NBC having done the same five years ago, that leaves ABC as the last of the original three terrestrial networks programming animation at that time of the week. But with ABC's Saturday mornings given almost entirely over to Disney product, the days of Saturday morning animation as we once knew it are now over.

Mike Judge's King of the Hill.

While the major networks were decimated by such upstarts as the Fox Kids Network and Nickelodeon, their exit from the market does change the dynamics of the market somewhat. Though the licensing fees paid by the likes of CBS to producers had been cut over the past few years, it was still considerably more than that paid by most of its competitors, (I've heard said that the reason that Nickelodeon has not dealt more with more traditional studios, is that they demanded higher licensing fees than Nickelodeon was willing to pay; while the differential has narrowed over the years, it remains significant.)

Despite this and the increased concentration of power in TV, production continues to increase. Of special note is the proliferation of prime time shows, mostly on cable, but also on-air. It is an aspect of television animation that is perhaps the best indicator of how far things have progressed over the last few years. Thus, after several fruitless attempts to cash in on the early popularity of The Simpsons,doubts have vanished about the viability of programming animation in the evening hours, especially if they aimed at adults.

Cable's Nickelodeon continues to flex its muscles not only by increasing the number of animated shows it puts on, but by beginning to program such shows in the evening/prime time hours, including Craig Bartlett's Hey AlbertKablam! Sister channel MTV will give us more episodes of Beavis and Butt-headwith its new spinoff, Daria, featuring BABH's only "intelligent character."