Shows that people forget or get lost in time

The Warner Brothers and MGM shorts were better than Disney anyway!

This is almost exactly what I remember Tony saying, too.

Xilla - I used to have the "non-PC cartoons" one, where he discussed the Mammy Two-Shoes issue we've been talking about, and also how cartoon explosions would often lead to the characters becoming blackface "minstrel" stereotypes. In the other one you mentioned, with different animation types, I remember him showing some student animation projects, in particular a stop-motion piece called "The Man with No Brakes". I'd love to see that one again.

It seemed to vary a bit. The first time it spanned the split was early in 1993, and then that summer they did a series called Disney Club Summer Holidays - which was just Richard Orford and Paul Hendy introducing cartoons and a few clips from previous series - entirely within GMTV's airtime. But then when the Disney Club came back in the autumn, it was back only on ITV again. And then from then on it seemed to vary a bit, sometimes it would be one continuous show from 8am to past 9.25, but sometimes GMTV and ITV would do distinct shows, even if they were both Disney fare.

I do remember when they did the one show, the bit on GMTV would be pretty self-contained - they'd open the show from the studio but the rest of the bit during GMTV would often be entirely devoted to Flipper Forrester out and about somewhere, not returning to the studio until 9.25.



Yes, quite an interesting series, Stay Tooned. I remember Fast Forward pointing out it was a straight continuation of Rolf Harris Cartoon Time, a series that began simply because the Beeb had the rights to a couple of hundred cartoons so needed something to top and tail them. Although under Robinson it became more of a proper show with discussion about the cartoons and, as you say, all kinds of animation.

It always used to be that the Beeb had MGM cartoons - Tom and Jerry, of course, plus also Droopy and the Tex Avery cartoons I used to love - whereas ITV had Disney and imperial phase Warner Bros. It was always a disappointment when you switched onto what was billed as simply "cartoon" in the TV Times, hoping for Daffy Duck or something, and it was boring old Mickey Mouse. However, you would sometimes see very old Warner Bros cartoons on the Beeb because I remember - and sorry to mention him again - the Rolf's Cartoon Club newsletter saying that Warner Bros themselves no longer had the rights to, I think, their pre-1950 cartoons so they would turn up all over the place. I remember they discussed that based on a video I remember renting myself in the eighties which was called "Bugs Bunny and Friends" but featured one ancient Bugs Bunny cartoon and then a load of black and white cartoons from the thirties.

But of course there was Disney on the Beeb in the shape of Disney Time, and indeed it always baffled when I was a kid that all Disney was on ITV, apart from Disney Time. I don't know how that worked. Of course, later the imperial phase Warner Bros cartoons moved to the Beeb, around the turn of the century, and they showed them for a few years, albeit always as part of CBBC and not as fillers in primetime.

Yes, the rights to the Warner Brothers archive pre and post 1948 used to be separate because WB sold off their pre-1948 libary to some TV distribution company some time in the 50s. It changed hands a few times, had ended up in Ted Turner's hands by the early 90s, then ended up back with WB as a result of them buying Turner back in 1996.

Disney Time itself seemed to flit between BBC and ITV over the years too, I have a video from 1999 that has the link to an ITV edition of Disney Time.

You still get those sort of things now, quite misleading really. They're usually just public domain shorts nobody really cares about, with 1 or 2 cartoons with a known character that snuck into the public domain on there, and with their name on it to sell it.

I remember that, because it was the first time Disney Time had actually been on the channel that showed all the other Disney. But up until the late nineties, Disney Time had always been a BBC staple, in fact it was one of the longest-running programmes on the channel, starting in the fifties. There always used to be four episodes a year - Christmas, Easter, Spring Bank Holiday and August Bank Holiday. Judging by Genome its last appearance on BBC1 was in May 1998, when it was presented by Rio Ferdinand. That's not a bad trivia question, actually.



This reminds me of the early days of home video when we used to hire any old rubbish from the video shop. One thing you used to get in the mid-eighties was the concept of the video "show" which would string together anything they could grab hold - cartoons, plus also pop videos and stock footage of stunts and so on - linked Broom Cupboard-style by a presenter. I remember watching one linked by Valentine Vox, the ventriloquist.

I've probably mentioned this before but one of the other things I always used to rent from the video shop was The Disney Channel, which was a series of videos made up of pretty B-list Disney fare - various cartoons, the Winnie The Pooh TV series, those boring nature films, some TV movie and an American syndicated keep fit series caused Mousercises. I didn't especially like Disney, but I liked those because the whole thing was stitched together with idents and trailers and continuity like a proper channel. I was a great kid, as you can imagine.

WB got wind of the VHS and managed to created new stuff wrapped around old shorts:

* The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie
* The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie
* Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales
* Daffy duck's fantastic island

Glen Michael did the same but it was strange: Those cartoons were clearly copyright free...

The story of cartoons also reminds me that on Channel 4, they occasionally had five minute filler cartoons of Laurel and Hardy, or Mr Magoo.

On the cartoon fillers subject I remember Rodger Ramjet cropping up as a filler now and again on STV



And Murun Buchstansagur on Channel 4

Doubt they're copyright free somehow -- the Modern Madcaps series only dates from the 1960s although it is fairly obscure. By 2017 with the exception of anything really big, obvious and relatively well known and made prior to about 1950 is typically in the public domain in the US, there's a big list of stuff on TV Tropes and the Wiki. Disney's first cartoon, Steamboat Willie, should have fallen into the public domain long ago but its copyright was controversially extended in the 1990s..

Of course copyright and who owns what can generate major headaches, and one such example is the case of the monkey that "took" a selfie and the resulting legal battle as to whether it was copyrightable or not. Turns out it isn't as animals can't hold copyright and so the image went into the public domain. Whether the monkey plans to appeal isn't known

Being a Looney Tunes (not Looney Toons; that always bugged me!) fan, I always enjoyed Stay Tooned!, especially for featuring those cartoons and the MGM staples instead of Disney cartoons.

On the same subject, does anyone remember Toonatics? It was set in a studio reminiscent of a cartoon house and featured an oversized man-child called Thomas (named to replace the Tom of Tom and Jerry and played by Paul Burnham who directed it as well) and had a few kids watching about four cartoons and using oversized props to decide on their favourite (a carrot for a Bugs Bunny cartoon, cheese for Tom and Jerry etc.):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toonatics

I think that might have been the one I thought was Mark Speight hosting. Speight did host a show called 'Name That Toon' but was on CITV and more of a gameshow.