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A Saturday-morning cartoon was the colloquial term for the animated television programming that was typically scheduled on Saturday mornings in the United States on most major television networks from September 1960 to September 24, 2016, with the end of NBC Kids (after 56 years of animated programming on Saturday mornings). The genre's popularity declined in the mid-late 1990s and 2000s after cable and satellite television, home video and later online streaming over the Internet, began providing 24-hour access to cartoons for children. The format has continued in a reduced manner through the present day as a way of meeting educational television mandates. Minor television networks, in addition to the non-commercial PBS, continue to air Saturday morning cartoons while meeting those mandates.
In the United States, the generally accepted times for these and other children's programs to air on Saturday mornings were from 8 a.m. to noon Eastern Time. Until the late 1970s, American networks also had a schedule of children's programming on Sunday mornings, though most programs at this time were repeats of Saturday morning shows that were already out of production. Canadian Saturday morning cartoons were largely defunct by 2002. U.S. broadcast television networks still aired non-E/I animated programs on Saturday mornings until September 27, 2014. Cable television networks have since then revived the practice of debuting their most popular animated programming on Saturday mornings. (Full article...)