Remember when Saturday mornings were simple? There were no responsibilities, but your parents were teeming with things to accomplish, so they greeted you, gave you some breakfast, and sat you in front of the television to catch you up on all your happenings with your animated friends. Those were the days, right? Other cultures might look upon that description of child rearing and be appalled but we loved it. Are you kidding? Sugar AND cartoons on the weekend? Sign me up; it was always a blast, and it never really mattered which cartoon you were viewing because that was the Saturday ritual, at least, you know, if you had a TV. (For those people who grew up without TV...you probably aren't reading this blog anyway since that is what I endeavor to write about, so while I respect you, I pretty much don't care about you or your non-small screen opinions.)
Anyway, now that we are all "grown up", we either take those Saturday mornings as an opportunity to sleep in (Cha right), run errands, or entertain our own kids, which would probably consist of something along the lines of what I painted as your childhood upbringing so it's still relevant. As such, we now fall into that 18-49 viewing demographic, which is SO important to the networks not named CBS. Thus, our viewing tastes evolve, we crave more high brow and involved programming, you know, with complicated plot devices and cinematic quality editing and transitions (oh the transitions!) Even our inevitable maturing and changed viewing habits cannot dissuade the human population from that one irrevocable fact: cartoons are awesome.
The numbers are undeniable. Animation has never been consumed to this capacity, where not only are networks concentrating vast resources to air multiple shows (Fox named their Sunday night prime time block Animation Domination to compete with Sunday Night Football on NBC and AMC original programming) but movie studios too are banking heavily on reliable animated films to keep their studios afloat. (4 of the top 15 grossing movies of this year fall into that category with another few hanging on in the periphery of top 50.) Heck, if you look at the list of highest grossing box-office stars of 2013, 3 of the top 10 reached that status primarily on the success of their voice-over talent (Steve Carell, Billy Crystal, John Goodman). Hollywood hasn't just become obsessed with sequels and blockbuster superhero pictures, they are dependent upon the release of the next big animated movie.
Not to be outdone, the streaming media outlets of Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon have been ordering up multiple original series of the cartoon persuasion. Earlier this year, you couldn't entertain the notion of watching content on Hulu without running into an advertisement for the Saturday Night Live-infused show The Awesomes (Google ChromeCast has further beat the American public over the head with it with this commercial) That was the first wave of full-length Internet cartoon, which was then followed by an Eva Longoria-headed raunchy animated turn Mother Up and subsequent followers after that. When Amazon announced it was providing original content to go along with the massive brick sets of TV shows on DVD it sells, animated series Supanatural was part of the maiden voyage. Finally, Netflix, which has enjoyed a renaissance unlike any other this year with it's own set of dramas manned by actual humans, has finally joined the party by ordering a show called Bojack Horseman starring every one's favorite GOB Will Arnett and bitch-enthusiast Aaron Paul (creating these shows is all about science). While all these websites feature children's sections to allow for kids to watch their age-appropriate shows on the Internet as God intended, it's the more R-rated cartoons that are swimming in popularity.
2013 will be remembered as the year of many things (namely when we realized conspiracy theorists rants about government spying weren't completely unfounded), but quietly, it was also a period when animated content became more readily available and more popular. The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park are three of the longest-tenured shows on television as we speak, FX has found a niche with not only compelling dramas and soon-to-be movie-quality miniseries, but with sarcastic-laden animation like Archer and the soon-to-be released Chozen. A-list actors are lending their vocal chords more readily to the medium (mostly for the huge pay-days) and B-list and under actors are finding their careers reborn with multiple avenues for voice work.
Network and cable alike discovered one of the keys to building a diverse lineup of likable content is to include animation, especially for us hanging in that 18-49 gamut. No matter how much we grow up, we will not let our infatuation with animation die. (Seth MacFarlene knows all to well how killing that which we love will spark the ire of the loyal fan-atics.)
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