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50-484: After two seasons, The Bugs Bunny Show moved to Saturday mornings , where it aired in various formats for nearly four decades. The show's title and length changed regularly over the years, as did the network: both ABC and CBS broadcast versions of The Bugs Bunny Show . In 2000, the series, by then known as The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show , was canceled after the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies libraries became

100-539: A bonus feature on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1 DVD set. Sylvester talks about how to take care of your kids, while Junior explains how the stories really happened. Prime Time: Saturday Mornings : Saturday-morning cartoon " Saturday-morning cartoon " is a colloquial term for the original animated series and live-action programming that was typically scheduled on Saturday and Sunday mornings in

150-463: A bonus feature on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2 DVD set. Co-directed by Maurice Noble and Ken Harris Co-Directed by Maurice Noble and Ken Harris Co-directed by Hawley Pratt NOTE: The bridging sequences for this episode were included as a bonus feature on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 DVD set. Co-directed by Maurice Noble and Tom Ray NOTE: The bridging sequences for this episode were included as

200-479: A bonus feature on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5 DVD set. Co-Directed by: Maurice Noble NOTE: the bridging sequences for this episode were included as a bonus feature on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4 DVD set. Co-Directed by Maurice Noble and Robert Tronson Co-Directed by Hawley Pratt Co-directed by: Maurice Noble and Tom Ray Co-directed by Hawley Pratt NOTE: Bridging sequences for this episode were included as

250-472: A companion Sylvester & Tweety, Daffy and Speedy Show was added to the CBS schedule, which included a number of later cartoons produced by a reestablished Warner Bros. Cartoons studio from 1967 to 1969. The following year, this new companion series was canceled and its cartoons were incorporated into The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show , which was broadcast as two separate hour-long programs on Saturday mornings (for

300-723: A motorcycle down a city street chased by a police car. He makes a sharp turn into a theater, where the rest of the Looney Tunes are performing to the Bugs Bunny Show tune. Beginning in January 2021, the original "This Is It" opening sequence was included in Bugs Bunny and Friends , part of MeTV 's Saturday Morning Cartoons block. In the Seinfeld episode " The Opera ", as Jerry and Elaine are waiting outside

350-479: A package, beginning in the 1950s, generally retained the original opening title sequences as shown in theaters. The current revival of the show on MeTV also uses the original theatrical title cards.) The show's theme song was "This Is It", written by Mack David and Jerry Livingston ( "Overture/curtain, lights/this is it/the night of nights..." ). The opening title sequence, animated by Freleng unit animator Gerry Chiniquy , features Bugs and Daffy Duck performing

400-427: A reconstituted half-hour Bugs Bunny Show aired on CBS, featuring re-edited versions of the bridging sequences and a different grouping of cartoons. In 1973, The Bugs Bunny Show returned to ABC for two seasons, only for CBS to re-acquire both shows and bring back The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour in 1975. In 1976, Sylvester and Tweety were featured in their own Sylvester and Tweety Show for one year, necessitating

450-542: Is such that it has been used elsewhere, such as in the Canadian province of Ontario where it was used in a TV commercial promoting the various performing arts tourist attractions , where artists of various disciplines sing separate lines of the song. When Warner Bros. released its video series "Golden Jubilee", featuring the classic cartoons, the opening sequence shows the Tasmanian Devil maniacally riding

500-603: The United States on the "Big Three" television networks . The genre was a tradition from broadly the mid-1960s to mid-2010s; over time its popularity declined, in the face of changing cultural norms, increased competition from formats available at all times, and heavier media regulations. In the last years of the genre's existence, Saturday-morning and Sunday-morning cartoons were primarily created and aired on major networks to meet "educational and informational" (E/I) requirements . Minor television networks, in addition to

550-465: The 1960s and 1970s as performed by alternative rock artists. The Netflix animated series Saturday Morning All Star Hits! parodies the mid-1980s to early 1990s era of Saturday-morning animation, such as Thundercats , Care Bears , ProStars , and Denver, the Last Dinosaur . The science fiction animated series Futurama also spoofed 1970s and 1980s Saturday-morning cartoons in

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600-663: The 1970s, these groups exercised enough influence, especially with the U.S. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission , that the television networks felt compelled to impose more stringent content rules for the animation houses. In 1978, the Federal Trade Commission was openly considering a ban on all advertising during television programming targeting preschoolers, and severe restrictions on other children's program advertising, both of which would have effectively killed off

650-504: The 1990s. Such examples included Disney's Disney Afternoon in syndication, Fox 's Fox Kids , UPN 's UPN Kids , CBS 's CBS Saturday , The WB 's Kids' WB , and Amazin' Adventures (later Bohbot Kids Network) in syndication. From 1992 however, the "Big Three" traditional major networks and their affiliates began replacing their Saturday-morning animated programming with weekend editions of their morning magazines . and live-action teen-oriented series. Multiple factors contributed to

700-603: The 2021 debut of Toon In with Me on MeTV , along with a companion Saturday morning block. This show is credited for keeping the Warner Bros. cartoons made during the Golden Age of American animation a part of the American consciousness. Indeed, the show ran for almost four decades, helping inspire animators , comedians, historians , and others who watched Saturday morning television. The "This Is It" song's fame

750-438: The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies film library exclusive to Cartoon Network , which Time Warner owned as part of the purchase of Turner Broadcasting in 1996. As a result, The Bugs Bunny Show ended its nearly four-decade-long network run, one of the longest runs in the history of United States network television. Outside cartoons in the public domain, Warner Bros. cartoons would not return to American broadcast television until

800-744: The Masters of the Universe and continuing with such series as The Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles . These were heavily criticized by ACT, but were nevertheless successful. As well, several more lighthearted series appeared, popularized by Hanna-Barbera’s The Smurfs and Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies . These included series based on popular video games , such as Saturday Supercade . Despite increased competition from cable television networks (such as Nickelodeon , Cartoon Network , and Disney Channel ), Saturday-morning and weekday cartoon blocks continued to remain popular in

850-581: The Philippines, it was also aired on TPI (now MNCTV ) from mid 1990s to early 2000s and RCTI during 2000s in Indonesia as well. The original Bugs Bunny Show debuted on ABC prime time in the United States on October 11, 1960, airing on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM ET, under the sponsorship of General Foods ( Post cereals, Tang , etc.). Newly-produced linking segments were done for each episode by

900-424: The United States, The CW continued to air non-E/I cartoons as late as 2014; among the "Big Three" traditional major networks, the final non-E/I cartoon to date ( Kim Possible ) was last aired in 2006. This era continues to be satirized and/or spoofed in popular culture. The tribute album Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits was released in 1995, featuring covers of Saturday-morning cartoon themes from

950-420: The Warner Bros. animation staff. Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng produced, directed and created the storyboards for the earliest of these, with Robert McKimson later taking over the direction while Jones and Freleng continued producing and writing. The wraparounds were produced in color, although the original broadcasts of the show were in black-and-white. A total of 52 episodes were made. Rather than display

1000-540: The animation for the show's intro, closing credits as well as the wrap-around bumpers. From 1966 to 1968, The Road Runner Show initially ran for two seasons on CBS . From 1968 to 1969, CBS combined The Road Runner Show with The Bugs Bunny Show to produce The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour . The Road Runner and the Coyote more often shared at least an hour with Bugs Bunny on CBS. In 1971, ABC picked up The Road Runner Show and ran for two seasons until 1973, when

1050-583: The black-and-white ABC broadcast prints prepared in the early 1960s. On the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2 , the opening to the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (with the announcer calling it the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour ) and two openings to the Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (the 1988 opening and the 1992 opening) were released as special features. In 2009, an episode of the Bugs Bunny Show in color

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1100-453: The change, among them the introduction of people meters that children found difficult to operate in the mid-1980s, an increasingly competitive market fueled by the multi-channel transition , a boom in first-run syndicated content and the introduction of home video and video games , increasing restrictions on advertising and educational content mandates , and broader cultural changes stemming from an increase in no-fault divorces and

1150-417: The end of the post-World War II baby boom . Attempting to pair the newscasts with the remaining cartoons was largely unsuccessful because the two program formats drew widely different audiences that did not lend themselves to leading in and out of each other , leading to viewership oddities (such as NBC's children's block having an average viewership age of over 40 years old); by the late 2010s, all of

1200-678: The episode " Saturday Morning Fun Pit ". The Road Runner Show The Road Runner Show is an American Saturday morning animated anthology series which compiled theatrical Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner cartoons from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies , which were produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons between 1949 and 1964. Several of the shorts, especially the ones produced from 1965 onward, were produced by DePatie–Freleng Enterprises after Warner Bros. closed their animation studio. DePatie–Freleng Enterprises provided

1250-477: The exclusive property of the Cartoon Network family of cable TV networks in the United States. In Canada, Reruns of The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show were aired on the channels Teletoon and Teletoon's sister channel, Teletoon Retro (until 2015 when Teletoon Retro signed off). Prior to Teletoon and Teletoon Retro, CBC Television (1960–1975) and Global Television Network (1978–1982, 1990–2000) aired

1300-477: The format; the commission ultimately dropped the proposal. The networks were encouraged to create educational spots that endeavored to use animation and/or live-action for enriching content, including the Schoolhouse Rock! series on ABC which became a fondly-remembered television classic. With the 1970s came a wave of animated versions of popular live-action prime time series as well, mainly with

1350-406: The full Warner Bros. logo and opening title/credits sequence of each cartoon shown in each episode (as shown in the original theatrical versions and could take up to 20 seconds), new title cards were created to begin each cartoon and displayed for only about five seconds over a newly composed musical cue; the card omitted the Warner Bros. logo and any detailed credits of the animators, simply featuring

1400-490: The major American networks had shifted to live-action documentary programming, ostensibly targeted at teenagers to meet the educational mandates but less likely to cause a clash with the newscasts. This documentary programming also benefited from having less restrictive rules for advertising compared to programming targeted to children. Saturday-morning and Sunday-morning cartoons were largely discontinued in Canada by 2002. In

1450-479: The mid-1960s, the Saturday-morning timeslot would feature a great deal of series appropriate for children, although most of these were reruns of animated series originally broadcast in prime time and adventure series made in the 1950s, as well as telecasts of older cartoons made for movie theaters . Later in the decade, the slot would be dominated by superhero and action cartoon series, influenced by

1500-492: The network dropped the show due to its excessively aggressive scenes. Later on, CBS re-acquired the show and aired them as reruns under The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour until the mid-80s. Each show would feature one Road Runner/Coyote cartoon, with a Tweety and Sylvester cartoon in the middle segment, and other WB animated character(s) in the third segment (usually Elmer Fudd , Foghorn Leghorn , Speedy Gonzales , Pepé Le Pew and Hippety Hopper ). The intro of every cartoon

1550-685: The non-commercial PBS in some markets, continued to air animated programming on Saturday and Sunday while partially 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 8:00 a.m. to approximately 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time Zone . 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. In some markets, some shows were pre-empted in favor of syndicated or other types of local programming . Beginning in

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1600-457: The opera house, Jerry starts singing "This is it" to pass the time to which Elaine laments to him by saying, "You know, it is so sad that all of your knowledge of high culture comes from Bugs Bunny cartoons." A series of short animated scenes were produced for the show, featured "linking" moments during the fictional theater setting of the show. Some of these scenes included: The show's title sequences and some of these linking material scenes from

1650-557: The original Bugs Bunny Show are included as bonus features on each volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD collection (with the exception of Volume 6 ). As the original color negatives were cut up by CBS and ABC to create later versions of the show, the linking sequences are presented on DVD using a combination of footage from both what's left of the color negatives (some of which were used in later incarnations, thus helping to preserve them) and

1700-430: The program did not qualify for the educational/informational designation, it nonetheless remained on Saturday mornings after the new designation debuted in 1996, one of the few non-E/I programs to survive the rules changes. The previous year, ABC was bought by The Walt Disney Company , and The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show was the only non-Disney cartoon to remain on the lineup, due to their contract not being up yet, and

1750-460: The program, which was reduced to a half-hour and renamed The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show . Beginning with its third season, The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show was expanded to a full hour and the original "This Is It" theme was reintroduced with similar animation as the original, accompanied by the introductory sequence introduced in 1982. Another version of the "This Is It" opening sequence was done in 1992, with different character animations. Though

1800-436: The rabbit's saying, "...and also starring my fast feathered friend, the Road Runner", after which The Road Runner Show's theme was played. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour combined re-edited bridging sequences from both shows to link the seven cartoons featured in each episode. The bridging sequences would be edited further in later versions of the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour . In 1971, The Road Runner Show moved to ABC and

1850-525: The removal of most of the Tweety and/or Sylvester cartoons on Bugs Bunny/Road Runner that season. Also that year, a weekly half-hour prime-time edition of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show briefly aired on CBS' Tuesday night schedule, from April through June. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour became The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show in November 1977, after CBS added another half-hour to the runtime. In 1981,

1900-412: The rights to broadcast the Warner Bros. cartoons following the 1984–1985 season, and as a result, the show moved back to ABC, where it became The Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour . Cartoons featuring Tweety or Speedy Gonzales were not broadcast on ABC during the 1985–86 season, the latter presumably due to objections toward Mexican stereotypes. The following year, however, Tweety cartoons were added to

1950-420: The second program, the show's opening titles were re-animated). In 1983, CBS returned the show to 90 minutes and the bridging sequences were dropped. The following year, the "This Is It" opening was jettisoned altogether; a new title sequence (created from clips of the cartoons) and new theme song ("It's Cartoon Gold"), composed by Steve Zuckerman with lyrics by John Klawitter , introduced the show. CBS gave up

2000-466: The show. In Australia, episodes of the show were divided between three networks, with most episodes aired on Nine Network , and some episodes divided between Network Ten , and Seven Network since its debut. In Poland, the show aired on TVP1 from 1979 till 1980 and again from 1991 till 1992. In Asia, the program was aired in Japan and South Korea in the early 1960s and also aired on ABS-CBN and RPN in

2050-409: The song in unison. For the final chorus, a lineup of Looney Tunes characters joins Bugs and Daffy onstage (Porky Pig, however, is absent from the procession, although Porky had a spin-off show based on the original Bugs Bunny Show 4 years later titled The Porky Pig Show which aired on ABC from 1964 to 1967). The Bugs Bunny Show proved beneficial to the Warner Bros. cartoon staff, as it allowed

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2100-474: The studio to remain open despite the shrinking market for theatrical animated shorts. The final first-run episode of the original Bugs Bunny Show aired on August 7, 1962, and the Warner Bros. animation studio closed the following spring. ABC began re-running The Bugs Bunny Show on Saturday mornings in August 1962 until September 1967, when it was moved to Sunday mornings for the remainder of its run. The series

2150-491: The success of Space Ghost . These were heavily criticized by parents for their violence. By 1972, most action programming had been removed from the Saturday-morning slot, following pressure from parents' lobbying groups such as the Action for Children's Television (ACT). These groups voiced concerns about the presentation of commercialism , violence, anti-social attitudes and stereotypes in Saturday-morning cartoons. By

2200-615: The title of the cartoon in bold letters on a plain background, the main character of the cartoon standing off to one side and the copyright notice of the cartoon rendered in a smaller font at the bottom, before cutting directly to the opening scene of the cartoon. These cuts were sometimes awkward depending on how the original opening sequence was animated. A general credits line was shown at the end of each full episode: "Stories, Animation, layouts, and backgrounds: Members of Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 839 ." (The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons syndicated to local stations as

2250-402: The voices of the original casts, as well as imitations of the highly successful Scooby-Doo combining teen characters and talking animals with supernatural mystery stories. By 1982, under President Ronald Reagan , the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had loosened programming and advertising regulations, leading to the era of "half-hour toy commercials", starting with He-Man and

2300-558: Was aired on RPN 9 from 1988 to 1990. The theme song was written and performed by Barbara Cameron. In 1999, it was covered by the Mexican band Chicos de Barrio and was later parodied in Histeria! featuring Father Time and Big Fat Baby . It has also been covered by Barenaked Ladies , and Barbara Cameron re-recorded the theme with her son, jazz violinist Doug Cameron (with Paul Julian's iconic Beep-Beep and other sound effects from

2350-509: Was in the first few years of the Disney's One Saturday Morning block starting in 1997 (with the Disney logo omitted from the blocks bumpers during the show). The program was often paired with ABC's in-house Schoolhouse Rock! shorts during this time. The hour-long Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show remained on the air until 1999, when it was again reduced to a half-hour. In 2000, Warner Bros. made

2400-733: Was released on the Saturday Morning Cartoons 1960s Volume 2 set. Saturday Morning Cartoons 1970s Volume 2 includes an episode of the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show . Co-Directed by: Maurice Noble Co-Directed by: Gerry Chiniquy Co-Directed by: Maurice Noble Co-Directed by: Hawley Pratt Co-Directed by: Hawley Pratt Co-Directed by: Abe Levitow and Maurice Noble Co-Directed by: Robert Transon and Maurice Noble Co-Directed by: Maurice Noble Co-Directed by: Hawley Pratt Co-Directed by: Abe Levitow and Maurice Noble Co-Directed by: Abe Levitow NOTE: The bridging sequences for this episode were included as

2450-528: Was replaced with a simple title card, along with the shortened version of William Lava's arrangement of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down . The show aired in Albania on Bang Bang and Çufo, and in Hungary on M1 and RTL Klub. In Indonesia, The Road Runner Show was first aired on RCTI shortly after its launch in 1989 until 1990, and on TV7 (later rebranded as Trans7 ) between 2006 and 2008. In the Philippines, it

2500-399: Was rerun in color beginning in 1965 and remained on ABC until September 1968. At this point, the series switched to CBS, where it was combined with The Road Runner Show (which had aired on CBS since 1966) to create The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour . The standard Bugs Bunny Show opening and the announcer's introduction of Bugs Bunny ("that Oscar -winning rabbit!") were directly followed by

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