Looney Tunes

From Nickelodeon

The Warner Brothers cartoons aired on the Nickelodeon cable television network from 1988 to 1999. Because most of the more popular titles were exclusively on ABC's Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour and Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, Nick's half-hour broadcasts in the late 1980s were mostly composed of post-1960 entries, black-and-white cartoon shorts, and poorly colorized Porky Pig cartoons. Nick did have access to some pre-1960 titles, which it aired very often. Some titles like "Canned Feud", "Which is Witch?", and "A Ham in a Role" remained on Nick throughout the run of Looney Tunes On Nickelodeon. Until 1993, each show usually featured three or four cartoons, of which the second, usually black-and-white, starred Bosko, Buddy, or Porky Pig.

The original opening contained cartoon clips as an announcer proclaimed, "It's Looney Tunes On Nickelodeon!" And later, "And now it's time for the show!" The opening music with the Warner Brothers shield and the closing "That's all, Folks!" card were not shown on the cartoons, but the opening credits to the cartoon shorts were shown. The ending frame of each cartoon was shrunk into a ball which bounced into a shot showing a group of characters standing in front of the Looney Tunes On Nickelodeon logo. The one exception was "Guided Muscle", in which, instead of the bouncing-ball ending, Wile E. dragged the Looney Tunes On Nickelodeon card across the screen at the end, whereas at the finish of the original cartoon, he dragged across the "That's All, Folks!" card. In addition to the version that aired during the day and early evening on Nickelodeon, the network also packaged a version of the Looney Tunes show for its Nick at Nite line-up of classic television aimed at adults. The opening to this version showed clips from the cartoons of characters preparing for, or in, bed: Bugs in his pajamas from "The Iceman Ducketh", the mouse and Hippety Hopper sleeping from "Lighthouse Mouse", etc.. These shows were also a half-hour long, and also usually included a black-and-white cartoon.

Despite a limited selection of cartoons, Looney Tunes appeared to be very successful on Nick. In the early 1990s, Nick even aired a Looney Tunes Thanksgiving marathon from 7 P.M. Eastern Time until midnight, which aptly started with "Holiday For Drumsticks". By 1994, the compilations on Nick were becoming tiresome. However, this was around the time when there was some shuffling of cartoons between the networks, giving Nick access to an additional number of cartoon shorts. Nick, obviously knowing that its previous package of cartoons was becoming jaded, promoted its acquiring the different cartoon shorts by running advertisements saying, "Just when you thought you'd seen it all, Nickelodeon now has more of the Looney Tunes you want!" These advertisements also proclaimed that the shows would contain, "More Bugs, more Daffy, more Tweety, and no Bosko. Sorry, Bosko." A new theme song was added, and the cartoons now aired with their full openings and closings intact! The black-and-white cartoons were dropped as were the Nick at Nite programs. By late 1994, Nick was running cartoons like "Rebel Rabbit", "High Note", "Daffy Duck Hunt", "Cheese Chasers", "The Unmentionables", "Little Red Rodent Hood", "Crockett-Doodle-Do", "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century", "There Auto Be a Law", "The Rabbit of Seville", "Stooge For a Mouse", "Hot Cross Bunny", "Riff Raffy Daffy", "The Stupor Salesman", "Daffy's Inn Trouble", "A Waggily Tale", "Going! Going! Gosh!", "Barbary Coast Bunny", "Good Noose", "Baby Buggy Bunny", "Don't Axe Me", "A Mutt in a Rut", "The Mouse On 57th Street", "Zip Zip Hooray", "The Oily American", "Wild and Woolly Hare", the entire "Honey-Mousers" trilogy, the Duck Season/Rabbit Season trilogy, and many, many others. In addition to the selection of the post-1960 cartoon shorts to which Nick still had access, the poorly redrawn, color Porky Pig cartoons were replaced with new, computer-colorized versions which were far superior (although Nick continued to air redrawn versions of "Porky's Midnight Matinee", "Rover's Rival", and "Slap-Happy Pappy"). In total, Nick's shows offered a pleasing variety of cartoons from all eras of Warner Brothers animation. Also during this period (1994-5), Nick ran advertisements promoting its new Looney Tunes shows. These advertisements had a boy saying how Nick now had, "More Porky Pig than any other network!" in one, "More Road Runner than any other network!" in another, and in yet another stating that Nickelodeon was the only place to see cartoons like "The Foghorn Leghorn", "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century", and "A-Lad-in His Lamp". This was how it was until 1995, when the WB Network took possession of several of Nick's cartoons for its own package of cartoon shorts titled That's Warner Bros.! (later known as Bugs N' Daffy). Still, Nick had retained the rights to a number of pre-1960 classics like "What's Opera, Doc" and "Hillbilly Hare". Censoring of cartoons has been ongoing, and on all networks, although Nickelodeon does not seem as concerned about violent gags. There were, however, some gags that were considered too violent even for Nick. "Dough Ray Me-Ow" was cut to remove its "Let's play radio!" gag, "Big House Bunny" was snipped to remove its scene where Yosemite hangs in a noose, and the Rocky's-gun-to-Daffy's-head scene in "Golden Yeggs" was deleted. Nick's other edits were those to scenes that were considered racist. Daffy's sign reading "Hush Yo Mouf" was gone from "The Daffy Doc", blackface gags were gone from the Porky cartoons, and the Chinese laundry ending gag of "China Jones" was removed. Happily, Nick's cuts are not as sloppy or as abrupt as those on ABC and the WB. Jerry Beck has noted in the Warner Brothers newsgroup that, "Nickelodeon has 'Tokio Jokio', 'Injun Trouble' (both versions), 'Confusions of a Nutsy Spy', 'The Ducktators', and others, supplied to it in the package of titles from Warner Brothers. It is up to their standards and practices not to run them." From 1995 to the end of 1997, Nickelodeon's batch of cartoons remained constant. "Wet Hare", "Mad as a Mars Hare", and "D' Fightin' Ones", ABC staples since 1985, transferred to Nick in 1994. However, with the start of 1998, Nickelodeon and ABC swapped several cartoons. "The Fair-Haired Hare" and "Hoppy Daze" finally were relinquished by ABC to air complete on Nick, while ABC reacquired "Mad as a Mars Hare", "D' Fightin' Ones", "Rabbit Rampage", "Ali Baba Bunny", "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide", "What's Opera, Doc?", "Hare Brush", and many more. A number of initially black-and-white Porky Pig cartoons, including "Pilgrim Porky", "Porky at the Crocadero", "Golddiggers of '49", "Porky in Wackyland", "Wise Quacks", and "Porky's Pet", commenced transmission on Nick in computer-colorized format in 1998. Despite the recently acquired cartoon shorts, Nickelodeon rescheduled the show for the remainder of 1998 to weekdays at 6:30 A.M. Eastern Time, in addition to regular showings on Saturdays and Sundays. In early 1999, it was announced that, come autumn, the Nick package of Warner Brothers cartoons would be relocating to Cartoon Network. In a surprising move, also in early 1999, Nickelodeon began promoting a programming block with the title of Tiny-Looney-Tiny-Looney Nickelodeon Afternoonie, consisting of two half-hours of Looney Tunes rotating with two half-hours of Tiny Toon Adventures. The venture did not last more than two months before Nick replaced it with additional showings of its Nicktoons fare. Looney Tunes soon disapeared from weekdays and Saturdays, with only a weekly half-hour on Sunday mornings at 8:30 A.M. Eastern Time. For summer 1999, Nick restored the at-one-time-regular Saturday afternoon one-hour showing and dropped the Sunday broadcast. In a surprising move, Nick had an unannounced six-hour marathon of Looney Tunes on Saturday, May 29, 1999 from noon to 6:00 P.M. Eastern Time. In September, 1999, Nickelodeon's Warner Brothers animation package was allocated to Cartoon Network, which had by then gained a dubious reputation for underexposing most of the classic animation in its library. The final installment of Looney Tunes On Nickelodeon, containing "The Cat's Bah", "Porky in Wackyland", "The Daffy Duckeroo", "To Beep or Not to Beep", "Tree For Two", and "Of Rice and Hen", aired on Sept. 11, 1999, almost 11 years since the show first appeared on Nick on September 12, 1988.