According to Erickson, statistics going back to the radio years showed that the peak tune-in hours for children were between 10 a.m. and noon on Saturday mornings and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays.
Crusader Rabbit was the very first cartoon created exclusively for television and the first to take advantage of this window of opportunity to market to children. Prior to
Crusader Rabbit, the only cartoons that had appeared on television were repackaged shorts originally created for the big screen. In order to keep costs down and constantly turn out new material, Ward and Anderson pared
Crusader Rabbit down to its absolute bare essentials. Characters moved an average of once every four seconds and tended to stay in static poses. The show ran for two years, from 1950-1952.
Crusader Rabbit failed to trigger a deluge of morning cartoons. Television stations preferred to stay with the tried-and-true (and much less expensive) format of a live-action host holding court over a studio audience of children and plugging the sponsors' products. But CBS took a gamble and placed a well-known character, Mighty Mouse, on Saturday mornings in 1955. Mighty Mouse Playhouse ran for 12 highly successful seasons and further edged live-action shows out the door in favor of direct-to-television animation.
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