THE LAST SATURDAY-MORNING CARTOON BLOCK

On September 27, 2014, The CW's Vortexx block aired its final Saturday-morning broadcast — a 5-hour run from 7 a.m. to noon Eastern. The last cartoon to air was Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal. There was no farewell montage. The following Saturday, One Magnificent Morning — a live-action educational block — took its place and never gave it back.

The tradition had lasted nearly fifty years. NBC was the first major network to walk away, in 1992. CBS and ABC followed. Fox replaced cartoons with infomercials in 2008. The CW held on until it couldn't. The FCC's Children's Television Act had always made cartoons the harder choice for broadcast networks, while cable — Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel — faced no such mandate. 1 2 3 4 5