The scarce history of Disney animated shorts on television

[AKA]

Much evidence exists of Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and Popeye theatrical shorts enjoying wide exposure on television in the '50s and '60s; Disney shorts, not so much, which is weird, because Walt Disney was a huge proponent of the medium.There was Disneyland and later The Mouse Factory, both of which occasionally featured the shorts, but unless I'm missing something major, the advent of The Disney Channel in 1983 marked the first time theatrical cartoons starring Mickey, Donald, Goofy; etc. were in regular rotation on television.

What was the rationale behind this scarcity? By the time Disney was in the TV business, Mickey Mouse's career on the big screen was over, and the frequency of the shorts themselves had slowed to a crawl. Did Walt not want television runs hampering potential theatrical reissues of the shorts, or did he just feel it wasn't appropriate to air them on TV too often?

 

[SteveRichards]

It's hard telling what the rationale was. I suppose it's possible that part of the contractual agreement that Disney had with ABC (and later NBC) for "Disneyland" prohibited syndicating material to individual stations, whether that same material was seen on the network or not. You mentioned "The Mouse Factory," which would have been on while NBC was running "Disney's Wonderful World." Perhaps there was an exception made during that period. According to Wikipedia, "The Mouse Factory" was syndicated and cancelled after two seasons due to low ratings. Looney Tunes, as well as shorts produced by other companies, were typically just sold to stations for a certain amount of runs, usually as a stand-alone show that stations would call something like "Bugs Bunny & Friends," where the station would show 3 or so shorts to make a half-hour show, or they were featured during a locally produced children's show. Maybe Disney was insistent on controlling the content around its material, thus a show like "The Mouse Factory," which was a fully-produced program.

I'm not a huge fan or follower of Disney material, but I know that in the past and I think even today, Disney releases movies on DVD "for a limited time," particularly the classic stuff, and won't make it available again for a number of years. It could be that Disney didn't and doesn't want to dilute the value of its product due to overexposure.

 

[landtuna]

I don't know how the younger set felt comparing Disney (Donald Duck, Mickey, Goofy etc.) to Looney Tunes but for those of us who were a bit older when the WB cartoons were on TV they eclipsed Disney by a mile.

Interestingly, the most imaginative Disney work I've ever seen was the "educational" cartoons that featured Goofy (driving safety, teaching "Junior" safety in sports/hunting etc.).

Disney animation was at its best doing classic fairy tales and stories (yes, even "Song of the South"). Their cartoon shorts never were, for me, nearly as good as Yosemite Sam, Daffy, Bugs, and especially The Roadrunner.

 

[Hal Erickson]

Disney had no desire to syndicate the studio's old cartoons so long as they could be profitably reissued to theaters. I recall seeing such war-era cartoons as CHICKEN LITTLE and DONALD GETS DRAFTED in theaters as late as the 1960s. The Donalds, Goofys and Chip 'N' Dales were very much in demand throughout that decade.
The studio ran its old black-and-white (and a few color) cartoons on THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB throughout its run, sometimes on a daily basis, sometime 2 or 3 per week. Keep it in the family, I guess. Then of course there were the "pastiche" episodes of DISNEYLAND, WALT DISNEY PRESENTS and WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR which patched together several old theatrical cartoons into a new narrative, with fresh wraparound footage.

 

[Ultimajock]

...of course, an exception to Disney's stinginess towards television for their cartoons was its allowing the BBC to use them all on their BBC Television Service in London before World War 2. Of course, the famous story goes that Mickey's Gala Premier was running on BBCTS when the order came down to shut the station off immediately on 1 September 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland, and that cartoon was the first thing BBCTS broadcast when the service resumed after the war on 7 July 1946. However, it appears to be an urban legend that the station was shut down in mid-reel and the engineer on duty paper cued the reel so as to start it up again at the same point after the war had been won; Wikipedia claims the cartoon was shown in its entirety, with an announcement of the schedule that night (which, of course, was never shown) and test patterns right afterwards, and then shutdown after a few minutes...

 

[ShawnHill1]

The Disney animated shorts did appear on TV locally in Los Angeles, at least during the time they owned KCAL-TV, from 1989 to 1996. They had a local kids show that aired mornings and afternoons that featured the Disney shorts, but once KCAL acquired more syndicated kids product (especially non-Disney material), the shorts disappeared.

Ironically, during the Disney ownership, KCAL did also carry the pre-1948 Warner Brothers cartoons once aired for a long time on KTTV (the previous local outlet for a lot of Disney-produced programming).

 

[anotherguyTN]

Being able to see Looney Tunes from somewhere almost daily, whether it was local kid's shows, or from one or more of the big 3 networks on weekends vs. only getting to see Disney cartoons occasionally on their Sunday night show definitely made me prefer Looney Tunes.

 

[Bob1370]

Don't know what the Mouse did with classic cartoons on TV during the 1946-54 period, although since the color ones at least were still running, or re-running, theatrically at that time, probably not much.

Through the period from the fall of 1955 until about 1968, Disney kept them out of the general TV syndication market but aired both the black-and-white and color cartoons from Steamboat Willie all the way to 1954 as a daily feature of the Mickey Mouse Club TV show, first on ABC (1955-59) and then when the original Club was put in rerun syndication to local stations, mostly ABC-affiliated stations which had previously carried them new, between about 1961 and 1968. Some of them also popped up occasionally on Disney's Wonderful World of Color, which aired on NBC in prime time just before Bonanza on Sunday nights through the 60s, 70s and into the 80s.

They made a daytime TV comeback on the revival of the Mickey Mouse Club with a new batch of Mouseketeers in 1977, although that lasted only a year. Then, it was back to the vault until the Disney Channel came along.

 

[Marckd]

Disney really was not into putting large amounts of their movies or cartoons on broadcast TV. They had Disney's Wonderful World one Sunday Night a week, Mickey Mouse Club in syndication, and for a short time in the early 70's syndicated Mouse Factory. Other than that, unlike Warner Brothers or MGM or Paramount, Disney just did not care to syndicate their cartoons. My theory is because Disney felt it would devalue their cartoons. Then we had Dsiney Channel in the early 80's which was a premium channel amd that did run the Disney shorts, Disney Movies, mixed with other non Disney fare. Then in 1989 RKO sells KHJ TV Channel 9 Los Angeles to Disney. They added many family type sitcoms, cartoons, and talk shows. They added an hour a day of Disney cartoons under a banner called Toon Town Kids. KCAL 9 ran this until Disney sold the station in 1996 after they buy ABC. But Toon Town Kids only aired on KCAL 9 and nowhere else until late in the 90's when they syndicated this as well. But all in all Disney was very cautious on where their cartoons and movies would air.

 

[FreddyE1977]

If you broadcast them, then someone might record them on Betamax without the express written
consent of Uncle Walt.

Then they'd have to send a team of Disney Lawyers over to your house, along with guys with names
like Vinnie and Louie the Schnozz to (ahem)....persuade you to surrender them. ;D

 

[Bob1370]

"If you broadcast them, then someone might record them on Betamax without the express written
consent of Uncle Walt.

Then they'd have to send a team of Disney Lawyers over to your house, along with guys with names like Vinnie and Louie the Schnozz to (ahem)....persuade you to surrender them. "

Not much of a concern after about 1979 when the Supreme Court gave a blanket OK to home taping of essentially anything taken off cable or broadcast TV, as long as you did it only for your own personal home viewing. What Disney really held back the cartoons for, was a desire to directly monetize them in-house by airing them on their own programs/networks/channels. That's why they just showed up on the Mickey Mouse Club until the Disney Channel came along. They started making new program content with their core characters a lot sooner as a result of having in house channels to show them on as well, starting in the 90s (not just Disney Channel, but ABC). Still makes 'em more money that way. Warner is just recently beginning to produce and show new Bugs and Daffy cartoons for airing on Cartoon Netwotk...

 

[LKellerIII]

"If you broadcast them, then someone might record them on Betamax without the express written
consent of Uncle Walt.

Disney Studios has always been weird about distribution of their programs. In the early days of VHS and Betamax (83-84), i owned a video rental store. You could only carry Disney videos if you were an "official" (registered) Disney dealer, and you had to promise that you would only sell them, not rent them. My competition was the "official" Disney store. Of course, we purchased them, then rented them anyway - Disney had no legal grounds to stop us.

But it always seemed to me like a counter-productive attitude. Disney believed that there was a fortune to be made in VHS and Beta sales, and rentals detracted from that, so they tried to stop rentals. That didn't work, as we know.