It seems that everyone had an animated series in the 1970s (like Gilligan's Island), and the Jackson 5 were no exception. Here's the opening of their cartoon, The Jackson 5ive, which ran on ABC for a couple of years starting in 1971. Not sure how many series actually show the cast of the show, one by one, twice. It's also odd how dancing mice and a wacky snake show up in the middle, BUT IT WAS THE 70S DUDE. This was done by Rankin/Bass, who did all those Christmas specials.

Like the year 1965 was before the Saturday morning cartoon explosion of 1966, the year 1971 was also the calm before another storm. After years of producing and airing show after show, the networks took a breather during the 1971-72 season to look around and see where their industry was at the time. Looking back at it from present day it wasn't looking too bright.

With pressure coming from inside the networks (thanks to the censors) and from outside activist organizations, Saturday morning television began to fracture. Out of the 14 shows to premiere in 1971 only 5 of them were brand new offerings. The rest were rehashes or revivals of older cartoons and live-action series. And out of those a majority featured an education bent...something that kids revved-up by chocolatey, sugar-coated cereal did not have the patience to watch.

The experiment would fail by 1972 as another surge of animated programs made their appearance. Until then, viewers had to deal with a lack of new programming and repeats of shows that had been repeated a few times already. So went the Saturday morning schedule in 1971-72. Let's journey back, shall we?

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