Artist and animation historian Amid Amidi has a great piece on the Cartoon Brew blog about how focus grouping and executive decisions have ruined the current state of television animation. The main thrust of his piece has to do with the idea of creators pitching their shows, and that sometimes too much energy is put toward making a show seem appealing to a network executive rather than focusing on the actual quality of the show itself and making something audiences will truly enjoy. He points out that lionized directors from the Golden Age of animation such as Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones and Tex Avery were unhindered by such bureaucratic bullshit and allowed to create cartoons on their own terms that are still enjoyable even today. Those old cartoons are not only great works of art, but they transcend generations. My own nieces and nephew enjoy Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny as much as I did as a kid, just as my father enjoyed them long before I was born.