TV's Saturday Morning Cartoon Legacy: The Archie Show & Filmation Studios

As we continue our tribute to 1960's television cartoon programming, pop music related cartoons had begun to take hold... The Beatles from 1965 to 1967 (with reruns after), and then The Archie Show debuted September 14, 1968 on CBS.
Filmation Studios was the team behind the production of The Archie Show, and one of its producers Lou Scheimer, is interviewed in this video clip from the outstanding DVD set of The Archie TV series (available on Amazon).
Filmation studios began in 1962, with Lou Scheimer, Hal Sutherland and Norm Prescott as founders. Scheimer and Sutherland had met earlier at a smaller studio called True Line, and was doing work for a larger Japanese company called SIB. Paramount Studios purchased SIB, and Schmeimer and Sutherland were teamed with Norm Preston, and Filmation was founded soon after.
As with any start-up company, the early days of Filmation were often touch-n-go... projects being started but never quite getting the full studio support that had been anticipated, so higher end projects were put on indefinite hold. However, these setbacks also helped guide Filmation more towards smaller television work, and it was with television that Filmation would become a giant in children's programming.
The big break for the tiny Filmation studio came in 1966, when DC Comics approached the Filmation team to produce an animated version of Superman. Batman soon followed, and then Aquaman and Filmation was on their way to big time success.
"If it flew around and had a cape, we had done some version of it."
In fact, as we'll learn more in the following video clip interviews with Mr. Scheimer, Filmation became a key and critical animation studio in the transition of children's Saturday morning television of the mid 1960s towards a 'kinder-and-gentler' Saturday morning of the 1970s.
More later today and this weekend on Filmation, and The Archie Show in particular. We'll also get a chance to hear Lou Scheimer's view of what was happening to children's programing in the late 1960s and how Filmation tried to react and transition to the changes the FCC and ACT were trying to implement.
Enjoy !
This video clip is presented here on TH-cam for the entertainment and informational value of the viewer, and no copyright infringement is intended.

[@maximusprime3459]

Lou Scheimer seemed like such a nice guy. His book on the history of Filmation is really good.

[@JHollowayNetwork]

It was the first-ever Saturday morning cartoon to utilize a laugh track (previous animated shows that had laugh tracks (The Flintstones and The Jetsons) ran in prime-time with the target being adults). Many Saturday morning programs started using them shortly thereafter.

[@Mary0614]

Put them on dvd! I need them in my library!

[@jessquinn6106]

No one remembers that Archie had had his own radio show back in the 40's.

[@JHollowayNetwork]

In this incarnation of the animated Archies, Veronica towers over Betty. But in "Archie's Weird Mysteries" it's the rather polar opposite (Betty towers over Veronica).

[@MONGOOSE1ful]

Another amazing Filmation legacy, "THE ARCHIE SHOW" for CBS in Fall 1968 (along with "THE BATMAN-SUPERMAN HOUR" and "FANTASTIC VOYAGE") would eventually become a Saturday Morning dominator throughout most of the 1970s, also as a result of Music Supervisor, Don Kirshner, and vocalist, Ron Dante', who made the Filmation cartoon series a success with the Bubble Gum music-"Sugar, Sugar", which became Billboard's Top 20 in 1969, and appearances on "THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW" (singing "Bang Shang-a Lang") and also on ABC-TV's "MUSIC SCENE" from Fall 1969 (they aired the clip of The Archies singing "Sugar,Sugar") while Kirshner's Calendar Records had released five Vinyl LPs of their music between 1969 and 1971, while Filmation Associates even competed against themselves with ABC's "THE HARDY BOYS" in Fall 1969 (the third and final cartoon series that Filmation produced for ABC and 20th Century Fox Television, and a Vinyl LP was also released by RCA in 1969) while CBS dominated the weekends with "THE ARCHIE COMEDY HOUR" in Fall 1969, "ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE" in Fall 1970, "ARCHIE'S TV FUNNIES"in Fall 1971, "THE US OF ARCHIE" in Fall 1974, and the swan song of the franchise, "THE NEW ARCHIE/SABRINA HOUR", that Filmation produced for NBC in Fall 1977 which changed titles ("THE BANG SHANG LALOPALOZA SHOW" and "SUPER WITCH") which concluded Filmation's decade long frachise in early 1978- a remarkable testiment to Filmation's all too short 25-year history!

[@pamelad5677]

🤩💖👍

[@sail2byzantium]

Well, that ended much too soon. Is there subsequent videos that pick it up at this point?

[@magpatocx]

Riverdale New York

[@decayed_layer_xx5339]

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