Enough talk, let's expose these suspects.

Suspect One: Peggy Charren and the Action For Children's Television

For a group that hasn't existed in 15 years, they're still considered the primary suspect in the murder of Saturday mornings.

The Action for Children's Television was a grassroots organization whose sole purpose of existance was to make children's television more than just an electronic babysitter that bombarded you with ads for sugary foods and useless pieces of plastic.

Led by Peggy Charren, this group was against kid show hosts who just plugged toys during the show, ads for sugary cereals and candy-like vitamins, imitable acts on television programs (here's a fun fact: ACT was concerned with a scene in which Sebastian, the cat on Josie and the Pussycats, was supposed to be tangled up in spaghetti; however, because they were afraid that kids would dump their poor kitties in spaghetti, ACT protested, making the scene a little more unimittable. It's a fact.), and shows they perceived as "half-hour commercials," including G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, Jem, My Little Pony, Care Bears, and the like. ACT also wanted to limit commercial time on children's television per hour (12 minutes per hour, meaning, gasp, 24 minutes of actual showtime per half hour).

Networks and studios worked hard to appease ACT, although ACT just wanted them to be more responsible programmers and program providers. Though they're considered to be the scourge of the industry, ACT's mission was clearly anti-censorship, anti-corporate, and pro-quality, which doesn't necessarily mean pro-education, though they did praise shows like Sesame Street and Schoolhouse Rock. They wanted shows to be more than just glorified ads that were used to sell toyetic products and junk food. In 1990, ACT's mission was believed to be completed when Congress passed the Children's Television Act of 1990, which was built up on many of the group's core agendas: limited commercial interruption, limited sugary foods commercials, and no commercials featuring characters/hosts from the show they're watching during the show (in short, no Power Rangers ads during Power Rangers). In 1992, ACT was disbanded realizing that their mission was accomplished.

I swear, people need to stop using that phrase.

Suspect Two: The Government

The Action for Children's Television influenced the Democrat-led Congress of 1990 to pass the Children's Television Act to use television's influence to teach the country's children information and skills that will benefit them when they become older. The Act limited commercial time for sugary foods and self-promotional toy ads as well as required television stations to show programs that are educational, which led to the creation of shows like Beakman's World, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?, Cro, and others. These shows co-existed with regular non-educational fare for a good while. However, times changed, and in 1994, a new Republican-controlled Congress with a new agenda came into power and decided to amend the CTA to their own vision.

In August 1996, the Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules to strengthen the enforcement of Act based on recommendations mandated by the new Congress. These new rules included:

• Clearly define what's educational and what's not: they have to air between 7 AM and 10 PM E/P, a regularly scheduled program, and be 30 minutes in length (in short, no Schoolhouse Rock-like shorts).
• A mandate of a minimum of three hours of educational and informational programming on every broadcast network
• Identify these educational programs verbally before the show airs or with an on-air marker

Considering the traditional three networks only had five hours of children's programming every week on Saturday mornings, they were the ones to become hurt by the rules. ABC, NBC, and CBS all added two-hour long news programs every Saturday morning and dedicated the remaining timeslot to E/I programming. Well, shows they classified as E/I despite having no educational and informational content at all. Fox Kids and Kids' WB, which operated week-long at the time, benefited the most because their audiences grew throughout the remainder of the 90s since they didn't air all educational programming like their competitors did.

Ironically, as mandates of educational programming on broadcast television increased, funding for PBS, long the bastion of educational programming in the US, decreased. The Congress's excuse for PBS's budget cuts was that programming that would normally be seen on PBS were seen throughout cable networks, including Discovery Channel and Nick Jr.

In 2001, additional mandates were added, including limited self-promotional ads. Fox Kids disappeared by 2002 while Kids WB became Saturday-only in 2006.

Up next: the next pair of suspects.