Let's take a look at the CBS Saturday morning lineup for 1965. What strikes me about it is how unbelievably cheap the whole thing must have been for the network. CBS had purchased the Terrytoons library years earlier so they owned Heckle & Jeckle and Mighty Mouse and weren't paying anything for those two shows. Tom & Jerry and Quick Draw McGraw were old cartoons which probably didn't cost much. Tennessee Tuxedo was produced for CBS but it went on the air in '63 and I think by 1965 was all reruns.
The only show of the six that I think even produced new animation for 1965 — and they probably didn't do much — was Linus the Lionhearted. That was a fairly expensive program but Post cereals ate most of that expense. The series was done as a kind of loss leader to promote the characters who were associated with Post cereals and appeared on their packaging. I don't know how much CBS kicked in but I'll bet it wasn't much. This promo also probably didn't cost the network more than — what? — maybe fifty bucks for editing old footage and putting in a bad announcer track.
Anyway, here it is: A whole Saturday morning schedule that probably cost less for the season than one episode of any current series…
