The '90s were a great decade for cartoons, as not only were animated shows on TV Saturday morning, but kids could also catch them on Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and more. It was also the decade when adult animation really started to take off, with The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, and more. However, all good things must come to an end — even cartoons that never age up their characters — and some of these shows had pretty strange reasons for going off the air. From the Nickelodeon show that got Disney-fied to the animated Roseanne show that just didn't work, let's take a look at why these '90s cartoons really got canceled.
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00:00The 1990s were a golden age of television animation. But cartoons are a business,
00:05and even the most beloved shows are sometimes canceled to make room for
00:08more profitable programming. Here's the real reason these 90s cartoons were canceled.
00:14In the 1990s, Fox became the only place on broadcast TV where primetime animation
00:19could find an audience and flourish creatively. Following the success of The Simpsons,
00:24the network debuted another, very different show about a cartoon family in early 1997,
00:28King of the Hill. Created by Beavis and Butthead mastermind Mike Judge, the low-key but hilarious
00:34series centered on Hank Hill, an extremely uptight family man from the town of Arlen, Texas,
00:40who loved beer, football, and selling propane. He often struggled to relate to his weird tween son,
00:45Bobby.
00:46"'Teaching my boy the facts of life is my job.'"
00:49"'Damn, you got that right.'"
00:52King of the Hill earned all kinds of Emmy attention and was a consistent hit with viewers.
00:57It remained on the Fox lineup for well over a decade, but after 259 episodes,
01:02King of the Hill was out of gas. Its final episode, To Sirloin With Love,
01:07aired just before the start of the 2009-2010 TV season. King of the Hill helped further
01:13popularize network cartoons, but ironically, the show was forced to step aside for a new
01:17animated series. Shortly after Fox announced its final order of King of the Hill episodes,
01:22it gave a full-season pickup to The Cleveland Show, a spinoff of the hit cartoon Family Guy.
01:29Before a slew of blockbuster X-Men movies hit the silver screen, kids got to know Professor
01:34Xavier's crew of superpowered mutants on Fox's Saturday morning staple X-Men, the animated
01:39series. Based on the Marvel comics that date back to the 60s, the show was mostly serialized,
01:44with viewers required to turn in each week to see how multi-part storylines played out.
01:49X-Men the Animated Series debuted on Fox in 1992 and eventually moved to its weekend morning time
01:55slot, where it aired until 1997. That's a bit longer than the network or producers had envisioned.
02:01The show was only supposed to run 65 episodes, a standard production run for an animated show
02:06in the 90s. Fox ultimately wanted a total of 76 episodes, and once those 76 episodes were finished,
02:13so was X-Men the Animated Series.
02:16I miss you. I never knew how much I would.
02:20We all miss her, Scott. The question is, how will we move on without her?
02:25Doug premiered in 1991 and was one of the sweetest, gentlest cartoons of its era.
02:31It was told from the point of view of awkward tween Doug Funny,
02:34who makes up for his painful shyness with a wildly active fantasy life.
02:38This wasn't so hard. Maybe if I kept at it.
02:41Nickelodeon ended production on Doug in 1994. Shortly after that, Disney purchased ABC
02:48and launched the One Saturday Morning programming block. According to Doug creator Jim Jenkins,
02:54Disney aggressively pursued his animation studio Jumbo Pictures because it wanted Doug.
03:00In slimed, an oral history of Nickelodeon's golden age, Jenkins asked,
03:05So, should I stay with Nickelodeon, who is through with me? Or get bought by Disney,
03:10where we get to create 65 new half-hours of Doug, a feature-length movie, Doug live for
03:16their theme park, toys, books, additional funding for development and production on many new series?
03:23In 1996, brand-spanking new Doug hit ABC. More focused on the business side of Doug,
03:29Jenkins wasn't around to maintain quality, and the show arguably went downhill when others stepped in.
03:34Casting director Wendy Litwack said,
03:37Doug suffered when it changed to Disney because of network intervention.
03:41The new Doug came to a conclusion at the end of its third season, followed by a big-screen movie.
03:47Hey Arnold! joined the Nicktoons lineup in 1996 and quickly became one of Nickelodeon's
03:52most popular and enduring shows. For five seasons, fans eagerly tuned in to watch the
03:58many adventures of this group of highly independent city kids.
04:01Steel Mill? We're at the Steel Mill?
04:04Sure, why'd you think it worked?
04:05This train isn't haunted?
04:07In 1998, Nickelodeon renewed Hey Arnold! and ordered a feature film,
04:11which creator Greg Bartlett began working on after the fifth season.
04:15It was a straight-to-video project called Arnold Saves the Neighborhood,
04:19but it was also released to theaters as Hey Arnold! The Movie. The movie flopped in 2002,
04:24earning only $13 million at the American box office. That marked the end of Hey Arnold! in
04:30any form, until Bartlett returned to Nickelodeon to produce Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie in 2016.
04:36Roseanne Barr ruled ABC in the late 80s and early 90s. Roseanne, the sitcom based on her stand-up
04:42comedy act, finished the 1989-90 season as the number one show on network TV. In the fall of
04:491990, the network tried to capitalize on her popularity with a Roseanne Barr show just for
04:54kids — a Saturday morning cartoon called Little Rosie. Little Rosie revolved around an 8-year-old
05:00version of Barr. Nobody from the Roseanne sitcom voiced their animated kiddie counterparts,
05:05not even Barr. ABC tried to interfere with the production early on, requesting that
05:09Rosie's friend group include more boys. It was reportedly a difficult show to make,
05:13and ratings weren't so great. No wonder Little Rosie only lasted one season.
05:18"'Mrs. Kanker, I want you to know I'm sorry I kicked the ball into your yard.
05:23We don't do it on purpose, and we don't like to bother.'"