Did anyone here catch the first broadcast of season 1?
 

Season one aired from Mon-Fri in a single week back in December of 87. Did anyone here catch it? What time did it air?


I also have a general question about the 87 series. Was it an afternoon cartoon or a Saturday morning toon?

Early weekday morning at the time it was a rare treat.

Season 2 was every Sunday morning.

Season 3 was finally a weekday cartoon played every afternoon.

Parts of season 4 and onwards were shown Saturday morning on cbs while new eps were occasionally shown weekdays still.

Not sure about red sky.

I was only like 2 at the time, so I'm sure I didn't.

As for when it aired, I remember during the height of its popularity they would air two episodes in the morning and two in the afternoon. I remember this because I would watch 2 episodes before I left for school in the morning and 2 when I came home from school.

If I remember right Red Sky was on Saturdays on CBS at 11am for me. Sometimes they would show 2 episodes.

Here's what I remember from my foggy old-guy memory:

I started watching in season 2, 1988. It was aired at 6 or 6:30 Saturday mornings on our ABC affiliate. It was syndicated, which meant the local affiliate decided when to air it. So basically, it aired at a different day/time depending on what city you lived in.

For season 3 it moved channels, but was still syndicated. Ours were aired around 4pm weekdays. The next year, 1990, the Disney Afternoon bumped TMNT to 7:30ish am.

TMNT seasons 1-3 continued to air in syndication (along with occasional new episodes) 5 days a week while the CBS Saturday AM season started in 1990. I think it kept airing in syndication until USA Network acquired the rights to reruns in 1993.

USA first aired the first 5 European Vacation "new" episodes in 1993 as a marathon. This is also when they started airing 4 episodes a day, 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon, and another 2 on Sunday. Also it was still playing on CBS Saturdays. So it was aired every day of the week, more than once a day. TMNT overload!

No wonder it's been off the US airwaves for 17 years..it used up all its time at once.

And it's so weird... I never remembered seeing that.. For me the CBS cancelled TMNT (before the Red Sky seasons) and other shows due it being replaced by educational shows and paid advertisements. I remember the TMNT not being on anymore around the time of the Sonic cartoons. So I don't know how or when Red Sky was aired.

That's interesting. I was living in NY at the time in the late 80s early 90s when Red Sky first aired. I remember a weird cartoon called Rude Dog and the Dweebs that I think used to come on 30mins before TMNT.

Where I live, the original miniseries came on the local Fox affiliate in the afternoon around 4pm (CST).

The actual cartoon series aired new episodes on Saturdays at 9am, then as popularity escalated they aired an hour block on Saturdays, then in syndication rotation it came on all the time!

I would watch Turtles in the morning from 6 - 7 on USA's CartoonExpress, then that afternoon from 3 - 4, and Sundays after WILDCats and Iron Man/FF Power Hour!

Later, Turtles moved to CBS and, IIRC, aired around 8am.

I was only 34 months old, so I really couldn't remember if I saw it by accident, which wasn't out of the question but I would have probably been watching the kids' PBS at the time (Sesame Street is one of the first shows I can remember watching).

But the timeslot for the first five episodes varied from market to market. However, WOR was a cable channel at the time and aired it at 9 AM Eastern that post-Christmas week at the end of 1987. It was preceded by Beverly Hills Teens. If you had cable and enjoyed their cartoons, you had a good chance of catching TMNT given it was Winter Break along with a favorable morning timeslot. More traditional markets, such as WUPW (Toldeo's FOX affiliate) would aired the same episodes at 6 AM, too early for many kids to enjoy given that in wintertime the sun doesn't rise until well after 7.

Only on Video did I watch the first season. Only on the USA Cartoon Express did I ever see the first season on network television.