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Old 12-07-2017, 03:38 PM   #1
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Why did CBS take over TMNT during mid-season 4?

Why did CBS take over the MWS series during mid-season 4? I can understand if it happened during the start of a season, but right in the middle of a season?
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Old 12-07-2017, 04:30 PM   #2
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The defined “seasons” for the original TMNT series are very muddy. They were not set on a regular schedule like they are today. Also, while CBS episodes started airing on Saturday mornings, there were still new episodes happening in syndication. Trying to sort them out into one cohesive list was never really going to be possible.
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Old 12-07-2017, 04:33 PM   #3
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The defined “seasons” for the original TMNT series are very muddy. They were not set on a regular schedule like they are today. Also, while CBS episodes started airing on Saturday mornings, there were still new episodes happening in syndication. Trying to sort them out into one cohesive list was never really going to be possible.
I'm still trying to remember the first time I heard "season" applied to a TV show. Once upon a time, that was the strangest thing to me. I always thought "seasons" existed more for the networks to use in promotion than they did for the actual studios and animators working on the shows. It was such a different time... the goal of most cartoon shows was to score syndication privileges to churn out 52 or so episodes and then make money in perpetuity. Any additional orders for a small crop of new episodes was considered icing on the cake.
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Old 12-07-2017, 06:31 PM   #4
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The way cartoons were handled in the 80's and early 90's are so fundamentally different from now that it's something only the past business execs would know about. TMNT of course being a huge fad at the time was a major exception and why they kept renewing it for so long.

The opening changed in mid-Season 4, so you can pinpoint the time the show was renewed.
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Old 12-07-2017, 10:15 PM   #5
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Actually it was kinda different. If you guys recall back then, the same 2 or so seasons of several cartoons were aired weakly on FOX and whatnot, while the newer episodes with higher animation quality and new intros were aired Saturday mornings.

If I recall, 2 main examples were the Smurfs and The Chipmunks. The Smurfs had the same batch of episodes running weekly, but the ones aired on Saturday were newer episodes and newer characters (I forgot their names, there was like a little girl Smurf and a grandpa Smurf added later on, and I don't mean Papa Smurf and Smurfette). The Chipmunks had the same batch running weekly, but the Saturday morning version had a different intro and the designs were improved, making them look like they did in the Chipmunk adventure and their cameo appearance in the Cartoon All-Stars to the rescue.

The Turtles was the very rare example in which they had the first 3 seasons running weekly, with CBS running newer episodes with a new intro and a slightly different art style and in an hour long 2 episode format, with one episode being the usual Shredder stuff and the second episode mostly focusing on one Turtle and the villain being scientists and mobsters. The difference with the Turtles and all the other cartoons like Smurfs, Beetlejuice, The Chipmunks and Muppet Babies... was that occasionally there would be new episodes appearing in the weekly format, still with the classic intro.

Offhand I can remember the Rondo episode, the Howie episodes, that giant Don VS giant ape, Shredder's mom and the two Hokum Hare episodes were new episodes running in the weekly run at the same time that CBS was still airing their new episodes with the new intro and such. That's why we had two Atlantis episodes, one was weekly, the other was the CBS one. That's also why we have 2 episodes of the bad guys surviving the end of season 3's Big Blow Out, because Plan 6 from Dimension X started new eps for the weekly run while The Dimension X Story was the series premiere for the CBS eps.

It was a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing, and the reason why the episodes are so sloppily out of order on the DVDs. After season 3 and some of 4, it really wasn't a matter of seasons anymore, it was just the weekly eps and the CBS Saturday eps. When trying to make sense of what was a season 4, a season 5 and what-have-you, whenever DVD sets became a thing, well.... I don't envy the guys in charge of having to sort through that mess. It wasn't until Red Sky kept things only on CBS that there was a clear format.
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Old 12-08-2017, 02:51 AM   #6
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The Turtles was the very rare example in which they had the first 3 seasons running weekly.
Only season 2 was weekly. Season 1 aired for one week, season 3 for weekdays.
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Old 12-08-2017, 07:07 AM   #7
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Only season 2 was weekly. Season 1 aired for one week, season 3 for weekdays.
Yes, upon first airing, but eventually they were mixed in with reruns during the weekly runs. The weekly runs added title cards to season 1, the first airings didn't have any.
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Old 12-08-2017, 08:11 AM   #8
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Yes, upon first airing, but eventually they were mixed in with reruns during the weekly runs. The weekly runs added title cards to season 1, the first airings didn't have any.
So you didn't know the episode names until the reruns.
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Old 12-14-2017, 02:39 PM   #9
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The opening changed in mid-Season 4, so you can pinpoint the time the show was renewed.
Hopefully this helps: "The fourth season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is split into two sub-sections that aired concurrently: thirteen episodes which aired daily in syndication, and twenty-six episodes that premiered in hour-long double-bills on Saturday Mornings on CBS, which would serve as its home for the remainder of the whole series. A brief "Turtle Tips" segment aired between the two episodes which served as a PSA about the environment or other issues. There were a total of 20 "Turtle Tips" segments produced and aired. The syndication episodes featured the original title sequence, while the CBS episodes debuted a new title sequence, and also did away with the show's title cards.

During this season, the Technodrome is back in Dimension X, having been launched from Earth through a portal at the conclusion of season 3 .[1] The season premiere, "Plan 6 from Outer Space", aired in syndication, and detailed how the villains' battle fortress crash-landed on an asteroid; in the later episode, "The Dimension X Story" a volcano on the asteroid erupted, immobilizing the Technodrome by surrounding it with molten lava.[2] "The Dimension X Story" was evidently intended to be the first episode of the CBS run, as many other episodes which aired before it from both the syndication and CBS episodes refer to the Technodrome being trapped in lava, but wound up airing very late in the season."



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage...es)_(season_4)

To answer your question it is possible CBS made the deal but didn't have time to finalise it before new episodes were to be aired so the syndicated episodes were made first before the deal was set in stone. Notice also the CBS episodes have a slightly bigger budget for animation.
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Old 12-16-2017, 04:12 PM   #10
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I prefer the title sequences instead of the title cards.
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Old 12-16-2017, 04:15 PM   #11
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So you didn't know the episode names until the reruns.
I honestly thought Turtle Tracks was a new episode... until it began. Then the next ep, and the next. I noticed they used the same titles ftom the VHS tapes.
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Old 12-16-2017, 04:18 PM   #12
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Reruns

When were all those reruns back then? After Christmas and new year? (as most episodes aired between September and early-mid December)
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Old 12-16-2017, 06:18 PM   #13
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When were all those reruns back then? After Christmas and new year? (as most episodes aired between September and early-mid December)
Idk. Once they hit weekdays I remember em going all year. There were no such things as 'season breaks' back then. Just nonstop reruns sprinkled with new episides.
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Old 12-17-2017, 01:36 AM   #14
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Idk. Once they hit weekdays I remember em going all year. There were no such things as 'season breaks' back then. Just nonstop reruns sprinkled with new episides.
Here are the airdates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ries)_episodes
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Old 01-05-2018, 08:47 PM   #15
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So, I didn't grow up in the US, and the CBS/syndicated/weekday thing is confusing. What does that MEAN? Were two shows effectively commissioned, created, and aired simultaneously, with the voice cast working on both? Why would that happen?
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Old 01-05-2018, 09:36 PM   #16
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So, I didn't grow up in the US, and the CBS/syndicated/weekday thing is confusing. What does that MEAN? Were two shows effectively commissioned, created, and aired simultaneously, with the voice cast working on both? Why would that happen?
No, it's the same show. You know how Season 4 changes the opening theme song to the second one that runs throughout the end of Season 7? That's where the CBS episodes started. The animation also noticeably improves tremendously from those early Season 4 episodes.

It's also a bit confusing because those European Vacation episodes were also made during Season 4. So Season 4 was one weird as hell scheduled season. Probably why that season has 40 whopping episodes and is the longest season of the show.
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Old 01-06-2018, 08:54 AM   #17
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Ok... But why was the animation different? Was it not produced by the same company?
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Old 01-06-2018, 11:00 AM   #18
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Plan Six/Dimension X Story/Son of etc. were continuations of the main plot in that order. If you went from Plan Six to Turtles of the Jungle, it wouldn't make sense because they went from a ruined Technodrome with broken portal/equipment to fully functioning again. Especially when you factor in the European episodes.
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Old 01-06-2018, 11:56 AM   #19
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Ok... But why was the animation different? Was it not produced by the same company?
Lots of different animation studios worked on the show at the same time, that's why the animation looks noticeably different from some episodes in the same season. This is the norm for a lot of cartoons and anime, that's how they're able to animate and produce so many episodes in the same season.

For example look at something like Season 5. Episodes like the Muckman ep used a completely different animation studio than the Mutagen Man episode, the latter which was the standard animation studio for the time.
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Old 01-06-2018, 12:55 PM   #20
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I used to tape the shows in the order of airing. It would be interesting to compare the order of my tapings to that "official" airdates list...because I do remember that "The Dimension X Story" aired first, not in the middle of the season on CBS. The tapes are long gone now, though.
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