The Bugs Bunny Show
The Bugs Bunny Show is an animated television anthology series hosted by Bugs Bunny, that was mainly composed of "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons released by Warner Bros. between August 1, 1948 and the end of 1969. The show originally debuted as a primetime half-hour program on ABC in 1960, featuring three theatrical Warner Bros. Cartoons with new linking sequences produced by the Warner Bros. Cartoons staff.
After two seasons, "The Bugs Bunny Show" moved to Saturday mornings, where it remained in one format or another for nearly four decades. The show's title and length changed regularly over the years, as did the network: both ABC and CBS broadcast versions of "The Bugs Bunny Show". In 2000, the series, by then known as "The Bugs Bunny dan Tweety Show", was canceled after the "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" libraries became the exclusive property of the Cartoon Network family of cable TV networks in the United States. Reruns of "The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show" were aired on the Canadian channels Teletoon and Teletoon Retro.
The original "Bugs Bunny Show" debuted on ABC prime time on October 11, 1960, airing on Tuesdays at 7:30 PM EST, under the sponsorship of General Foods (Post cereals, Tang, etc.). Newly produced linking segments were done for each episode by the Warner Bros. animation staff. Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng produced, directed, and created the storyboards for the earliest of these, with Robert McKimson later taking over the direction while Jones and Freleng continued producing and writing. The wraparounds were produced in color, although the original broadcasts of the show were in black-and-white.
The show's theme song was "This Is It", written by Mack David and Jerry Livingston (""Overture/curtain, lights/this is it/the night of nights...""). The opening title sequence, animated by Freleng unit animator Gerry Chiniquy, features Bugs and Daffy Duck performing the song in unison. For the final chorus, a lineup of "Looney Tunes" characters joins Bugs and Daffy onstage (Porky Pig, however, is absent from the procession).
"The Bugs Bunny Show" proved beneficial to the Warner Bros. cartoon staff, as it allowed the studio to remain open despite the shrinking market for theatrical animated shorts. The final first-run episode of the original "Bugs Bunny Show" aired on August 7, 1962, and the Warner Bros. animation studio closed the following spring.
ABC began re-running "The Bugs Bunny Show" on Saturday mornings in August 1962 until September 1967 when it was moved to Sunday mornings for the remainder of its run. The series was rerun in color beginning in 1965, and remained on ABC until September 1968. At this point, the series switched to CBS, where it was combined with "The Road Runner Show" (which had aired on CBS since 1966) to create "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour". The standard "Bugs Bunny Show" opening and the announcer's introduction of Bugs Bunny ("that Oscar-winning rabbit!") were directly followed by the rabbit's saying, "...and also starring my fast feathered friend, the Road Runner", after which "The Road Runner
Show's" theme was played. "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour" combined re-edited bridging sequences from both shows to link the seven cartoons featured in each episode. The bridging sequences would be edited further in later versions of the "Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour".
In 1971, "The Road Runner Show" moved to ABC, and a reconstituted half-hour "Bugs Bunny Show" aired on CBS, featuring re-edited versions of the bridging sequences and a different grouping of cartoons. In 1973, "The Bugs Bunny Show" returned to ABC for two seasons, only for CBS to re-acquire both shows and bring back "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour" in 1975. In 1976, Sylvester and Tweety were featured in their own "Sylvester and Tweety Show" for one year, necessitating the removal of most of the Tweety and/or Sylvester cartoons on "Bugs Bunny/Road
Runner" that season. Also that year, a weekly half-hour prime-time edition of "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show" briefly aired on CBS' Tuesday night schedule from April through June.
"The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour" became "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show" in November 1977 after CBS added another half-hour to the runtime. In 1982, a companion "Sylvester dan Tweety, Daffy, and Speedy Show" was added to the CBS schedule, which included a number of later cartoons produced by a reestablished Warner Bros. Cartoons studio from 1967 to 1969. The following year, this new companion series was canceled, and its cartoons were incorporated into "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show", which was broadcast as two separate hour-long programs on Saturday mornings. In 1983, CBS returned the show to 90 minutes, the bridging sequences were dropped, and the
show's opening titles were re-animated. The following year, the "This Is It" opening was jettisoned altogether; a new title sequence (created from clips of the cartoons) and new theme song ("It's Cartoon Gold"), composed by Steve Zuckerman with lyrics by John Klawitter, introduced the show.
CBS gave up the rights to broadcast the Warner Bros. cartoons following the 1984-85 season, and as a result, the show moved back to ABC, where it became "The Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour". Cartoons featuring Tweety or Speedy Gonzales were not broadcast on ABC during the 1985-86 season, the latter presumably due to Mexican stereotypes. The following year, however, Tweety cartoons were added to the program, which was reduced to a half-hour and renamed "The Bugs Bunny dan Tweety Show". Beginning with its third season, "The Bugs Bunny dan Tweety Show" was expanded to a full hour, and the original "This Is It" theme was reintroduced, accompanied by a newly animated introductory sequence. Another version of the "This Is It" opening sequence was done in 1992.
Though the program did not qualify for the educational/informational designation, it nonetheless remained on Saturday mornings after the new designation debuted in 1996, one of the few non-E/I programs to survive the rules changes. That same year, ABC was bought by The Walt Disney Company, and "The Bugs Bunny dan Tweety Show" was the only non-Disney cartoon to remain on the lineup, due to their contract not being up yet, and was in the first few years of the "Disney's One Saturday Morning" block starting in 1997 (with "Disney's" omitted from the logos on the Disney's One Saturday Morning bumpers during the show.) The show also continued airing despite Time Warner's purchase of Turner Broadcasting, which included Cartoon Network, that same year. The program was often paired with ABC's in-house "Schoolhouse Rock!" shorts during this time.
The hour-long "Bugs Bunny dan Tweety Show" remained on the air until 1999, when it was again reduced to a half-hour. In 2000, Warner Bros. made the "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" film library exclusive to Cartoon Network, as it, along with Warner Bros., is owned by Time Warner. As a result, "The Bugs Bunny Show" ended its four-decade-long network run, one of the longest runs in the history of United States network television.
This show is credited for keeping the Warner Bros. cartoons made during the Golden Age of American animation a part of the American consciousness. Indeed, the show ran for more than four decades, and helped inspire animators, comedians, historians, and others who watched Saturday morning television. The "This Is It" song's fame is such that it has been used elsewhere such as in the Canadian province of Ontario where it was used in a TV commercial promoting the various performing arts tourist attractions where artists of various disciplines sing separate lines of the song.