Imagine If... CBS Action Zone Lasted A Little Longer
In 1994, CBS launched a newly-branded action block to shake up its Saturday morning lineup. The new block, Action Zone, was an attempt to take on FOX Kids' rising popularity on Saturday mornings as well as an environment to reignite interest in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series that was a keystone in the network's lineup since 1990. Action Zone also brought in a pair of new series, Skeleton Warriors, a sword-and-sorcery fantasy cartoon from Graz Entertainment, the studio behind FOX Kids' wildly-popular X-Men animated series, and WildC.A.T.S., based on the popular Image comic book series created by Jim Lee, who was the illustrator who helped spark the reinvention of the X-Men comics and the looks of the characters on the highly-popular FOX Kids adaptation.
Needless to say, the first season didn't do as well as CBS had hoped it would. Apparently getting a show from the studio behind X-Men and a comic from a former X-Men comic illustrator wasn't the same as actually having X-Men.
The failure of the first season of the Action Zone was something that affected CBS Saturday morning programmers tremendously. After trying to take on the growing juggernaut of FOX Kids as well as preparing for whatever The WB was going to do with its new Saturday morning block that fall, CBS wanted to expand its action offerings a bit.
Seeing what they needed to focus on, they understood that it didn’t have to be a toyetic block as it was in the first season. They wanted familiar properties that resonated with viewers. They wanted fresh and newer series. They wanted to add a bit of edge and a bit of levity but keep it kid-friendly. They also wanted shows that older audiences wouldn’t be embarrassed in watching with their kids or on their own.
While Skeleton Warriors and WildC.A.T.S. were dropped from the Action Zone, a trio of new shows would be added to the block for the new season.
The block would start off with Street Fighter. Produced by Capcom, USA Studios, and Graz Entertainment (the studio behind X-Men, The Tick, Ronin Warriors [the localized version of Samurai Troopers], and Skeleton Warriors), it’s based on the widely-popular Capcom fighting game and presenting a global team of martial artists going on international missions to stop a tyrannical despot from ruling the planet. This was the first series sold by USA Studios, a division of Universal Television, to air outside of the cable channel it was associated with, USA Network.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would remain as the anchor. It’s been a part of the CBS lineup and is beginning to show its age. Still, it was a dependable part of the lineup and still got respectable ratings, even with its darker revamp to tie it in closer to its live-action theatrical incarnation.
The third series on the new Action Zone block was The Savage Dragon. Based on Erik Larsen’s Image Comics title of the same name, this series was a production of Universal Cartoon Studios and USA Studios. Ironically, it was initially considered for the first season of Action Zone along with fellow Image comic WildC.A.T.S. and had a brief toyline from Playmates Toys, which also made figures for WildC.A.T.S., Skeleton Warriors, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Interestingly enough, another Image title almost ended up in this slot instead of Savage Dragon. Cyber Force, based on Marc Silvestri’s Top Cow title, was in development at Graz and was very close to getting a slot on Action Zone, but CBS felt it was too thematically and visibly similar in tone to WildC.A.T.S., plus Graz’s other series option, Street Fighter, sparked more interest from the network.
The final series on Action Zone was The Mask: Animated Series. This was a dark horse series in both a literal sense (it was co-produced by Dark Horse Productions and New Line Television) and a metaphorical sense. CBS wanted a comedic action series similar in tone to The Tick on FOX Kids, and The Mask, based on the 1994 film that helped cement Jim Carrey’s legendary status, fit that role perfectly on the block. Not surprisingly, its lead-out at 11:30 AM ended up being another animated series based on a Jim Carrey role, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
1995-96 Lineup (all times Eastern/Pacific)
Needless to say, the new and improved was far more successful than the first season. Audiences were more familiar with the characters and brands. Even The Savage Dragon had respectable viewership on the block. It would be no surprise that the following season would be intact for the most part, though the producers of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles informed CBS that the new season would be its last.
The first season of Savage Dragon and Street Fighter gets an additional run on Sundays on the USA Network as part of its Action Extreme Team block the following spring. When the fall schedule was announced, the Action Zone block was slightly tweaked. Instead of starting at 9:30 AM, it would now start at 10 AM and remain a two-hour block.
The lineup was the same in the 10 AM hour as it was the previous season. Street Fighter was shifted to 11:30 AM as a kind of “clean up” position. The Mask moved from 11 AM to 9:30 AM and airing immediately after Ace Ventura on the lineup. It was replaced by Project G.ee.K.e.R., an animated sci-fi comedy adventure series from the creators of Earthworm Jim (which was entering its second season on Kids’ WB) and The Neverhood video game. Despite promising initial ratings, the series was ultimately a disappointment, and The Mask returned to the block by the spring.
Overall, CBS wasn’t pleased at all with the direction not only of Action Zone but the entire block as a whole. ABC, FOX, and The WB’s offerings were dominating CBS’s lineup in the ratings.
Ironically, Kids’ WB’s action block, which went head-to-head against Action Zone at the beginning of the season, shifted to an earlier slot as part of a “Big Kids Go First” campaign that brought more comedic shows in the slot, which took a healthy slice of the audience in the process.
Falsely citing high production costs in animation and lower-than-expected ratings for higher-profile shows like Ace Ventura, The Mask, Street Fighter, Project G.ee.K.e.R., and Bailey Kipper’s P.O.V. (the latter of which was presented as a marquee series for the lineup that season), everything gets canceled on CBS except for Beakman’s World and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which had already announced that the 1996-97 season would be its last.
While no longer in production, Street Fighter and The Savage Dragon shifted to USA Network full-time as part of an expanded Action Extreme Team along with reruns of other shows, including fellow Action Zone vets Skeleton Warriors and WildC.A.T.S.
The 1997-98 season would ultimately be a hard reset for CBS that would radically change the entire Saturday morning lineup forever.
CBS initiated plans to add a Saturday morning edition of CBS This Morning in fall 1997. The lineup also removed the 12 PM hour of programming in favor of an expanded SEC College Football afternoon package. In total, three hours had been removed from Saturday mornings, and as a result, the Action Zone block also shrank from two hours to one hour every week.
Interestingly enough, the Action Zone would be the lone hour of animation on CBS’s lineup for the 1997-98 season. The bulk of the new lineup, which now began at 9 AM, would consist of two hours of live-action programming which would adhere to the federal educational and informational guidelines for children's programming.
These would be Wheel 2000 (9 AM), which was a kid-themed Wheel of Fortune spinoff, The New Ghostwriter Mysteries (9:30 AM) which was a spinoff of the Sesame Workshop/PBS series Ghostwriter, The Weird Al Show (11 AM), and Beakman’s World (11:30 AM), the lone returning series from the previous season.
After considering scrapping Action Zone for the 1997-98 block, CBS decided to give it a bit of a retooling and allow affiliates to program the third mandated E/I hour on their own. The block would become the center of the new lineup. CBS acquired a pair of series distributed by Claster Entertainment, DIC’s Mummies Alive! and Mainframe’s Beast Wars: Transformers.
Beast Wars was considered a surprise acquisition by many insiders because it was generally assumed that FOX Kids was a leading contender to air the popular new series. However, after failing to secure a guaranteed late-morning slot on the network, they went with CBS, which had a rather impressive summer trial run of much of the first season.
The other new series on the Action Zone was Mummies Alive! While 42 episodes were initially produced, CBS broadcast an unprecedented 20 episodes, including the first episode, “Ra, Ra, Ra, Ra,” and the three-part arc that wrapped up the core story, with random episodes running throughout the season. The full series would enter the syndication market under a new distributor, Bohbot Entertainment, who would put in under its BKN branding in fall 1998.
In January 1998, CBS landed an agreement with animation house Nelvana to program its Saturday morning children’s programming block. This would mean that the entire lineup would be ultimately scrapped. Claster Entertainment, which was responsible for programming the Action Zone block for the network, began to panic, especially because they had one last season of Beast Wars left and didn't want to be without a broadcast home, although they briefly considered bringing that series to Cartoon Network's new action block Toonami. After losing Mummies Alive, there was going to be an empty slot for Action Zone, and Claster already had one series in mind.
Claster’s parent company, Hasbro, had signed a deal with video game giant Nintendo and licensing agent 4Kids Entertainment to handle merchandising rights to their new hit video game franchise, Pokémon. While they were still finishing negotiations for the license, Claster had optioned rights to the animated series and worked on a deal for CBS to pick up the animated series, which was going to be produced by 4Kids but distributed by Claster. The CBS deal would have guaranteed a prominent Saturday morning slot in addition to a traditional weekday syndication run, which would have been handled internally by 4Kids’ own Summit Media division.
After some internal discussions at the network, especially in dealing with stricter rules regarding children’s programming standards and the perception of Action Zone being largely seen as a promotional block for merchandising (an accusation that wasn't without merit considering Playmates and Hasbro were heavily involved with the block in its initial four years), a decision was ultimately made that would alter the face of Saturday mornings forever and cement the fate of Action Zone:
CBS rejected Pokémon.
Claster reluctantly rescinded the distribution rights to the series to 4Kids and still left with a bit of a void. Claster would also have to give up half of the Action Zone block to Nelvana, who put its own action series in the lead slot, Mythic Warriors: Guardians of the Legend, which was inspired by ancient mythologies and considered an E/I series by the network.
To make matters worse, CBS decided to shift its Saturday news block to avoid getting beat by NBC’s Saturday Today news block from its 7-9 AM slot to an odd 9-11 AM slot. CBS’s Saturday morning lineup would be split in half with the first two hours of the block airing from 7 to 9 AM with an additional hour airing from 11 AM to Noon leading into the SEC football game of the week. That 11 AM to Noon slot would be Action Zone.
By winter, Claster decided to walk away from CBS and head to FOX Kids, which would pick up a daily strip of Beast Wars episodes as well as a follow-up series, Beast Machines, in fall 1999, which would be the first series under Claster's new name, Hasbro Studios.
Although Mythic Warriors remained on the lineup, CBS decides to officially cancel Action Zone for the 1999-2000 season after five seasons on the air. Nelvana is now given full and free rein to program the entire Saturday morning children's lineup.
An irony not lost by anybody was the fact that one of Nelvana’s newest series for the 1999-2000 was Rescue Heroes, an animated series based on a toyline from Fisher-Price and ultimately move to Kids WB!, sharing channel space with that channel’s biggest hit, Pokémon.
Thanks to new corporate mandates from new owner Viacom, CBS handed control of its Saturday morning lineup to new sibling network Nickelodeon, which programmed it from 2000 to 2006.
After Nick and CBS became owned by separate companies after Viacom split the company in half, the block was run by DIC Entertainment, which had a sponsorship deal with AOL’s KOL kids unit which dubbed the block KOL Secret Slumber Party for the 2006-07 season and KEWLopolis for two seasons before ultimately becoming Cookie Jar TV after DIC was purchased by The Cookie Jar Group, which would ultimately be purchased by DHX Media (now WildBrain) before ending the block in 2013.
Since 2013, CBS’s Saturday morning block has been operated by Litton Entertainment (now Hearst Media Production Group), much like The CW, NBC, and ABC’s Saturday morning lineups, under the name of CBS Dream Team before it got renamed to CBS WKND in 2023.
As for Action Zone? Well, it’s a memory from a bygone era that no longer exists. It was one of the final gasps of life for CBS’s Saturday morning block, and while it didn’t last long, it was quite memorable to those who watched it every week.
Even in the real world outside of this reimagined history.
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