Back in the dark ages of television better known as and the 70’s and 80’s, whenever the BBC needed to fill time between an episode of whatever it is people watched back then, they’d show cartoons.
The reasoning behind this is because unlike almost every other TV channel in the fucking world, the BBC doesn’t show commercials, like ever. While this is great for viewers who don’t want to be bombarded by ads for expensive dog food and shower curtains with pictures of the Queen on them, it sucked for the BBC who had to find some way to fill the time between shows that didn’t cause viewers to collectively say “fuck this” and change the channel. Luckily for the BBC they had something on hand that they could use to placate the masses for the 5 minutes it took to put on the next show, cartoons.
Due to the fact that a lot of early Merrie Melodies and Hanna-Barbera cartoons were only a few minutes in length, it made them ideal for fleshing out run times and filling gaps in an otherwise empty schedule. Of course, the main problem with this was making sure that they picked cartoons that people actually gave a shit about.
Through a lot of trial and error showing nothing but shit, the BBC eventually realised that Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry shorts had the best audience retention rate, regardless of the time slot they were used in.
In fact, Tom and Jerry cartoons were so popular with audiences that whenever the BBC needed to fill time, whether it was because an episode of the news ran long or a live episode of something had to be pulled off air early because someone accidentally whipped their dong out, Tom and Jerry would be called upon to fill the void.
Because lets be honest guys, there’s never not a good time to show an episode of Tom and Jerry.
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