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The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour
| The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour | |
| |
| Premiere | September 14, 1968 |
| Finale | August 30, 1985 |
| Network/Provider | CBS |
| Style | 60-minute (seasons 1-4) / 90-minute (seasons 5-7, 9-10) / 120-minute (season 8) animated anthology |
| Company | Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Television (season 1), Warner Bros. Television (seasons 2-10) |
| Distributor | Warner Bros. Television |
| Origin | USA |
The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, also known as The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show is a long-running animated anthology program that ran animated shorts from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies library, all created between 1948 and 1966. It began after CBS got the rights to The Bugs Bunny Show, which was merged with The Road Runner Show.
The show's first season ran from 1968 to 1969, which was followed by two years of reruns, through 1971. After a four-year hiatus (during which time CBS then ABC aired The Bugs Bunny Show), cartoons not screened on TV before were shown in 1975, with additional unscreened cartoons appearing yearly through 1978. A prime time edition, as The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (30 minutes), aired on CBS from June 8 to June 29, 1976. In 1978, the program was expanded to 90-minutes, and the title was changed to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, with a new batch of cartoons not shown before. The following year (1979-1980) only featured reruns of these 90-minute episodes. Cartoons previously seen on NBC's The Daffy Duck Show (and later on CBS as The Daffy & Speedy/Sylvester & Tweety Show were presented in 90-minute episodes for two more years, when the show changed to a full two-hour format. After only one year, the show returned to 90-minutes, with a new opening theme ("It's Cartoon Gold") and new title animation. Following this show, The Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour appeared on ABC.
At the start in 1968, the opening title music (before the "This Is It" sequence) was a truncated Bill Lava arrangement of an attempt of a new Merrie Melodies theme around 1965. This piece can be heard using a calliope in the 1968 Cool Cat cartoon "Three-Ring Wing Ding."
In Canada, CBC Television acquired the Canadian rights to air first-season reruns of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour, which debuted on the network on September 6, 1969. CBC aired the show's 26 first-season episodes continually in various late-afternoon time slots on Saturday afternoons, with the start times varying between time zones (and occasionally being pre-empted or having its start time changed) due to live sports programming on the network. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour ended its run on CBC Television on August 30, 1975; shortly after, the show was picked up by rival Canadian network Global Television (then a regional network serving southern Ontario), which syndicated the show to other local stations across Canada until the early-1980s. [1]
Contents |
Seasons
| Season | Premiere | Finale | # | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CBS | ||||||
| Season One: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour (60-minute) | September 14, 1968 | March 8, 1969 | 26 | |||
| Season Two: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour (60-minute) | September 13, 1975 | 1976 | — | |||
| Season Three: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour (60-minute) | September 1976 | 1977 | — | |||
| Season Four: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour (60-minute) | September 1977 | 1978 | — | |||
| Season Five: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (90-minute) | September 9, 1978 | March 3, 1979 | 26 | |||
| Season Six: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (90-minute) | September 1980 | 1981 | — | |||
| Season Seven: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (90-minute) | September 1981 | 1982 | — | |||
| Season Eight: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (120-minute) | September 1982 | 1983 | — | |||
| Season Nine: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (90-minute) | September 1983 | 1984 | — | |||
| Season Ten: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show (90-minute) | September 1984 | 1985 | — | |||
In-Depth
- At a Glance: Additional information about the series
DVD Releases
While there has not been a DVD release for this show, many of the shorts shown in the show have been released in their original theatrical forms. Additionally, opening and briding sequences from the show have appeared on Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs. An hour-long episode of The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour is slated to appear on volume 2 of Saturday Morning Cartoons: The 70s, due out in October.
