From Warner Bros
The Bugs Bunny Show (Better known as The Bugs Bunny / Road Runner Hour) is a long-running American television anthology series hosted by Bugs Bunny, that was mainly composed of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons released by Warner Bros.. Because Warner Bros. did not have the copyrights to their pre-1948 cartoons (their copyrights, but not their original negatives, were sold to Associated Artists Productions in 1956), the show only could air cartoons released between "You Were Never Duckier" and "Injun Trouble". Despite the black and white cartoons (excluding the 1931-33 Merrie Melodies, except "Lady, Play Your Mandolin!") being back in Warner's ownership by 1969, they were never shown.
The show originally debuted as a prime time 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 three 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, as did Canadian network CBC Television (1969-1975) and local Canadian stations via syndication (1975-early 1980s). In 2000, the series, by then known as The Bugs Bunny & 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.
Plus it had the coolest intro!
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).
ABC began re-running The Bugs Bunny Show on Saturday mornings in August 1962. 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 1978 after CBS added another half-hour to the run time. In 1981, a companion Sylvester & 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 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. - Warner Bros
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