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| Before Peggy Charren gave us boring "Edutainment", Margaret Loesch was the face of Children's Television, who listens to the people and gives them what they want, especially when making our childhoods so awesome. |
As Hasbro continues to expand with their catalog of toys, they decided to expand it even further with other media, particularly with television. Although Saturday Morning Cartoons wasn't new (which goes way back to the 60s or a little bit earlier than that), our government's Federal Communications Commission, or FCC for short, put a stranglehold on that media, forbidding companies and distributors of promoting their products, such as toys, through cartoons. All that changed in 1981, when then President Ronald Reagan appointed Mark Fowler as the commissioner of the FCC at the time. Thus, deregulating the strict rules the FCC placed, allowing the aforementioned companies and distributors to promote their product through other media, such as cartoons. From Filmation with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to promote the toys from Mattel to World Events with Voltron promoting the Matchbox toys (which were imports of the Golion and Dairugger XV toys respectively), it takes Hasbro long to follow suit. Regarding toy-based shows like G.I. Joe, Transformers and My Little Pony, they relied on two famed animation studios, talented voice actors and writers, and most importantly, producers who became well-known names in the later years like Tom Griffin, Joe Bacal, Nelson Shin, Lee Gunther, Tom Tataranwicz and last, but certainly not least, the very person who truly became the queen of children's television for a span of 4 decades, the one, the only, Margaret Loesch.
(MK3 VS. Screen Fanfare)
Born on March 28, 1946, Margaret Ann Loesch started her career working for ABC in 1971 and then later with NBC in 1979. Around that time, she was vice president of programming, then later becoming executive vice present for the famed animation studio, Hanna-Barbera Productions, back when all cartoon characters, including then mascot Yogi Bear and friends, were treated equally and not treating Scooby-Doo like a god. It was not until 1984, that she reached a new high when she joined Marvel Productions as their president and CEO. Under her leadership, along with other important people I have mentioned before, she lead Marvel Productions, along with their counterparts at Sunbow Productions, to providence with some of our favorite cartoons, whether there from Sunbow or Marvel or a little bit of both like Muppet Babies, Jem and the Holograms, Inhumanoids, Dino-Riders, the animated version of Fraggle Rock, Defenders of the Earth, My Little Pony 'n Friends, Pryde of the X-Men (which was the pilot of a failed attempt to an X-Men cartoon), RoboCop: The Animated Series, and of course, the aforementioned G.I. Joe and Transformers, among other things.
After she left Marvel Productions, she joined FOX as president of the newly launched FOX Kids block on September 8, 1990. Just with the cartoons in the 1980s, when running FOX Kids, Loesch gave us even more animated goodness with shows like Bobby's World, Fox's Peter Pan & the Pirates, Tom & Jerry Kids, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Taz-Mania, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Eek! The Cat (later renamed Eek!stravaganza), The Tick, Spider-Man (1994) and of course, two of our favorite animated shows of all time, Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men: The Animated Series (which eclipsed the failed Pryde of the X-Men pilot). And it wasn't just animation alone, they also got some live-action shows and anime with assistance from Saban Productions, such as Mon Colle Knights, Flint the Time Detective, the first anime Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Digimon (which was their answer to Pokémon, when it was aired on Kids WB!), Beetleborgs, Masked Rider (but I prefer Kamen Rider Black RX), and finally, the very show that became a "Morphinomenon" so to speak, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which combined American footage with those from Japanese Super Sentai or any other Tokusatsu show.
After her time there, she was president of the Jim Henson Television group for Odyssey Channel around 1998 until rebranding it into the Hallmark Channel (named after the famed greeting card company) in 1999.
Other than her other business ventures, including forming The Hatchery, a family entertainment and consumer product company in 2003 alongside Bruce Stein, things for Ms. Loesch were slowing down. That is until she was hired by Discovery Communications around 2009, where she became the CEO of the very network that was launched a year later. By October 10, 2010, just like with her previous business ventures, Margaret Loesch brought everything, and I mean everything, together, when she ran the joint Discovery/Hasbro hybrid that became simply known as...The Hub.
(The Hub Network jingle)
To Be Continued...
In memory of:
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Kevin Conroy
(November 30, 1955 - November 10, 2022)
Jason David Frank
(September 4, 1973 - November 19, 2022)
Next Time: Part 3: Slow and Steady: The Hub's Early Beginnings!
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