Beyond The Animated TV Grave: Jokebook

The Ratings Junkie

Beyond The Animated TV Grave is a sub-series of Beyond The TV Grave, and takes a look at short-lived prime time adult animated series that aired on ABC, CBS, or NBC. This edition focuses on NBC’s Jokebook, another Hanna-Barbara cartoon. This one lasted just three episodes after the end of the traditional 1981-82 TV season before being pulled from the schedule.

Background

In a pre-Simpsons world, Hanna-Barbera was really the only production company making adult animated shows. Led by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, their most successful prime time series was their first — 1960’s The Flintstones. By the time Jokebook premiered, some of their short-lived attempts series from the 1960s like The Jetsons and Top Cat had found an audience as part of Saturday morning cartoon blocks, with The Flintstones also maintaining relevance through this means. However, Hanna-Barbera had not had a new adult animated show on prime time television since the short-lived Where’s Huddles? in 1970, which was also the most recent adult animated show to premiere on any network.

Jokebook came at a time where decades-old adult animated programs were gaining popularity on Saturday mornings, but were largely shut out on prime time. It premiered on April 23, 1982 in the Fridays at 8 pm time slot as a partial replacement to the newsmagazine series NBC Magazine. It would lead into the 90-minute one-and-done drama Chicago Story at 8:30 pm.

Synopsis

Jokebook wasn’t as much a structured program as it was a collection of short cartoons. Some of these were brand new segments produced specifically for the show by Hanna-Barbera. Others were licensed shorts that had aired or were produced elsewhere. Some shorts were already Oscar winners; others were completely unknown. With each short under three minutes long and several well under a minute, there was room for plenty in an episode. Essentially, Jokebook was an animated showcase, a hodgepodge of shorts that filled a half hour on Fridays in the late spring after the official TV season had ended.

Cancellation & Aftermath

Despite airing in a time slot that naturally came with low expectations, Jokebook still managed to be pulled from the schedule after airing just three episodes. While specific viewership figures are unknown, the second episode is infamous for being the lowest-rated prime time program of the week across all three networks. With both previous time slot occupant NBC Magazine and lead-out Chicago Story among the lowest-rated shows on NBC in 1981-82, it’s imaginable Jokebook had to have done abysmally to actually get pulled from the schedule. The four remaining produced episodes did not even get the dignity to be burned off over the summer.

Jokebook would become Hanna-Barbera’s last adult animated show to feature a laugh track, an element their most well-known series all employed. It would be another ten years before another one of their cartoons made a network’s prime time schedule, a drought nearly as long as the one between Where’s Huddles? and Jokebook.

Jokebook may just have been a bit ahead of its time. Adult animation’s presence grew later in the 1980s with The Jetsons getting a revival in syndication, followed by The Simpsons premiering, ironically, as an animated short itself. Perhaps if Jokebook premiered 10 years later and NBC was more patient with it, they too could have stumbled upon a long-form hit adult animated series.

While Jokebook is not available for digital purchase or available on any streaming service, the first two episodes did manage to survive online. If interested, you can watch the first episode here and the second episode here.