One question involving the animated STAR TREK series was whether they ever were broadcast along with a Public Service Announcement (PSA). Several animated Saturday morning series beginning in the 1970's had a 30-second "message" aimed at teaching the children viewers a lesson, like staying away from downed power lines and not being a bully. Several people have written in with fuzzy memories of Public Service Announcements featuring the animated STAR TREK cast. They wanted to know if they were ever produced and if they did exist why weren't they included on the recent DVD release.
This is an interesting question because the existence of 30-second Public Service Announcement segments would mean there was some lost animated STAR TREK material out there that could be recovered and eventually released. I've done some checking, and it seems fairly certain that there weren't any segments broadcast when the series originally aired. Fred Bronson, who served as NBC publicist on the animated series and who also penned the last episode, does not recall ever seeing any or even hearing about them.
PSAs made their debut in conjunction with Filmation's Hardy Boys series in 1969. They didn't become a regular epilogue element until 1972 as part of Filmation's Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids series. Filmation was the first studio to add a moral in the form of an epilogue at the end of animated television episodes. In an interview for Agent DVD Online, Filmation co-founder Lou Scheimer said, "The PSAs were always about the moral in the show, literally to help the child with the concept of the lesson. The idea started with Bill Cosby doing the live-action segments on Fat Albert. It was very effective. We had these superhero shows and at the end the hero would talk about what was in the episode. It created really good will. Mothers were writing in. It was very successful for the kid audience."
It is likely that PSA's were never made or televised because the animated STAR TREK series did not feature physical violence which might require a special moral to provide balance as the much-maligned superhero shows did.
So there never were any Animated STAR TREK PSAs. Just for fun, however, I decided to create 30-second PSAs with the type of lessons that might be learned from each of the twenty-two Animated STAR TREK episodes. These new PSAs were written seriously just like the ones that were seen on Saturday mornings in the 1970's and 1980's, but when viewed with today's sensibilities, they will probably seem quaint and perhaps humorous. They are being uploaded to youTube as soon as they are completed and they can be watched below. Enjoy...
