Scooby Doo first aired on CBS in September of 1969 and can be traced back to Fred Silverman who was the head of daytime programming for CBS. Silverman was looking for a show that would lead networks away from the superhero cycle and take them into an area of comedy and adventure. Silverman was after a show that had a combination of Carleton E. Morse's 1940's popular radio program I Love a Mystery, in which three detectives roamed the world solving mysteries and crimes, and the 1959-1963 television sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, about a scatter-brained teenager and his friends.
Silverman took the show idea to Hanna-Barbera, where Ken Spears and Joe Ruby were assigned to create the characters, plots and story lines of the show. Originally, the show was about four teenage detectives who traveled the country in a van, called the Mystery Machine, solving mysteries in dangerous situations. The show was first known as Mysteries Five and later changed to Who's Scared? The show was then presented to CBS management and President Frank Stanton as a new Saturday morning cartoon for the fall of 1969.
Stanton rejected the
show, saying that the artwork was too frightening. Silverman flew back
to Los Angeles that night. He relaxed to Frank Sinatra singing Strangers
in the Night on the earphones. The phrase 'Scooby-dooby-doo' struck
Silverman so much that he went back and said "We'll call the show Scooby
Doo, Where Are You?, and we'll make the dog the star of the show."
And with those words, Scooby Doo was created with the other characters
supporting him.
The new show was
more comical than mysterious. Don Messick became the voice of Scooby Doo,
Casey Kasem became the voice of Shaggy, Frank Welker became the voice of
Fred, Nicole Jaffe became the voice of Velma, and Heather North was the
voice of Daphne.
There were other voices that supported the main crew. One such voice was that of David Coulier, who played Uncle Joey in Full House. At the age of eighteen, David Coulier made a voice tape and sent it to Hanna Barbera. A few days later, Hanna Barbera called him and said "we have work for you on Scooby Doo."
The original Scooby Doo series enjoyed wide popularity from the time of it's premiere in September of 1969. By 1972, CBS decided that it was time for a change in the format of the show. The Scooby Doo movies were created, which incorporated the voices of such guest stars as Phyllis Diller, Jonathan Winters, Don Knotts, Laurel and Hardy, and many others.
After seven years with CBS, Scooby moved to ABC (in 1976) to start the Scooby Doo/Dynomutt Hour, which saw the rise of the two canine characters Scooby-Dum and Scooby-Dee. The following year saw the first two-hour Saturday morning cartoon show in network history, the highly successful Scooby's All-Star-Laff-a-Lympics. In 1978, more episodes of Scooby Doo were added to a smaller version of Laff-a-Lympics.
1979 proved to be a very successful year for Scooby Doo. Scooby's first television special, Scooby Goes to Hollywood, was created. Also in 1979, Scrappy Doo, Scooby's nephew, was introduced.
The eighties showed various combinations of Scooby Doo and his friends that continued to entertain children and adults of all ages. Why is Scooby Doo so popular? Don Messicks summed it up well when he said "I've loved Scooby from the inception, and so has everyone else. I think it's because he embraces a lot of human foibles. He's not the perfect dog. In fact, you might say he's a coward. Yet with everything he does, he seems to land on his four feet. He comes out of every situation unscathed. I think the audience - kids and more mature people as well - can identify with Scooby's character and a lot of his imperfections."