since the mid-'50s hanna barbera has produced more than 2,500 hours of kids' tv.ors, they realized there was money to doing television as long as they could keep losts low enough to ensure a profit. the first was rough and ready. >> the aesthetic values were missing. it just didn't have the quality that let's say the animation of tom and jerry had, but we were able to reduce the costs let's say of a six minute cartoon from about 30 or $40,000 for a tom and jerry down to 3 or $4,000 for the same amount of time. it was a dramatic reduction in cost. >> rough and ready became quite popular eventually running for seven years on saturday mornings on nbc, but their next project was the one that led to their dominance of kids' tv. the huckleberry hound show was a prepackaged half hour program sponsored by kellogg's that was first syndicated to local stations in 1958. containing three cartoons, huckleberry hound, pixie and dixie and yogi bear, the show ran once a week in most markets monday at 6:30 p.m. it was an immediate hit and within a few months they began to spin off