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Scooby Doo first aired on CBS and can be traced back to Fred Silverman in 1969 who was the head of
Daytime Programming for CBS. Silverman was looking for a show that would lead the network away
from the superhero cycle and take them into an area of comedy and adventure. The combination of
Carleton E. Morse's 1940's popular radio program I Love a Mystery, in which three detectives roamed
the world solving crimes and mysteries, and the 1959-1963 television sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie
Gillis, about a scatterbrained teenager and his friends, was the look Silverman was after.

Silverman's quest was brought before Hanna-Barbera who assigned writers Ken Spears and Joe Rugby
to create the characters, plots, and many of the story lines. The show actually started out revolving
around four teenage detectives who traveled the country in a van, called the Mystery Machine, solving
mysteries in dangerous situations. A Great Dane accompanied the foursome but was not a promient
character. The show was first known as Mysteries Five and later changed to Who's Scared? The show
was then presented to the top CBS management and president Frank Stanton as a new Saturday morning
cartoon for the fall of 1969.

There was one problem: the artwork was very frightening which led Stanton to reject the show.
Silverman immediately flew back to Los Angeles that night. While listening to the earphones on the
flight back, Silverman was relaxing to Frank Sinatra singing Strangers in the Night. 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 now more comical then mysterious. Don Messick became Scooby Doo with his
trademark laugh and scratchy voice, Top-Forty DJ Casey Kasem became Shaggy who was always in a
constant state of panic and hunger which also served as Scooby's partner, Frank Welker became blond
Freddy, Nicole Jaffe became brainy and bespectacled Velma, and the trouble-prone, sexy, Daphne was
the voice of Heather North. There were other voices that supported the main crew. One worth
mentioning is David Coulier who is the star of America's Funniest People and Full House (not to be
confused with Bob Saget). The teenage Coulier made a voice tape that told a story and mailed it to
Hanna-Barbera on a Friday. The next Monday Hanna-Barbera called Coulier and said "We have work
for you on Scooby-Doo." Coulier was only 18 years old!

The original Scooby Doo series enjoyed wide popularity from the time of its premiere in September of
1969. By 1972 CBS decided that a change in the format should arrive which gave birth to the Scooby
Doo movies incorporating the voices of such guest stars as Phyllis Diller, Tim Conway, Jonathan
Winters, Don Knotts, the Addams family, and Laurel and Hardy. After seven years with CBS, Scooby
moved to ABC to start the Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour which saw the rise of the two canine characters
Scooby-Dum and Scooby-Dear. The following year saw the first two-hour Saturday morning cartoon
show in the 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 which was renamed to
Scooby's All-Stars. 1979 was the year of Scooby's first television special, Scooby goes to Hollywood
which combined slapstick and parody with a sprinkling of music. 1979 was also the year Scrappy-Doo
was introduced (and thats all I will say about that pain in the...I mean character).

The eighties showed various combinations of Scooby and his friends that continued to entertain children
and adults of all ages. Shows such as The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo and A Pup Named Scooby
Doo were good, but were never as big as Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Why is Scooby-Doo so
popular? Don Messick (the voice of Scooby) sums it up real well....."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."

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