Scooby-Doo is a long-running cartoon series produced for Saturday morning television from 1969 to the present. The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, was created for Hanna-Barbera Productions by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, CBS executive Fred Silverman, and character designer Iwao Takamoto. The show features a talking dog named Scooby Doo and four teenagers : Fred "Freddie" Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, and Norville "Shaggy" Rogers.
These five characters drive around in the Mystery Machine van, solving mysteries by exposing seemingly otherworldly ghosts and monsters as flesh and blood crooks. Later versions of Scooby-Doo featured different variations on the show's supernatural theme, and include characters such as Scooby's cousin Scooby-Dum and nephew Scrappy-Doo in addition to or instead of some of the original characters.
Scooby-Doo was broadcast on CBS from 1969 to 1976, when it moved to ABC. ABC aired the show until canceling it in 1986, and presented a spin-off, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, from 1988 until 1991, which featured the characters as children. The series was revived for The WB Network's Kids' WB programming block as What's New, Scooby-Doo?, which ran from 2002 until 2006. The most recent Scooby-Doo series, Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!, ran from 2006 to 2008 on The CW network; a new series, Scooby-Doo - Mystery, Inc., will begin airing on the Cartoon Network in 2009.
