Editing United Productions of America (section)

=== Turning to television ===
In 1955, Steve Bosustow secured a CBS contract for UPA to produce a television series (''The Boing-Boing Show'' aka ''The Gerald McBoing Boing Show''),<ref>Adam Abraham, ''When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA'' (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012), 178.</ref> which premiered in December 1956. Supervised by Bobe Cannon, this production offered an array of styles and brought then-new talent to the studio, such as [[Ernest Pintoff]], [[Fred Crippen]], [[Jimmy Murakami]], [[Richard Williams (animator)|Richard Williams]], [[George Dunning]], [[Mel Leven]], [[Aurelius Battaglia]], and [[John Whitney (animator)|John Whitney]], among others. However, audiences did not embrace UPA's experiment in television entertainment; as a result, the show vanished from the airwaves in 1958. Further, as the major Hollywood studios began cutting back and shutting down their short film divisions in the late-1950s and early-1960s, UPA was in financial straits, and Steve Bosustow sold the studio to a producer named [[Henry G. Saperstein]]. Saperstein turned UPA's focus to [[television]] to sustain the studio. UPA adapted Mr. Magoo for television and produced another series based on the [[comic strip]] ''[[Dick Tracy]]''. UPA was forced to churn out cartoons at a far greater quantity than the studio had done for theatrical releases or even the CBS television series. Despite this however, quality was languishing, and UPA's reputation as an artistic innovator faded.

UPA's style of [[limited animation]] was adopted by other animation studios, especially by television cartoon studios such as [[Hanna-Barbera Productions]]. However, this procedure was generally implemented as a cost-cutting measure rather than an artistic choice that UPA originally intended. A plethora of low-budget, cheaply-made cartoons over the next twenty years effectively reduced television animation to a commodity, partly popularizing the notion of animation as being made only for children rather than a medium for any age group to enjoy (with the exception of shows like ''[[The Flintstones]]''), and notoriously going against UPA's original goal to expand the boundaries of animation and create a new style for the medium.

One bright moment in the UPA television era came with ''[[Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol]]'' (1962), which inspired the format of Magoo's next television endeavor, the 1964 series ''[[The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo]]''. ''Christmas Carol'' captures the spirit of Charles Dickens's 1843 book and is considered a holiday classic, ranking alongside ''[[A Charlie Brown Christmas]]'' and ''[[How the Grinch Stole Christmas!]]''.<ref name="Hill">{{Cite web
  | last = Hill
  | first = Jim
  | title = Scrooge U: Part VI -- Magoo's a musical miser
  | publisher = JimHillMedia.com
  | date = November 28, 2006
  | url = http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/jim_hill/archive/2006/11/27/christmas-carol-vi.aspx
  | access-date = 2006-12-25}}</ref><ref name="TOTN">{{Cite web
  | last = Conan
  | first = Neil (host)
  | author-link = Neal Conan
  | title = Choose Your Favorite Scrooge
  | work = [[Talk of the Nation]]
  | publisher = [[National Public Radio]]
  | date = 2006-12-25
  | url = https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6673835
  | format = audio
  | access-date = 2007-01-03 }}</ref>

UPA produced only two full-length feature films in their tenure: a 1959 feature starring Mr. Magoo entitled ''[[1001 Arabian Nights (1959 film)|1001 Arabian Nights]]'', directed by ex-Disney animator [[Jack Kinney]]; and ''[[Gay Purr-ee]]'' in 1962, written by [[Chuck Jones]] and his wife Dorothy and directed by a friend of Jones, [[Abe Levitow]].