This thesis is a systematic study of significant American television animation programs produced between 1948 and 1980, with special mention given to selected works produced by three influential studios: Hanna-Barbera, Jay Ward and Filmation. It considers how outside forces such as network television censorship, grassroots political activism, and other social and political forces served to limit how the genre developed, and the extent to which the producers chose to test the limits to get their points across. It provides a discussion of masculine images in television animation of the 1950s and 1960s, and of the reactions of television animation producers to outside concerns regarding "violence" in children's programming, and the threat of censorship related to this, in the 1970s. My thesis demonstrates that television animation producers, as a result of the need to remain actively involved in production, were forced to change and adapt with the times around them.