Scooby-Doo co-creator Joe Ruby dies at 87

The Hollywood Reporter

Ruby not only co-created Scooby-Doo with Ken Spears, but the creative partners also helped make Saturday morning a must-see destination for children's programming. "Ruby met Ken Spears (who is still alive) when both were sound editors and then staff writers at the cartoon powerhouse Hanna-Barbera, and they created the supernatural kids show Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, which centered around a talking Great Dane and bowed on CBS in September 1969. All but four of the first 25 episodes were written and story-edited by them," explains Mike Barnes. "In the early 1970s, then-CBS president of children's programming Fred Silverman hired Ruby and Spears to supervise the network's Saturday morning cartoon lineup, and they followed the executive to ABC for similar duties in 1975. (Scooby-Doo joined that network's lineup as well.) Two years later, ABC set up Ruby-Spears Productions as a subsidiary of Filmways, and the company launched Saturday morning animated series around such characters as Fangface, Plastic Man, Mister T and Alvin and the Chipmunks." In 1981, Hanna-Barbera's parent company acquired Ruby-Spears. Ruby and Spears also created Dynomutt, Dog Wonder and Jabberjaw while at Hanna-Barbera.