KCAL Pulls ‘Dick Tracy’ Cartoon Off Air : Stereotypes: TV station’s decision comes after some Asians and Latinos found 2 characters offensive.

KCAL Channel 9 decided Friday to discontinue its revival of the old “Dick Tracy” cartoon series because two ethnic characters might be offensive to some viewers.

The station’s announcement that it would pull the cartoon from its scheduled weekday time slot at 8 a.m., replacing it as of Monday with “Underdog” cartoons, came one day after The Times reported that some Asian and Latino groups were upset with the series, which was made in 1961 and whose Asian and Latino characters conform to ethnic stereotypes.

“It’s not our intention to offend anybody and that’s why this decision was made,” said KCAL program director Matt Cooperstein. The station had considered editing the Latino and Asian characters out of the show, but decided to discontinue it altogether, he said.

“If we had altered the show, it would not have been the same show,” Cooperstein said.

KCAL, which is owned by Walt Disney Co., had scheduled a 13-week run of the “Dick Tracy” cartoons to coincide with the release last month of the parent company’s “Dick Tracy” movie. The cartoon series ran four weeks.

“It should have been obvious from the very beginning that the show was offensive,” said Raul Ruiz, a professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge, who had spoken out against the series. “But I am certainly glad that this particular series of cartoons--which are outdated at best and stereotypical at worst--are not going to be run again.”

The characters that had elicited objections were two detectives who aided Tracy: Jo Jitsu, who has big buck teeth, wears glasses and mispronounces the letter “r,” and Go Go Gomez, who wears a sombrero and takes frequent naps in a hammock.

In a prepared statement, KCAL said that the series had been reviewed before it was aired, and officials had felt that while Gomez and Jitsu “had stereotypical names and used stereotypical phrases,” these drawbacks were, on balance, “acceptable because these characters were positive--they solved crimes rather than perpetrating (sic) them.”

A further review following publication of The Times’ article led to the decision that “the program could be offensive to some of the station’s viewers,” the statement said.