Television has been a major entertainment medium since its inception in the early 1900s, especially with its' first real use in the 1920s. Initial TV broadcasts were live events, but starting in the 1930s, famous studios like Disney and 20th Century Fox began creating cartoon programs (Looney Tunes, Mickey Mouse, etc.) and airing them for millions of American children throughout the later years of the Great Depression. Beginning in the late post-war '40s, the first live-action series – like Gunsmoke and California, '49 – began airing for audiences across the nation and television quickly grew to become the industry as we know it today.