Ackchually you need to go back much further - It really started its decline in the 60s as the animators all unionized and drove up the costs of animation in the US leading to fewer animators to cut costs and simplified drawing techniques/styles to compensate, especially for TV animation. Disney kept it afloat with movies but even those saw a decline in quality (EG compare Cinderella to Jungle Book to Robin Hood.) until the resurgence with The Little Mermaid.
During the late 70s and 80s animation studios got around the labor costs by outsourcing the animation to the asian markets which is why you see a 'boost' in quality around this time but these costs also increased and, in the 90s, animation shifted back to domestic production which is how you end up with the CalArts stuff.
Even before that: in the 1950s when animation moved from theaters to the small screens of television, animators were advised to simplify everything and cut out details because audiences simply could not see them. Also, a lot of shows were produced on the cheap by small studios with a handful of artists who weren't necessarily that good. So Western animation on TV started out bad and stayed that way until the outsourced Japanese animation came back in the 1980s.
Ackchually you need to go back much further - It really started its decline in the 60s as the animators all unionized and drove up the costs of animation in the US leading to fewer animators to cut costs and simplified drawing techniques/styles to compensate, especially for TV animation. Disney kept it afloat with movies but even those saw a decline in quality (EG compare Cinderella to Jungle Book to Robin Hood.) until the resurgence with The Little Mermaid. During the late 70s and 80s animation studios got around the labor costs by outsourcing the animation to the asian markets which is why you see a 'boost' in quality around this time but these costs also increased and, in the 90s, animation shifted back to domestic production which is how you end up with the CalArts stuff.
Even before that: in the 1950s when animation moved from theaters to the small screens of television, animators were advised to simplify everything and cut out details because audiences simply could not see them. Also, a lot of shows were produced on the cheap by small studios with a handful of artists who weren't necessarily that good. So Western animation on TV started out bad and stayed that way until the outsourced Japanese animation came back in the 1980s.
That's certainly why I got into anime in the mid-'90s. It looked NOTHING like any American cartoon I'd ever seen.