The 13 “Deaths” of Cartoon Network (Editorial)

[wonderfly]

From the front page of AnimeSuperhero.com:

"The 13 “Deaths” of Cartoon Network (Editorial)"​

"With the recent merger of Cartoon Network and WB studios, and with Adult Swim now coming on at 5pm Eastern Time Monday through Friday, people are once again pronouncing the “death” of Cartoon Network. But the thing is, Cartoon Network has been around long enough, it has experienced many “deaths”.

It was former Cartoon Network President Stuart Snyder that himself once said that Cartoon Network needs to refresh itself “every 5 years” in order to attract a new wave of kids. But if you’re refreshing the identity of the channel every 3 or 5 or 7 years, you’re going to have a set of “kids” who feel the network has changed and is no longer for them. For them to feel that Cartoon Network had “died”.

What I’m advocating for here is that we keep some perspective, to see where things have been before now. Cartoon Network might eventually come back revitalized, stronger than ever. But it’s also going to change again (and shed more “old school” fans). So with having said that, here’s the 13 times that Cartoon Network “died” (the end of one era, and the start of another):"

Read the full article here.

 

[PicardMan]

The thing is that this situation with Cartoon Network is way different from previous eras because it's not just Cartoon Network that is "dying," it is cable as a whole. I figured the Cartoon Wars would change from being Cartoon Network vs Nickelodeon vs Disney Channel to Max vs Paramount Plus vs Disney Plus. Max seems like they hate any cartoon outside the adult comedy genre, as Infinity Train's purging is still fresh in people's minds. Then again, Disney Channel is still making cartoons people watch in streaming era, but Disney Plus's synergy with the cable channel is better than Cartoon Network and Max. Getting out of this funk will be a real uphill battle.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

The thing is that this situation with Cartoon Network is way different from previous eras because it's not just Cartoon Network that is "dying," it is cable as a whole. I figured the Cartoon Wars would change from being Cartoon Network vs Nickelodeon vs Disney Channel to Max vs Paramount Plus vs Disney Plus. Max seems like they hate any cartoon outside the adult comedy genre, as Infinity Train's purging is still fresh in people's minds. Then again, Disney Channel is still making cartoons people watch in streaming era, but Disney Plus's synergy with the cable channel is better than Cartoon Network and Max. Getting out of this funk will be a real uphill battle.

The problem, I think, that streaming will face, and is likely facing it already, is that there are too many streaming services. There needs to be fewer of them, and having the big studio-owned ones (except Disney+) shut down should be the way to go.

 

[Checkerboard]

Id argue it started sooner than 2003 (2000 Boomerang launch) and also happened in 2004 with City.

As for branding, I'd argue Disney was most consistent over the years. Even Nick did it better than CN probably.

 

[Daikun]

I can think of an earlier "death" than 2003...

2001, shortly after Time Warner merged with AOL. The ill-fated merger resulted in a massive debt sink, causing a management restructuring that resulted in Ted Turner and Betty Cohen being removed from their positions and began CN's unofficial "merger" with Kids' WB.

 

[JMTV]

I can think of an earlier "death" than 2003...

2001, shortly after Time Warner merged with AOL. The ill-fated merger resulted in a massive debt sink, causing a management restructuring that resulted in Ted Turner and Betty Cohen being removed from their positions and began CN's unofficial "merger" with Kids' WB.

Yup. That’s why Cartoon Network unofficially became Kids WB the cable channel, and Adult Swim’s existence is the final nail in the coffin.

Thanks a lot, AOL and Jamie Kellner…

 

[Goldstar!]

The problem, I think, that streaming will face, and is likely facing it already, is that there are too many streaming services. There needs to be fewer of them, and having the big studio-owned ones (except Disney+) shut down should be the way to go.

My prediction: some smaller streaming services will indeed shut down, while others will either get bundled or merge with the bigger ones. Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+ and Max will stay, but expect to see more bundled services in the near future.

 

[Silverstar]

What I’m advocating for here is that we keep some perspective, to see where things have been before now. Cartoon Network might eventually come back revitalized, stronger than ever. But it’s also going to change again (and shed more “old school” fans). So with having said that, here’s the 13 times that Cartoon Network “died” (the end of one era, and the start of another):"

The one positive I can take from Cartoon Network being where it is now is that from here things can only get better.

Max seems like they hate any cartoon outside the adult comedy genre, as Infinity Train's purging is still fresh in people's minds. Then again, Disney Channel is still making cartoons people watch in streaming era, but Disney Plus's synergy with the cable channel is better than Cartoon Network and Max. Getting out of this funk will be a real uphill battle.

I wish I had a counterpoint to offer here, but I don't. Everything @PicardMan said here is 100% correct.

 

[Goldstar!]

What annoys me the most about all this is that the current people in charge of Warner Discovery care about Adult Swim and only Adult Swim. Anything that's under the Cartoon Network label they toss aside like a used tissue. Disney at least has a plan; they want Disney Plus to be the one-stop place to go for all things Disney. WB could be doing the same thing for Max, but they don't because again, the only cartoons that WB cares about are Rick and Morty, Harley Quinn and anything else that's under the Adult Swim label (except for Scooby Doo).

I don't particularly want to see Looney Tunes, the MGM and Hanna-Barbera libraries and the Cartoon--Cartoons get sold off to another company, but I do want to see these IPs in the hands of someone who actually gives a crap about them.

Things being the way that they are now, with cable dying a slow death and streaming being in a constant state of flux, I don't know what the future of Cartoon Network is, or even if CN has a future. We'll just have to see what the entertainment industry looks like in the next 3 to 5 years.

 

[Dr.Pepper]

I’d argue that death #1 actually happened in May 2003 when Cartoon Cartoon Fridays bit the dust and was replaced by the cheap looking Summer Fridays. At least Fridays with Tommy and Nzinga looked like it had effort put into it (and I’m not going to lie, I loved the opening with the characters at CN studios).

I could tell CCF was on its last legs in the summer of 2002 when they didn’t ad any new hosts, they didn’t do a big pick weekend, had a ton of random no host nights, threw out CCF all together for Scooby Doo movies all that October, added Samurai Jack and What’s New Scooby Doo to the schedule, and the hype for Kids Next Door seemed kind of half baked even though I knew the channel as a whole had faith in it. I wish they could have given older hosts like Bubbles and Johnny Bravo revamped nights like the did for Eustace and Dexter, because they were dated because they originally had new dialogue recored every time they hosted. At the bare minimum they could have reused Edd’s night from the time Sheep in the Big City premiered and edit out all the specific dialogue. I saw a fan edit of this and it totally worked.

Thank you for allowing me to vent on the subject.

 

[Silverstar]

I’d argue that death #1 actually happened in May 2003 when Cartoon Cartoon Fridays bit the dust and was replaced by the cheap looking Summer Fridays. At least Fridays with Tommy and Nzinga looked like it had effort put into it (and I’m not going to lie, I loved the opening with the characters at CN studios).

I'm going to say it: I kind of liked Fridays. The wraparounds weren't animated but it was still kind of fun, with the Big Guy Shimmies, Whiskers the Cat Who Can Name Fruits, etc. It reminded me of Nick's Weinerville but with a bigger budget. Plus I loved the Fridays intro.

If it's true that CN has had many "deaths" and could have more, then I actually want this iteration of CN to "die" so we can fast forward to what comes after it.

 

[JMTV]

I don't particularly want to see Looney Tunes, the MGM and Hanna-Barbera libraries and the Cartoon--Cartoons get sold off to another company, but I do want to see these IPs in the hands of someone who actually gives a crap about them.

Don't worry. MeTV is the best place for you!

I’d argue that death #1 actually happened in May 2003 when Cartoon Cartoon Fridays bit the dust and was replaced by the cheap looking Summer Fridays. At least Fridays with Tommy and Nzinga looked like it had effort put into it (and I’m not going to lie, I loved the opening with the characters at CN studios).

I could tell CCF was on its last legs in the summer of 2002 when they didn’t ad any new hosts, they didn’t do a big pick weekend, had a ton of random no host nights, threw out CCF all together for Scooby Doo movies all that October, added Samurai Jack and What’s New Scooby Doo to the schedule, and the hype for Kids Next Door seemed kind of half baked even though I knew the channel as a whole had faith in it. I wish they could have given older hosts like Bubbles and Johnny Bravo revamped nights like the did for Eustace and Dexter, because they were dated because they originally had new dialogue recored every time they hosted. At the bare minimum they could have reused Edd’s night from the time Sheep in the Big City premiered and edit out all the specific dialogue. I saw a fan edit of this and it totally worked.

Thank you for allowing me to vent on the subject.

That's fair. I can understand that CCF was on its last legs in late 2002 where they didn't have any new hosts. I mean, they easily add KND onto their roster to shake things up. Or heck, even Billy and Mandy. Sadly, they didn't, and I'm bitter about it because that would've been so cool.

I guess maybe because of management shifts going on at CN at the time and wanted to geared towards kids. Plus, with animation being expensive, they decided to make something cheaper to replace CCF. To be fair, CN Fridays did put a lot of effort into it.

I'm going to say it: I kind of liked Fridays. The wraparounds weren't animated but it was still kind of fun, with the Big Guy Shimmies, Whiskers the Cat Who Can Name Fruits, etc. It reminded me of Nick's Weinerville but with a bigger budget. Plus I loved the Fridays intro.

Yeah, I love Fridays!

Very great block!

Fun fact: Andy Merrill, the voice of Brak, did worked on CCF/Fridays while he was on Adult Swim. I think he voiced either Vernon or Long Haul, maybe.

 

[Darklordavaitor]

While things were much less dire then, one of my first signs that Cartoon Network was changing, possibly for the worse, was when basically every classic aside from Tom and Jerry were purged from the channel. A few years earlier, CN was proudly the "exclusive" (in quotations because of Boomerang) home of all (non-problematic) Looney Tunes shorts, but by 04, they were taken off the channel and were only available on Boomerang and the yearly Golden Collection releases. Even Scooby-Doo's classic material, itself just as vital to the Powerhouse era as Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls, was mostly removed at this time, with the channel primarily focusing on his recent movies and What's New instead.

I understand that Cartoon Network had enough originals to anchor the channel at this point, and the hierarchy was changing as Powerhouse was winding down to City era- Dexter and Powerpuff were being phased out of their top positions in lieu of Ed, Edd n' Eddy and Kids Next Door- but part of the channel's appeal was that their timeless classics library were just as vital to the lineup as the new material. No, CN wasn't just the Hanna-Barbera dumping ground anymore, and it was arguably healthier the moment that it stopped being that first and foremost, but the classics were always a part of the channel's DNA and I still think that there should always be room for at least the A-listers- Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Scooby, maybe even Flintstones and Jetsons. It started feeling just a little bit emptier when those were phased out.

The problem, I think, that streaming will face, and is likely facing it already, is that there are too many streaming services. There needs to be fewer of them, and having the big studio-owned ones (except Disney+) shut down should be the way to go.

Dear Mr. Internet, there are too many streaming services nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot.

 

[Pooky]

^I was going to say there are still probably some OG purists still out there somewhere (probably in some of the MeTV Toons news articles truth be told) who think it "died" as soon as the first "What a Cartoon" premiered. I think people under a certain age, or who never read about such things on ye dial up internet, or perhaps have just forgotten do not realise this but there really were people out there who really liked Cartoon Network when it was a kind of retirement home for old cartoons and didn't care for when it branched out. I won't link to it because some of the comments are, er, not our kind of thing, but I've got an archived page from the old jumptheshark.com (remember that?) open now, and the top vote on the page for Cartoon Network was when they started to "roll their own".

I wouldn't agree with that, but I do think there is something to be said for the network genuinely losing something when it retroactively decided 1995/96 was a kind of "year zero". If Cartoon Network is dead, maybe the launch of Boomerang was that first, initially innocuous, cough.

 

[Goldstar!]

I think people under a certain age, or who never read about such things on ye dial up internet, or perhaps have just forgotten do not realise this but there really were people out there who really liked Cartoon Network when it was a kind of retirement home for old cartoons and didn't care for when it branched out.

Thar's true. I can attest to that. I was a member of the Big Cartoons Forum on The Big Cartoon Database (bcdb.com) when the Cartoon-Cartoons started to get hot, and we began seeing more and more of them on Cartoon Network. There were some of the people on the forum at the time who absolutely hated it. These same folks were elated when Boomerang was launched in 2000 because that was a channel where they could watch old-school CN without having to see any of that "new crap".

 

[Darklordavaitor]

^I was going to say there are still probably some OG purists still out there somewhere (probably in some of the MeTV Toons news articles truth be told) who think it "died" as soon as the first "What a Cartoon" premiered. I think people under a certain age, or who never read about such things on ye dial up internet, or perhaps have just forgotten do not realise this but there really were people out there who really liked Cartoon Network when it was a kind of retirement home for old cartoons and didn't care for when it branched out. I won't link to it because some of the comments are, er, not our kind of thing, but I've got an archived page from the old jumptheshark.com (remember that?) open now, and the top vote on the page for Cartoon Network was when they started to "roll their own".

I wouldn't agree with that, but I do think there is something to be said for the network genuinely losing something when it retroactively decided 1995/96 was a kind of "year zero". If Cartoon Network is dead, maybe the launch of Boomerang was that first, initially innocuous, cough.

Some of those people are definitely around, but as the years go on and people get older and have less time to complain on the internet, you'll start to see views like this less frequently. I recall someone brought up a similar point to how Russell T Davies' original Doctor Who run was disliked by classic Who purists- the people who didn't like his run probably still don't, they just don't post about it all the time anymore, especially compared to those who did enjoy it.

And I can see why someone would prefer Cartoon Network when it was almost exclusively a repeat channel. That's probably more their generation, and CN was especially good at marketing these shows back in the day. One line I love from the original Boomerang block's ads is "you know you miss them, and your kids don't know what they're missing". While the Cartoon Cartoons did a good job of winning adult fans over due to their sheer entertainment value, nothing is for everyone and even a show as clever as Dexter's Lab can still seem like a nuisance compared to something you built a habit around, like your childhood favorites airing at a specific time.

As for myself, the earliest days of Cartoon Network isn't personally my favorite- I have a higher tolerance for Hanna-Barbera's shows than most, but I definitely preferred when the Cartoon Cartoons started- although there was a charm to those earliest days that was its own. And love it or hate it, the change from Checkerboard to Powerhouse, when the originals started taking more and more space, was indeed a notable change.

 

[Mejo]

Digging around on alt.tv.cartoon-network, I found that people were already missing the old Cartoon Network in 1999!

I miss the old Cartoon Network....

groups.google.com

And even before that, people were already complaining about Cartoon Network declining in 1996, like Pooky said.

(no subject)

groups.google.com

 

[Checkerboard]

^I was going to say there are still probably some OG purists still out there somewhere (probably in some of the MeTV Toons news articles truth be told) who think it "died" as soon as the first "What a Cartoon" premiered. I think people under a certain age, or who never read about such things on ye dial up internet, or perhaps have just forgotten do not realise this but there really were people out there who really liked Cartoon Network when it was a kind of retirement home for old cartoons and didn't care for when it branched out. I won't link to it because some of the comments are, er, not our kind of thing, but I've got an archived page from the old jumptheshark.com (remember that?) open now, and the top vote on the page for Cartoon Network was when they started to "roll their own".

I wouldn't agree with that, but I do think there is something to be said for the network genuinely losing something when it retroactively decided 1995/96 was a kind of "year zero". If Cartoon Network is dead, maybe the launch of Boomerang was that first, initially innocuous, cough.

Im one of them, i pointed it indirectly with boomerang's launch a few posts above. Not that I was too bothered, but I was upset. Slightly in 1997, then in 2000 and then in 2004 when the "old trash" was fully taken out. So yes, death #1 was in 1997 imo. 1995 was still too early to tell.

 

[Leviathan]

I can think of an earlier "death" than 2003...

2001, shortly after Time Warner merged with AOL. The ill-fated merger resulted in a massive debt sink, causing a management restructuring that resulted in Ted Turner and Betty Cohen being removed from their positions and began CN's unofficial "merger" with Kids' WB.

This

Betty Cohen's departure is not on the list but should be, because her leaving was the beginning of the end.

All of CN's subsequent problems can be traced back to one thing: execs trying to force it to be a more conventional kids channel like Disney Channel or Nickelodeon. And her leaving was the beginning of that.

The problem, I think, that streaming will face, and is likely facing it already, is that there are too many streaming services. There needs to be fewer of them, and having the big studio-owned ones (except Disney+) shut down should be the way to go.

I'd argue the opposite. Animation needs its own special dedicated streaming service, because it's not going to get a fair shake from any of the establish behemoths.

The industry STILL hasn't recovered from Netflix starting its own animation studio only to shut it down a week later.

 

[Mejo]

^I was going to say there are still probably some OG purists still out there somewhere (probably in some of the MeTV Toons news articles truth be told) who think it "died" as soon as the first "What a Cartoon" premiered. I think people under a certain age, or who never read about such things on ye dial up internet, or perhaps have just forgotten do not realise this but there really were people out there who really liked Cartoon Network when it was a kind of retirement home for old cartoons and didn't care for when it branched out. I won't link to it because some of the comments are, er, not our kind of thing, but I've got an archived page from the old jumptheshark.com (remember that?) open now, and the top vote on the page for Cartoon Network was when they started to "roll their own".

I wouldn't agree with that, but I do think there is something to be said for the network genuinely losing something when it retroactively decided 1995/96 was a kind of "year zero". If Cartoon Network is dead, maybe the launch of Boomerang was that first, initially innocuous, cough.

I think the first major example of how Cartoon Network was favoring the Cartoon Cartoons over their old cartoons was in 1999. In that year, they debuted a segment called Cartoon Cartoon of the Day, which showcased one random episode of a Cartoon Cartoon. However, rather than put this segment as filler if a show or a movie ran too short, they instead usually preempted the first cartoon slot on one of their Golden Age cartoon package shows, thus causing the actual package show to run shorter than usual (to give an example, on October 11, 1999, the 9:00pm slot consisted of the Cow and Chicken episode Who is Supercow? (Cow and Chicken also was the previous show on so 4 episodes of Cow and Chicken technically aired back to back) followed by at 9:07 with a shortened Bugs and Daffy episode containing a redrawn version of Daffy's Southern Exposure and Ready.. Set.. Zoom). So for a while, the Cartoon Cartoons actually invaded the classic toons!

(On a related note, a much better version of Cartoon Cartoon of the Day was also airing simultaneously with it. Titled Toon Extra, this segment not only aired both Cartoon Cartoons and Golden Age cartoons, but also aired usually as filler if a show or a movie ran too short, just like how I said Cartoon Cartoon of the Day should have been slotted!)