But I'll get to that problem later. I know everyone has there own opinions about Cartoon Network, so I think I'll use this opportunity to share what we can all agree to -- I want to go back and delve in behind the rise of what I call the third rise of TV cartoons in the mid-90s with Cartoon Network, and by proxy the other channels.
And a little tidbit, most of this comes from what people have put on Wikipedia, but I've also done a bit of side research for some of the finer details.
And a little tidbit, most of this comes from what people have put on Wikipedia, but I've also done a bit of side research for some of the finer details.
1. The First Televised Toons
The rise of television was the final nail in the coffin that heralded the end of the Golden Age of American cinema. At least as it would stand with matinee showings. One of the fastest outputs of the movie studios before then were cartoon shorts like Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry as well as serials like Flash Gordon, both meant to keep kids in the theaters through matinees.
When television started in the '50s and '60s, the first cartoons that showed were those theatrical cartoons re-shown for home audiences. This allowed the FCC to have its first filter against the more profane artifacts of the times. However, this collection was clearly finite.
As a result, animation giants William Hanna and Joseph Barbera led the way for producing new cartoons for TV with their new Hanna-Barbera studio. They had pioneered many techniques that made animation much cheaper, allowing them to produce a high output of cartoons throughout the '60s.
During the '70s, there was a slow rise of competition from such studios as Filmation, DePatie-Freleng, Ruby-Spears, and Rankin/Bass. However, there was a plateau and slow dip of animation as every form of American media shifted to a new mindset that was hard to adjust to.
Finally, there came a new rise of cartoons in the '80s. However, Hanna-Barbera's grip started to slip as competition from other studios became more intense and their productions became more financially difficult. More of their productions were outsourced to East Asia, as many industries soon became, and some of their employees even left to help work on new productions with the newly reborn Warner Bros. Animation in 1989. In addition, the '80s saw the rise of MTV, anime, and such family channels as Nickelodeon and Disney Channel that aired their own cartoons.
2. A New Corporate Game
Ted Turner started out in Atlanta with local UHF station WTCG in the '70s, which he later made into the revolutionary WTBS superstation, the first cable network. He then gained notoriety in the '80s with CNN, and in the process bought up a multitude of properties. This included much of the pre-May 1986 MGM library, the RKO Radio Pictures and a.a.p. libraries, and some early United Artists materials.
Back in the day, film properties and ownership of trademarks were dictated through the ownership of the original film tapes, and during the multitude of corporate switch-ups between the '60s and '80s the material in these libraries were switched up too many times to count. Turner's huge library was first made to broadcast on TNT in 1988, but there was little use for the expansive cartoon lineup acquired, which can be explored in detail under Wikipedia.
Finally, the 1991 purchase of Hanna-Barbera, whose film library spanned decades, sparked the need to create a cable network for this multitude of cartoons. Thus Turner created Cartoon Network, which first aired on October 1, 1992 with the Bugs Bunny short Rhapsody Rabbit.
However, Cartoon Network was not the first channel to form itself around cartoons. Created in the late '70s as Pinwheel, Nickelodeon introduced a hot lineup of cartoons including Doug, Ren & Stimpy, and Rugrats in 1991. On the other hand, cartoons played a smaller role in The Disney Channel and Family Channel around that time as well. Yet none of these channels had yet attempted to rely exclusively on cartoons. Turner used this tried a gamble to air cartoons 24/7, something that helped CNN rise in the '80s against local news programs. In addition, Cartoon Network was first packaged with TNT and WTBS, which helped it gain high ratings early on.
3. Baby's First Steps
While Cartoon Network started off with 8,500 hours worth of material to work with, this was still a finite resource that Turner had to eventually deal with. Luckily, Hanna-Barbera was still up and running. The first original show on Cartoon Network was The Moxy Show. It was created by Scott Fellows, previously a writer on Doug and now known for creating Ned's Declassified and Johnny Test. It was a collaboration with Hanna-Barbera and Colossal Pictures (now known as Wildbrain), and consisted of shorts (made in a mix of 2D, live action, and early CGI) that are sandwiched between more classic cartoons. Despite it being one of the only CN series to date that relied on a hybrid of those animation styles, The Moxy Show was cancelled in 2000 and all mentions of it were subsequently removed on official sources.
Cartoon Network's next original show would be Space Ghost Coast to Coast in 1994, a parody talk show starring the '60s Hanna-Barbera character Space Ghost. Its creator Mike Lazzo would co-found Ghost Planet Industries (now Williams Street after the studio's address) the next year to fuel its production through to its run on Adult Swim later in the decade. This show was the first attempt to create a more edgy show meant to cater to a broader audience.
4. What a Cartoon!
By the time Fred Seibert became president of Hanna-Barbera in 1992, he had led the rise of MTV and overhauled Nickelodeon with such concepts as Nick at Nite and Nicktoons. He wanted HB to go back to the Golden Age of animation in the mid 20th century for inspiration, helping them produce a multitude of new shorts. For Cartoon Network, Fred pitched them something risky -- produce 48 shorts that can act as pilots to potential series for Cartoon Network to air. It would cost twice as much as the production of a normal series, but the hit-or-miss opportunity for new programming was too much for Turner to pass up.
The word quickly spread that Cartoon Network was asking for hot, young animators to get their cartoon ideas on TV, and over 5,000 pitches from across the world came in to try and catch one of the 48 slots. All the while, Seibert pondered what he had learned from such legends as William Hanna, Joseph Barbera, John Kricfalusi (creator of Ren & Stimpy), and Friz Freleng.
The show, first called World Premiere Toons and later What-a-Cartoon!, started off the careers of such animators as Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, Rob Renzetti, Butch Hartman, John Dilworth, and Seth MacFarlane. And it even offered such veterans as Jerry Eisenberg and Ralph Bakshi get another chance.
While there were many one-time failures scattered among the 48, some of the shorts eventually became the flagship shows Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Cow and Chicken. Later shorts made after the 48 also started off shows like Codename: Kids Next Door, and Seth MacFarlane's short Larry and Steve eventually became Fox's Family Guy.
In late 1996, Seibert left Hanna-Barbera to form Frederator Studios and run the opposing Oh Yeah! Cartoons on Nickelodeon with colleagues Butch Hartman and Rob Renzetti, which sparked Fairly OddParents, ChalkZone, and My Life as a Teenage Robot. Later attempts of this concept include 2006's Random! Cartoons on Nicktoons and Cartoon Network's failed Cartoonstitute in 2008.
5. Cartoon Universe
By 1998, What-a-Cartoon! made way for the spin-off Cartoon Cartoons, which first consisted of series from the successful shorts. Some spin-offs like Mike, Lu & Og and Courage the Cowardly Dog came to be made by outside studios. In addition, there were new series like Sheep in the Big City and Ed, Edd n Eddy that came out around the turn of the '00s, and Cartoon Network occasionally made polls like the Big Pick which sparked Grim & Evil (predecessor to The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy).
Around the same time, programming blocks became much more memorable. Cartoon Cartoon Fridays was created, with a rotation of cartoon hosts announcing the latest episodes, and even offering some humor every now and then. In addition, the Toonami block, run by Williams Street, was reinvigorated to include a new android host called TOM. Three years earlier, Toonami was launched, originally hosted by Moltar from Space Ghost, and ran action shows and anime. The block would go through a multitude of revamps and time slot shifts before finally ending on September 20, 2008.
6. A New Cartoon Network
In 1996, Turner merged with Time Warner. This opened up Cartoon Network to a multitude of possibilities. Turner only had some of the Golden Age Warner Bros. shorts through the a.a.p. library, which was now expanded to include everything that Warner Bros. retained. In addition, Cartoon Network had access to content from Warner Bros. Animation that had previously been aired on Kids' WB, and new shows like Justice League could then be used. And in 2001, Adult Swim was launched, also through Williams Street, who produced much of the original content that would air along with others.
There were some big changes to the network itself too. In 2003, the Cartoon Cartoons concept was dropped in favor of the small-time Cartoon Cartoon Show airing 2 or 3 shorts per half-hour run. On the morning of June 14, 2004, audiences everywhere were shocked when Cartoon Network revealed a new revamped image of itself. 2D characters from their shows appeared in a 3D world, and a new logo. It kinda hearkened back to the premise of 2003's revamped live-action Fridays, but there was a cost to much of it.
Many of the classic shows were slowly coming to an end, instead ending up on sister channel Boomerang, and new shows were given a chance to come to the forefront instead. VP Sam Register in particular helped bring in Puffy AmiYumi and their co-producer Andy Sturmer to work on Teen Titans, which allowed Puffy to get their own cartoon series in 2004 and for Sturmer to become the score composer for the Ben 10 franchise starting in 2005.
7. A Turn for the Weirdest
In November 2006, a man nicknamed VJ Aiwaz asked Boston artist Peter Berdovsky to work on a promotional project. The subject: guerrilla marketing for the upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters. For the next few months, they would work together with a number of associates under terms of secrecy.
On a Boston morning of January 31, 2007, a random passerby found something on a column supporting part of Interstate 93. It was hard to tell what it was, but a highway officer was told about it. An hour later, Boston's bomb squad closed off the interstate to identify what it was. The makeup of the device was something like an improvised bomb, so they destroyed it to be sure. Not long after, Boston residents started to find these devices all over town. Little did they know that these devices were simply homebrew LED signs meant to look like the Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
After Cartoon Network was notified of the incident, Turner immediately released an apology statement about the publicity stunt turned bomb scare. They admitted that these devices had been in place weeks beforehand in major cities across America. In the aftermath, Turner paid $2 million in damages, and longtime Cartoon Network president Jim Samples stepped down to be replaced by Stuart Snyder in February.
Starting at the end of that year, Cartoon Network began airing in HD, and added a multitude of new shows imported from Canadian network Teletoon. They've added plenty of shows, and later on started their CN Real lineup, which ultimately solidified the ruin of the original goal for Cartoon Network to be 100% animated.
Well, I thought I'd stop there since that's just about the point I stopped earnestly watching Cartoon Network. Most of the shows I liked were gone by that point, and few of the newer shows had enough to bring me back. I hear that The Looney Tunes Show, Regular Show, and Adventure Time are pretty good, but I've been long gone to watch other genres of shows. I guess I can say I've been cursed with early maturity.
Nonetheless, I'm going to call it a day. I'll be sure to make Retrospectives on popular Christmas holiday stuff over the next couple weeks. So 'til then, see you later!
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