Cartoon Network - The Rise and Fall...And Rise Again

[Music] i am excited to talk about cartoon network because this is something that i started watching over 20 years ago when i was younger i would watch nickelodeon cartoon network disney channel and that was it i am not exaggerating when i say that either the tv in my room actually had this weird setting where you could program it to skip channels when hitting the channel up and channel down buttons i imagine it was intended to skip the ones that had a bad signal or were in a different language or something but i used it to eliminate every channel except those three for years i don't think a day went by where i didn't watch at least an hour or two of cartoon network so yeah i'm excited to talk about this i started watching i guess in the mid to late 90s but the channel does go back to 1992. it was the end result of some unconventional deals and innovative thinking all involving ted turner and if you're not familiar with ted turner he was a big part of shaping the cable television industry into what it is today the channel tnt stands for turner network television the channel tbs stands for turner broadcasting system well in 1980 he started cnn at the first network dedicated to 24-hour news coverage it was a pioneering new idea that helped prove the sustainability of a non-stop single focused channel so in 1992 he set out to try it again but this time instead of a news network it would be a cartoon network the reason he chose to focus on cartoons is because over the past few years he had acquired the rights to a tremendous amount of them the owners of all these classic cartoons kept buying and selling them so it gets a little tricky to follow but they were slowly consolidating together see in 1956 warner brothers sold the rights to all of their looney tunes cartoons that were created before 1948 you know all of the ones featuring bugs bunny and the gang and then two years later united artists bought that company then in 1981 mgm bought united artists with that deal mgm now owned all of the pre-1948 looney tunes which were added to their existing library of mgm cartoons it gets trickier because five years later ted turner purchased all of mgm the studio and the archives then a few months later sold it right back but held on to the archives his main motivation behind all of this in the first place was likely to get the rights of all the mgm and ua movies that he could show on his other networks but the cartoons came with it then in 1991 he added to that already strong collection when his company bought hannah barbera for 320 million dollars so the result of all these deals was ted turner possessing the rights to an unheard of library of cartoons it included all of the looney tunes made before 1948 tom and jerry popeye made his way into there with hannah barbera he added the flintstones the jetsons scooby-doo among many others see there was another cartoon library we got the united the uh warner brothers 350 cartoons can you imagine owning so many cartoons that you actually forgot that you owned all of the early looney tunes my gosh the collection was estimated to be approaching 9 000 hours and as if that wasn't enough in 1996 turner broadcasting itself was bought by time warner who was still the owner of the post 1948 warner cartoons meaning that full cartoon library was brought together for the first time in about 40 years but going back to 1992 ted turner owned all of these cartoons and created the perfect outlet for them on october 1st when he launched the cartoon network i really like this the first thing that they showed was droopy a character that they had acquired from the mgm library welcoming us to the network and guiding us around welcome to the world's first and only cartoon network it was then followed by an old bugs bunny cartoon that they had acquired from the warner brothers library and is it hard to see why they were successful in addition to the collection of cartoons creative structuring in the innovative 24 hour format the cartoon network was also propelled forward using ted turner's other channels specifically tnt they would get grouped together into the cable packages people would buy the two are commonly marketed together and they would even overlap the channels by sometimes literally switching tnt into the cartoon network in the beginning the programming that they showed was all unoriginal from these previous libraries but after only a few years they started producing original content i would consider it a slower start with the moxie show followed by space ghost coast to coast i mean taking a former hannah barbera superhero and having him host a fictional late night talk show is an original idea that you have to respect but it wasn't a huge investment and didn't have a huge impact on the channel overall easily the show that was most responsible for transforming cartoon network into the channel that we all know was what a cartoon it was a series of shorts made by different creators that led to the creation of some of cartoon network's most iconic shows oddly enough they even aired an early much cleaner predecessor of family guy but what i'm talking about here is johnny bravo cowan chicken courage the cowardly dog the powerpuff girls and my personal favorite dexter's laboratory you know while i'm talking about these cartoons here's something that i just learned that blew my mind in the show the powerpuff girls you know that narrator the city of townsville that is tom kenny the voice of spongebob and a ton of other things including the mayor on the powerpuff girls that was surprising but back to the network for me the height of the network will forever be cartoon cartoon fridays that was the night double d or johnny bravo or one of the other cartoon cartoons as they were called would host a night of cartoons i know i'm saying cartoon a lot right now but this cartoon cartoons era was when the network jumped in popularity growing by as much as 30 percent a year now seen by over 80 million people and more importantly it's where they found their identity this is when cartoon network became something more than just a place to show old cartoons it became something original so somewhat ironically as the cartoon cartoons were becoming the new focus of the channel they started phasing out their older cartoons that they'd spent so much money to obtain and had been the original motivation to start the network in the year 2000 they started a new network called boomerang where they would air all of these classic cartoons 24 hours a day essentially making it very similar to the original vision of cartoon network in 2001 they started adult swim which as a 10 year old i would absolutely hate every sunday night they would air this thing all kids out of the pool for adult swim i am still conditioned to dislike that sound because it meant that the cartoons were done for the day and it was essentially time to go to bed i didn't watch them at the time but they did air many successful shows and later on even played a big part in bringing back shows like futurama and family guy alright i want to talk about some potential falls and rises but it gets tricky because with a creative network like this how do you possibly quantify these fluctuations or even prove that they exist as far as i can tell even the viewers are divided firsthand on this channel i see comments talking about how they fell how they fell and came back and just some praising the network it's hard to know what to make of it but it appears that the general perception is that they started to fall soon after that cartoon cartoon era in the mid-2000s reached an all-time low toward the end of that decade and started somewhat of a renaissance around 2010. you may disagree with that but i think that's how most people see it and that timeline does make sense when searching for reasons behind the fall we should look at some major changes around that time and how about the 2000 merger between time warner and aol it was actually the biggest merger ever in a complete disaster so there's many ways that this could have affected the network they changed up hannah barbera productions for example but the big one i'm looking at here is the resignation of betty cohen she was the president of cartoon network going back to the beginning nine years earlier and it was under her control where all of these legendary shows were introduced and the network first found that identity in 2001 aol offered her a job that i believe involved creating content for teens on their internet platform so she left cartoon network she was replaced by jim samples who did make some changes not necessarily bad changes but things were different that leads me to my next reason rebranding by 2004 they had stopped using the name cartoon cartoon and changed their logo for the first time ever they kind of isolated the cn from the checkerboard and put them together it's hard to say if it was better or worse but it was different and it was followed by a few other branding changes in the upcoming years it was also during this time when all of those original cartoon series were coming to an end i should say that they were replaced with some hit shows created under the new leadership the grim adventures of billy and mandy codename kids next door foster's home for imaginary friends gosh the titles really got longer again i'm not here to review the shows and say what was good and what was bad but they weren't the originals and because of that i imagine many of the people including myself didn't make that transition and respond to them in the same way or even if they did by 2009 all of those shows were done as well along with ad and eddie and that was what many consider to be their lowest point another reason for their decline is all of this live action stuff in 2009 they introduced c and real it was a programming block filled with all of these live action reality shows their competitors like nickelodeon and disney channel had live action shows so i guess that this was their attempt to tap into that audience but it didn't go well the shows received poor reviews and even if the shows were decent enough i don't think the audience would have responded very well to them when they decided to call the channel cartoon network i'd say that pretty much cut out any potential for live action shows it's an easy criticism to say that cartoon network should stick to cartoons so if you combine all of these reasons we can see that by 2009 cartoon network was looking much different many would argue they were looking much worse but i say that was their lowest point because in 2010 they started making some major changes they cancelled cnreal introduced yet another logo and i'd say most importantly they started introducing some well-received shows i'm talking about the regular show premiering in 2010 adventure time premiering that same year the amazing world of gumball the following year in steven universe and teen titans go two years later they may have overdone it with teen titans go but many would agree that that lineup was a considerable improvement you know it really seems that every time we enter into a new decade cartoon network starts reinventing themselves i say that now because most of those shows have ended over the past few years and time warner was acquired by atnt over that time which will likely lead to more changes so it's hard to say what cartoon network will look like over the next decade but i bet it will be different let me know in the comments what do you think about cartoon network over the years as i said those cartoon cartoon fridays were the peak for me so what would you consider to be their best era maybe you were a fan of dude what would happen back in 2009 i think you'd be in the minority but it's possible you know i've had so much fun talking about all of these old cartoon network shows and if you watch them back then like i did i have to ask you this do you remember this commercial where fred is looking for a parking spot i think that they must have showed this thing excessively because i still have that thing memorized all right so any thoughts you have about cartoon network or the cartoons on the network leave them in the comments i'd like to hear what you have to say can no leader go undated thank you for watching

Channel: Company Man

Views: 802,226

Rating: 4.9249878 out of 5

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Id: jBL5rA4P0uQ

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020