It’s the 1st of the Month…

silverstar

Today is August 1st.

If you work in the animation industry, or are just a cartoon fan, this could be a day that will live in infamy.

Why? Because today is the day that the Cartoon Network studio building officially shuts down.

They will be relocating to a new location, the Second Century Project Building just a few miles away.

I have to admit, it is a quirky, cool design.

Prior to today, CN’s assorted staff, writers, animators, creators and talent came out to pay their final respects to the old CN Building.

Before I go any further, fam, I think I need to make sure we’re all up to speed here:

“Cartoon Network is not, repeat, NOT shutting down. The network is NOT going out of business! The remaining staff are just relocating to a new studio building. That’s it. Cartoon Network will continue to operate! Just turn on your TV; it’s still on! And no, this isn’t the fault of David Zaslav or the merger with Discovery! Warner Bros. broke ground on this new HQ back in 2020, long before the Discovery merger happened. This doesn’t excuse all of the crappy business decisions Zaslav has made for the studio, but he’s not responsible for this. And the Burbank building isn’t closing because people don’t like Teen Titans GO! Studios don’t close because people who are outside of a show’s target demographic don’t like a particular series; that would be a frivolous and childish way to run a business; anyone who thinks that this a legit reason for a studio to close is clearly an eight-year-old or has the mentality of one! That reason in particular doesn’t make sense because Teen Titans GO isn’t even produced by Cartoon Network Studios; it’s produced by WB Animation! And this is NOT just a publicity stunt to promote Learning with Pibby! Get a brain, morons! Y’all can stop writing obituaries for Cartoon Network because Cartoon Network isn’t dead! This Cartoon Network building is shutting down, but the channel isn’t! Got it? Good!”

OK, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, on to the big question: why is this happening? The plan is to assemble Cartoon Network Studios…

…under the same roof as WB Animation…

…with the long-term goal being to merge the two separate studios into one single studio, as opposed to them operating as separate entities.

How would/will this affect how Cartoon Network operates? Who knows? It’s hard to say. I hope they don’t feel the need to redo the channel’s segmentation too much. It’s fine the way it is:

You have Cartoonito for little kids…

…Cartoon Network for big kids and families…

…and [adult swim] for adults.

The foundation has already been laid out for these people, and somehow they’re still managing to screw it up!

Now, the big, BIG question is: by all appearances, the current regime at Warner Bros. Discovery seems (at the moment, anyway) to be favoring the Warner name and IPs over those of Cartoon Network; does this mean that Cartoon Network Studio is going to cease to exist? Or will it exist in name only, as in only for branding or nostalgic purposes? Or will it continue to be a separate division and focus on making original animated content?

I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate here: while I, like many of us here I suspect, have nothing but love and fondness for the CN Studios brand, I’d be willing to let it go if it meant a better quality of shows and content coming to Cartoon Network. I would hate to see the CNS branding disappear (as a typography geek I love the checkerboard logo), but I’d rather have one singular cool branding as opposed to two separate ones floating around. Keep in mind that in the early days of CN, the studio operated under the Hanna-Barbera Studios name before switching to Cartoon Network Studios.

And before anyone feels too bad about that, Cartoon Network’s European studio changed its’ name to Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe as a tribute to the late studio, so the name still exists in some form.

Who knows what the future holds? Maybe, just maybe, Cartoon Network could become like a Phoenix…

…with a new, bigger, better network and studio emerging from the ashes of the old one.

Maybe we could get a new, cooler name and branding.

And, dare I say, maybe we could get the reincarnation of a bigger budgeted made-for-cable Kids’WB!?

“I doubt it!”

-Yeah, probably not, but it’s still fun to think about.

7 thoughts on “It’s the 1st of the Month…”

    1. Honestly, I’d be more excited about this if it weren’t for the fact that this will be our 3rd or 4th “Ultimate Crossover Event” this year. I’ll probably watch this, since it looks like my man Daffy Duck will have a prominent role in this special, but I have to admit that between this, Nickelodeon All Star Brawl (1 and 2) and the upcoming Cartoon Network crossover event on Jellystone!, (never mind that Jellystone! is already a crossover series, so this will be a crossover within a crossover)now I’m getting a little tired of Everyone’s Here. I liked the crossovers and cameos in Space Jam: A New Legacy, but if it happens all the time, it’s no longer special. And the less said about that Chip ‘N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers movie thing on Disney+ from last year, the better. How about after this we put Everyone’s Here on the shelf for about 2 or 3 years so it can be special again?

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  2. Glad Ivandoe’s coming over to the states, but would it killed them to have released it earlier? And Jade Armor and the TDI reboot

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  4. (Feel free to move this comment to another post if you feel it fits better somewhere else.)

    It’s been a while since you’ve made a new blog post. How about your thoughts on MeTV Toons? That could be interesting, I think.

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    1. I know that neither Damon nor myself have made a new blog post in some time (lately, I’ve [posted more on the Anime Superhero Forums than I’ve posted here). That’s because we’re both done with blogging for the most part. The spark just isn’t there anymore. We’re both in the early stages of producing videos. We’re learning the ropes when it comes to editing, soundtrack, camera angles, etc., so we’ll finally be able to transform Twin Images from a blog to a full-blown website. I feel like I’ve outgrown the blog format and most of our jokes are visual. I get that this is confusing for anyone who’s not familiar with this place. This site is run by 2 people. Plus, we both want to be on camera. Now we’ll finally be on a medium where people will be able to see our faces!

      In regard to MeTV Toons, it’s good news for cartoon enthusiasts. Particularly old-school cartoon enthusiasts. Honestly, I’d be more excited about MeTV Toons if, a) it wasn’t just old cartoons that I’ve already seen, and b) so far, the channel isn’t going to be available where I live just yet. Presently, I have YouTube TV, and there’s no word on when or if YT-TV will be getting this channel. We’ll just have to wait and see how all of this plays out.

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      1. ^^What he said.

        Even if we were still blogging regularly, I don’t know if we’d need to devote an entire post to Me TV Toons. It features classic cartoons from nearly every classic animation studio (except Disney), so it’s a pretty big deal, no denying that, and it is good to see that Warner Bros. Discovery does actually give a crud about at least some of their animation properties, but at the same time, I can’t get too excited about it since a) it doesn’t look like it’s coming to our city right now, and b) as cool as this potentially is, nostalgia channels like Me TV Toons aren’t meant to be watched every day; you check them out once in a while, have yourself a little Nostalgia Party, but every day with no new shows coming down the pike, it would start to get old after a while. Besides, there’s nothing we could say about this channel that hasn’t already been said by a dozen other bloggers and YouTubers.

        Plus, like Jason mentioned, Me TV Toons hasn’t officially premiered yet. Maybe sometime after the channel launches, we’ll discuss it in an upcoming video.

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