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.
Let’s talk about this HBO Max/Discovery + merger, shall we?
“Let’s Get Together, yeah yeah yeah…”
Before we start, this is NOT going to be one of those “Discovery sucks! I hate that HBO Max is getting Discovery shows!” tirade. Warner has partnered with Discovery, so it was obvious that the 2 companies would be mixing, matching and cross-promoting one another; that’s just the nature of the biz. We’re not in love with the Discovery shows, but we’re not bemoaning the fact that they’re there either. Discovery keeps making these shows, so clearly somebody’s watching them, and that’s fine. At the same time, we’re not required to click on any of them either. There are already plenty of shows and movies on HBO Max that we’ve never clicked on; we’ve never watched everything on any streaming service. If Joe and Jane Six-Pack dig the Discovery shows, then we say let them have ’em. We’ve never clicked on Singin’ in the Rain, Meet Me in St. Louis or any of the Andy Hardy movies, but they’re on there for anybody who wants to see them. Got it? Good.
ANYWAY….
For those who are not aware, recently, on April 12, 2023 specifically, Warner Bros. Discovery, headed by this guy, reality TV mogul David Zaslav…
“I am not a greedy, out-of-touch boomer who’s only concerned about profit, OK?! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the country club and my manservant needs to clean my solid gold Rolls-Royce!”
…held a major press event where they finally revealed the new name and objective of their long awaited and much talked about plans to merge their 2 main streaming services, HBO Max and Discovery +.
In said presser, WBD finally revealed the name of their new mega-streamer.
It went from HBO Max….
To……..
….Just Max.
M’kay.
So you guys who get millions of dollars to make decisions like this had months to cook up a new name, and this is what you came up with? All you did was shave off the HBO name.
(Also, not to nitpick, but did you have to change the background as well? We have nothing against the color blue, but we liked the purple background color; it was more distinctive, helped the service stand out more. Though we do like how you modified the Max logo to resemble the HBO logo with the circle getting placed inside the ‘a’ like how it’s in the ‘o’ of the HBO logo. Nice touch.)
Now you may well wonder, why was WBD is such an all-fired hurry to remove the HBO part from their name? The answer is a lot simpler than you might think. Hint: it has something to do with these guys:
That’s right. WBD wanted the HBO moniker gone because they want to attract that elusive sub-group that all media craves…
…THE FAMILY.
Indeed, there was a surprising amount of emphasis on Kids & Family entertainment at the presser, more than most people were expecting. It seems that the higher-ups at WBD believe (or pretend to believe) that the HBO name was driving away general family audiences, and that people don’t associate the HBO brand with family entertainment, but rather with niche, provocative adult entertainment, and they’re really hoping to change that.
“Why is everybody always pickin’ on me?”
We find it kind of interesting that these folks are convinced that nobody associates HBO with family entertainment, when in fact, while it’s never been what they mainly specialized in, family entertainment has been part of HBO since it was launched.
History lesson, kids: do you know what HBO’s first original scripted series was? It wasn’t The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Westworld, Insecure, BoardwalkEmpire or Deadwood.
It was Fraggle Rock.
Our first ever exposure to the United Kingdom TV show Dr. Snuggles was on HBO.
Go ahead and look him up. We’ll wait.
The Water Babies. The Island of Neverwas. Allison and the Magic Bubble. The Adventures of Professor Beethoven. Peter No-Tail. The Elmchanted Forest. The Mouse and His Child. The “Buy Me That!” specials. These were all family movies and specials that we saw on HBO as kids.
And never mind that HBO is the current home of Sesame Street.
Yes, this airs on the same network that airs Euphoria. Believe it or not.
And also, HBO has a sister channel called HBOFamily that’s been running since 1996. It’s currently only airing in Asia, but still…
Purty colors!
Incidentally, if the idea is to attract more families to the platform, then WBD could have named the service HBO Family. It’s not the greatest name, but it’s better than just plain Max.
What I don’t get is why WBD never thought about naming its streaming service after the Warner Bros. studio.
The studio’s name is known all over the world. Everyone instantly recognizes its iconic shield logo, so why not name the service Warner Max or WB Max? Heck, even if they just called it WB+ or Warner+, that would be lazy (since everyone is doing the plus thing after the name), but viewers would instantly know whose service it was.
Maybe the HBO name might have contributed the family entertainment getting the least amount of clicks on HBO Max, but I would argue that their almost never bothering to advertise or promote their family fare didn’t help either. Since HBO Max’s launch, I can recall seeing one ad for Jellystone! and one for Looney Tunes Cartoons and that was it. People aren’t going to flock to something when they don’t know it’s there.
Compare this to Disney+, who never lets you forget the stuff they have, because they promote them to death. You never have trouble remembering that Disney owns Marvel and Star Wars ’cause they remind you constantly; they even have Star Wars and Marvel characters walking around the Disney parks. You always remember what Disney does since they plaster the Disney name in front of everything and remind you all the time.
“Want your car to glide like the Millennium Falcon (which we own) and look fancy like Cinderella’s coach (which is on Blu-Ray now)? Then don’t forget to use Mickey Mouse brand wax and motor oil! Just $20 off if you’re subscribed to Disney Plus! You can pay in Disney Fun Dollars, and remember what your pal Mickey says, ‘There’s no refunds!’ Ha-ha!”
This does seem to check out; it syncs up with the words of current president of Cartoon Network, Michael Ouweleen…
The man co-created Harvey Birdman. He’s cool with us.
…who in an interview around late January/early February stated that he and WBD were planning to shift CN to being a more “general, all ages” animation channel.
Now, this sounds promising, but given WBD’s shenanigans as of late…
I don’t have to remind you good people what a dumpster fire 2022 was for animation…
…You’ll understand if we’re just a tad skeptical. Seeing is believing.
D: If WBD’s claims actually do bear fruit, I personally hope that these plans result in more general TV Y or TV Y7 shows on Max and Cartoon Network. The gap between the ranges of CN’s programming as of late has been really noticeably wide; shows are either for Cartoonito…
“Let’s all count to 1! Yaaay!”
Or [adult swim]…
“Dude, I just ate an entire plate full of pot brownies and now I got the munchies like a mofo!” “Cool. Let’s fly to Singapore for no reason.”
And that’s it.
A middle ground exists and that’s a market just waiting to be tapped.
I really hope WBD can/will pull this off. It’s why Cartoon Network was always my favorite of the Big Three kids’ animation networks: it always seemed to cater to that sweet spot for people like me who don’t exactly flock to shows made for toddlers but aren’t really attracted to gratuitously gross, overly sexual, stoneriffic hipster adult cartoons either. There should be a place for us gray animation fans.
“Ooh! They’re stripping down to their no-no’s!” “Hon, the kids are asleep. You can use the actual words.”
J: I’m going to add to this; I hope that this “new way” for Cartoon Network will not only lead to more general audience programming on the channel, but also that we’ll get more bright, colorful, upbeat, funny cartoons on CN instead of the mopey, depressing, emo, edge lord-y stuff that we’ve been getting as of late. Somewhere down the line, these hot new creators and producers seem to have forgotten that cartoons are first and foremost meant to be FUN!
Make Cartoons Fun Again!
-If you want to get into our good graces, WBD, bringing back the shows that you yanked off the platform last year would definitely be a step in the right direction.
C’mon, we’re paying you close to $17.00 a month; the least you can do is let us watch Uncle Grandpa on there again.
On a final note, we think it’s interesting that, in order to attract more families to their streaming service, WBD dropped the the HBO handle, as they feel that name has become synonymous with adult entertainment, but kept the Max name; coincidentally their service shares that part of the name with another pay-TV channel, Cinemax…
…Which actually DOES specialize in adult entertainment.
“Eh, didn’t really tink ‘dis through, did ya, Doc?”
In an interview back when the show was still airing, Johnny Bravo creator Van Partible revealed that Johnny actually lays mad pipe, but only offscreen, as a show depicting his successes wouldn’t be funny.
“Ya always wondered, no ya know! HEH-HAH-HUH!”
Learning this only makes his getting this show on the air in the first place all that more miraculous.
Happy New Year, everyone! Let’s start 2023 with a big ol’ hot take:
We’re not opposed to the idea of live-action shows airing on Cartoon Network!
Yeah, yeah, I know. hear us out. We used to be like you. Years ago, whenever the subject of Cartoon Network daring to air live-action would come up, our usual reaction was….
There was a time when we regarded the very thought of CN airing live-action programming to be akin to painting a moustache on the Mona Lina, but over time we’ve either mellowed with age or have gotten even more insane, whatever you want to call it, but we’re not 100% opposed to the idea anymore.
“But guys…CARTOON Network!” I hear you say, and yes, I agree. Cartoon Network initially pledged to air “cartoons and nothing but cartoons, all day, every day, until the end of time”, I get it, but here’s the thing: animated shows are expensive and take time to produce; unless your parent company has a HUGE backlog of cartoons to fall back on, they’d need something to keep viewers occupied while the new animated shows are being made, and these days CN like most networks prefers to run their older cartoons online as opposed to on the main TV channel. The reason that Nickelodeon and Disney Channel rely so heavily on live-action kidcoms (aside from the obvious fact that they’re popular with kids) is because live-action shows are cheaper and take less time to produce: Disney Channel and Nick can whip out 2 or 3 episodes of Lizzie McGuire or Bunk’d or Henry Danger or Game Shakers in the time it takes to produce 1 episode of Phineas & Ferb or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So there’s a practical reason to employ some live-action programming, even on animation channel.
Now it’s usually at this point that someone will inevitably point to Cartoon Network’s notorious flop programming block CN Real, which we covered here a while back in Keepin’ It Real…Real Bad!. CN Real was a turkey, no one’s denying that, but as Jason (Goldstar) mentioned in that article, the reason why the CN Real block failed wasn’t because they dared to air live-action, it was because they were airing the wrong kind of live-action. What’s the first word in this channel’s name?
There ya go.
If Cartoon Network were to ever start incorporating live-action shows and movies into their schedules, certain requirements need to be met. Live-action on CN could work, provided it’s the right kind of live-action. Reality shows? No. Those don’t gel with cartoon lovers, least of all kids; generally speaking, the only non-scripted shows that kids tend to dig are game shows. If a CN show isn’t going to be a cartoon, then it should at least be “toon adjacent”. Some examples of acceptable live-action for CN would be:
Live-Action/Animation hybrids, i.e., shows that combine animation with live-action…
…Shows starring puppets…
..,or people in wacky costumes…
…Shows based on animated properties; for example, run Filmation’s Shazam! series…
…to coincide with the release of the new Shazam! movie or the first movie airing on ACME Night…
…Shows which evoke the spirit of cartoons or comics, like Super Sentai…
…Live-action hosts…
…Or shows that are so wacky and crazy that they’re like cartoons.
This kind of live-action could work, provided that the animation to live-action ratio stays at something like 70:30 or 60:40 in favor of the cartoons. It may or may not every happen, but if Cartoon Network is ever to open itself up to the possibility of live-action again, they should never forget their channel’s, name, history, theme and roots. If they really ever have to air live-action, it should be animated live-action.
-And yeah, I admit this is partially a way of campaigning to get The Aquabats’ Super Show! back on TV. This show was awesome and should be airing on TV somewhere; it just should.
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