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Some People Still Aren’t Getting It

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This is a brief follow-up to Jason’s “Tooning In at Late Night”.

Recently, regarding the prospect of so-called classic cartoons airing in syndication, some optimistic wag posted this:

“I’d like to see smaller stations and affiliates relaunching morning, afternoon, and weekend toons. They’d probably make more in the long run on cartoons. Considering the syndication rights for some of the shows they run are pretty steep especially for current hit shows. 

They pay through the nose for syndication rights, all so they can bring in more viewers for that show, so they can profit from the advertising. Depending on the show they may eventually break even. While the original network and advertisers clean up.”

To which let me respond with the following:

File this one under “Not Gonna Happen”. That’s a nice dream, but a dream is all it is.

Here is your reality check: Syndicated cartoon blocks, be they on weekday mornings, afternoons or weekends, simply aren’t profitable nor viable in this day and age of 24/7 animation and kids’ entertainment cable networks. The syndication market is all but dead in this country; most of the cartoon studios currently operate under the umbrella of giant corporations, and they’re not going to lend these properties out to local, syndicated or even broadcast network markets, as they have no reason to do that and doing so wouldn’t benefit them in any way. Why should corporate giants like Disney, Warner Bros, Universal and Dreamworks (which recently acquired Classic Media) loan their wares out to local or syndicated markets to air for about 2 to 3 hours when they can just run these cartoons on their own cable channels which run all day long?

The entertainment industry has changed too much in the last 2 decades for a network/syndicated weekday afternoon block like a Kids’ WB! or a Fox Kids to work anymore. There’s nothing the Alphabet Networks can offer kids that the 24/7 cable channels don’t already offer them in spades. And for the minority of viewers who don’t have cable or satellite, the internet and home video fills that void.

Furthermore, nowadays most local affiliates and syndication markets have no desire to pick up cartoon blocks because they know they can’t compete with cable, satellite and the internet. In fact, companies like Tribune and Sinclair actually pressured WB to drop the afternoon toons because they were losing money. And speaking of money, once again, TV networks and stations do what makes them the most lettuce. Presently networks make more money running news shows, talk shows, court shows, game shows and infomercials than they would running cartoons, especially old cartoons, so they run, guess what? News shows, talk shows, court shows, game shows and infomercials. We aren’t going to see a magical return of syndicated cartoon blocks just because some peoples’ nostalgia demands it.

Things change. The TV market you’re describing doesn’t exist anymore. Sorry.

And ‘dat’s the name of that tune.

Is Cartoon Network’s current Saturday morning lineup boring? A Rebuttal

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Today, a colleague of ours (the same guy from BCDB who made all that noise about Witch Lezah in “Why Y’all Hatin’ on Witch Lezah?”) posted the following nugget on Toon Zone’s Cartoon Network forum:

“I apologize for doing a thread like this, but I must say, I think the worst programming block on Cartoon Network is on Saturday mornings, 7 AM to 12 PM. It’s now all anime and action cartoons, many of them based on toy lines, including “Ben 10 Omniverse,” “Young Justice,” “Beyblade: Metal Fury,” “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” “Green Lantern,” and “NINJAGO.”

I actually saw some of “Ben 10” morning because nothing else was on TV, and I was bored out of my mind (just to see how bad they were!) Nothing really happened, it was just constant talking and some of the usual action sequences!

Sorry, but I have to agree with other people online on how Saturday morning cartoons have drastically changed. I still remember 10 years ago, Cartoon Network would have a two or three-hour Looney Tunes block on Saturday mornings, but not anymore. I feel sorry for kids that, instead of growing up eating sugary cereals watching funny, semi-educational or even remotely entertaining cartoons, children will just be having bacon and sausage and fatty pork products for breakfast while nothing plays on TV but droning talking and stereotypical action sequences on animation that is secretly plugging the toy lines they are based off of, as well as forced edutainment and news in terms of live-action.”

Now my response is kind of long and wordy (surprise, surprise!), so if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to address and rebut these statements here on Twinsanity as opposed to cluttering up Toon Zone with it:

These shows are only boring TO YOU, because as I know from your posts on BCDB, you’ve never liked action cartoons. (BTW, not all anime are action cartoons. There are plenty on non-action oriented anime, it’s just that the action anime are by and large the only anime that gets imported here.) The substantial fanbases that Ben 10, Pokemon, NinjaGo, Beybalde and Clone Wars have accrued, not to mention the hundreds of people complaining about Green Lantern: TAS and Young Justice going away and the dozens more setting up petitions and campaigns to get these shows revived clearly don’t share your views. You may not like these shows, but the action cartoons with high toy and merchandising tie-ins earn CN big ratings and routinely put butts into seats. Action’s got to air somewhere, and the current Big Brass at CN don’t seem willing to run it anywhere else besides SatAM right now (but we’ve covered that in greater depth in “Bringing Action Back”). Anyway, your personal feelings about these shows is moot, since you’re not a kid and therefore not part of the audience that CN is trying to attract with these shows.

Even so, let’s indulge you for a minute and ask: what else is CN supposed to run on Saturday mornings?  They could run encores of their original comedies, but they already do that throughout the week. CN may not want to run the TV-PG rated comedies like Adventure Time and Regular Show on SatAM, and kids would likely see more encores of Johnny Test and The Amazing World of Gumball, say “Been there, seen this!” and switch to something else. They could possibly air premiere comedies during those hours, but I’m guessing that CN would rather air their comedy premieres during prime time, where they’d stand a much greater chance of earning strong ratings. In fact, if you see a first-run comedy cartoon airing its’ premiere first-run eps on weekend mornings on CN, chances are it’s because the bigwigs in charge of the network don’t have a lot of faith in it and/or just want to burn through the episodes quickly to fulfill their contractual obligation. Should CN air Retro, like the 2 to 3-hour Looney Tunes block you mentioned? A single hour works (LT has always performed well on SatAM, and indeed, CN currently airs LT for an hour at 6 AM on Saturdays), but a 3-hour block of Looney Tunes across the board is not gonna happen. As much as I love Looney Tunes, a 2 to 3-hour LT block would get trounced in the ratings by the competing blocks of new and original comedies airing on Nick, Disney and The Hub. You can’t counter-program new hotness with oldies-but-goodies; fresh new programming is needed to keep bringing the viewers back. CN knows this all too well. Do you recall Thanksgiving of 1994 or 1995, when CN ran the “Great American Toon-In” to counter Nick’s “Nonstop Nicktoons Weekend”? CN was basically the Hanna-Barbera Reruns Channel back then, and their programming consisted solely of older toons like Yogi Bear, The Flintstones and Looney Tunes shorts. Well, the ratings came in the following Monday, and it wasn’t even close: CN got completely, utterly and hilariously trounced by Nickelodeon. The “Nonstop Nicktoons Weekend” earned roughly thrice the ratings that the “Great American Toon-In” did. Nostalgia is fine and all, but it doesn’t earn the big ratings, at least not the kids’ channel ratings that CN wants. Again, one could try to aim Retro Saturday morning programming towards adults, but there’s no big money to be made from that. A SatAM block can’t thrive on Retro alone. At the very most, there could be a SatAM block which mixes some retro hits along with first-run premieres.

Which brings me to my next point: let’s stop thinking small. Go macro with me for a second and look at the big picture. The harsh reality (one baby boomers don’t like to face) is that the industry has changed a lot since when we were kids. Reality check time: Saturday morning just isn’t the big deal that it once was. Sure, SatAM was a big deal for us back when all we had to look forward to cartoon-wise was SatAM toons (aside from weekday syndication and the occasional prime time special), but nowadays kids have cable channels which air cartoons 24/7 as well as internet services like Hulu and Netflix. Why should kids clamor to watch 2 to 3 hours of cartoons one day a week when they can get their animation fix anytime they want? Networks can’t compete with that. The reason you see more news and infotainment on the broadcast channels than cartoons nowadays is the same reason why any networks do anything: MONEY. The Alphabet Networks make more money running news and infomercials on Saturday mornings than they would trying to counteract the kids’ cable networks with their own children’s programming, so they run news and infomercials.

Do I feel sorry for today’s kids for missing out on our childhood SatAM experience? Not in the slightest. For one thing, they’re watching what they like, and that’s all that matters, even if what they enjoy doesn’t appeal to us. Quality is subjective and relative, and often what kids view as great entertainment can drive adults mad (I know my parents didn’t understand my fondness for The Super Globetrotters back in 1979). We can’t force our childhood memories on today’s kids; they can’t and shouldn’t be forced to like the same shows that we like(d). For another, today’s kids have 24-hour cartoon and kids’ entertainment channels. They have DVDs. They have the internet. they have tons of ways to get tooned in. All we had was the Alphabet Networks’ offerings. I’d have beaten up an old lady in front of her grandchildren for an all-cartoon network back then. So no, I don’t feel the least bit sorry for today’s kids. If anything, they should feel sorry for us, ‘cause we had to get our fix the hard way.

Anyways, I don’t see what the big deal is, as you’re not being forced to watch any of these shows. If what CN offers on Saturday morning isn’t to your liking, then you always have the option of watching something else, doing something else or just plain sleeping in.

LPS Progress Report (Plus Other Assorted Hub Ramblings)

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We’ve been doing a lot of Hub entries lately, haven’t we? Guess the network’s climbing up there.

Just thought I’d blow off a little steam about some of The Hub’s recent doings as of late. First, a little follow-up to my earlier entry on Littlest Pet Shop.

LPS Title Card

I still contend that so far I’m enjoying LPS’s debut season more than the 3rd season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (and on a side note, I’m getting a wee bit tired of folks putting MLP on a pedestal; it’s a decent show, undoubtedly the first time there’s ever really been anything Pony related worth giving a frak about, but really, the show just won the lottery, there are other decent shows on the shows on the network which are just as good as MLP, if not better, so it’s really time for folks to stop acting like MLP: FiM is the single greatest show on The Hub and the best thing to happen since Jiffy-Pop), but for all of its’ strengths, the show still seems unable to escape MLP’s shadow, which is unfortunate. Maybe some tweaks need to be made to LPS in order to give it more breakout potential. If I may make a few suggestions:

Perhaps every show need not consist of a single 22-minute episode like MLP does. People tend to overlook the fact that LPS is actually a mash-up of 2 separate franchises, Blythe and Littlest Pet Shop; perhaps the show’s stories should reflect this. Maybe instead of a single half-hour story each week, they could do two 10-minute shorts or three 7-minute shorts: say, 1 short which focuses on both Blythe and the Pets in tandem, 1 short which focuses squarely on the Pets with little or no participation from Blythe or the humans and 1 short which focuses largely if not exclusively on Blythe and her human co-stars. Sort of like the old Linus the Lionhearted show for those of you who are fossils like me and are old enough to remember (or even know of) that.

Another thing regarding LPS: the characters need to be strengthened and given more to do generally. I realize this is no easy task, since the show’s cast is relatively large, which is one reason why I feel the show should at least consider breaking the stories into segments as opposed to a single half-hour episode each week. The Pets’ characters are fine, they just need more to do and more air time to do it in. (Another side-note: it’s obvious that the recent addition of the Sweet Shop next door and the new characters attached to that are clearly a marketing tool to have another wave of toys to sell, but since LPS is a toy-driven show, it’s to be expected.) The human characters are the ones which really need more polishing and fleshing out. Out of the human characters, Youngmee has probably flourished the most, though that’s not saying much. She’s gotten more camera time than any of Blythe’s other friends, and she’s tied to the Sweet Shop, which gives her more opportunities to stand out than anyone else. She still needs some more defining traits other than being cute and a good friend to Blythe; she’s on the Mathletes team, so we can assume she’s smart, why not expand on that? Sue hasn’t had any standout roles since “Russel Up Some Fun”, and so far Jasper hasn’t had any real plots or subplots devoted to him. If I can make a suggestion, writers, whatever you decide to do with Jasper, please DON’T ship him with one of the girls. I like that he’s a boy and one of Blythe’s friends, but not a boyfriend to any of them, I say keep it that way. (Sue hit Jasper twice in “Topped with Buttercream”, and the 2 of them entered the story together, so I’m sure somewhere in cyberspace some shippertard is already typing fanfics pairing those 2 characters off, but I really hope nothing like that ever actually happens on the show.)

Speaking of relationships, please, please, PLEASE, writers, hook Blythe’s dad Roger up with somebody! Reveal Blythe’s mother or give her a stepmother. Something. Anything! I have no problem with dumb dads generally, they’re OK in small doses, but the recent episode “Helicopter Dad” proves that a little Roger goes a LONG way, and I think one reason why he’s so unbearable is that he has no one to counterbalance his goofiness. It’s like having the Odd Couple with only Oscar. the fact that Blythe’s mom is MIA is indeed one of the things I hate most about this show, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it, and I’d really like to see that rectified. Here’s a crazy suggestion: why not have Roger and Youngmee’s aunt Christie hook up? Not only would Roger get a romantic partner and Blythe get a much-needed mother figure, but that would technically make Blythe and Youngmee cousins, which could make for some interesting story ideas. Just a thought.

Another recent event on The Hub is the addition of Huckleberry Pie to Strawberry Shortcake’s Berry Bitty Adventures. As has been the case since the 5th TV special back in the ancient 1980’s, Huck is the only major male character in a predominantly girl-populated franchise, so as such there was a lot of hulabaloo surrounding his debut, not to mention his Justin Bieber-inspired look, viz:

huckleberry-pie

Oh, you were expecting a “Bieber sucks!” joke here, right? Sorry, not gonna happen. I’ve personally never heard any of Bieber’s music and couldn’t tell you the name of a single one of his songs, so while some folks tear their hair out at the very mention of the kid’s name, I can go about my life unaffected by Biebermania, so I honestly don’t care about the Biebs-inspired design. From an artistic standpoint, it’s an OK design, so no complaints from me about that. Whatever works. No, my issue with this version of Huckleberry Pie isn’t that he’s got the Bieb’s hairstyle or even that he’s a boy on a girls’ show, it’s that he’s, well…kind of boring. Huck here has no standout traits or attributes other than possessing a Y chromosome and being a nice kid who’s eager to please (assuming he is a kid; age-wise, it’s hard to know what to make of the Berry Bitty Gang: they look like children yet they have jobs, operate vehicles and live on their own without adults. Perhaps they just stop aging physically after a certain age, like the elves in Lord of the Rings), but to be fair, the girls are equally kind of dull and interchangeable. I actually prefer the 2003 version of Huck, pictured here:
…’cause he had an actual character, not to mention a boss board.
Finally, the Hub recently announced a “big event” coming to Thursday nights said to tie in with the recent Oscars. It turned out to be a fake awards show devoted to their old broadcasting sitcom showings: Happy Days, Mork & Mindy, Family Ties, et al, and kicking off something called “You Rule Thursdays”, in which viewers get to choose shows they watch on the network during the Thursday primetime hours of 9 p.m. – midnight ET. This week, following a special programming block featuring past Academy Awards® winners in popular Hub sitcoms, viewers will go to http://hubworld.com/YouRule to vote on the shows that will air Thursday, March 7. Each week will be themed with a different common element that links Hub shows, including “Mork and Mindy,” “Happy Days,” “The Facts of Life,” and “Family Ties.”
Oh, joy.
Well, I have to say, that’s disappointing. Here I was hoping that The Hub was finally going to spread their chops and expand their nighttime schedule beyond this sitcom rerun stuff. Before I get ambushed by Retro fans, I have nothing against Retro (though I’ve never been a nostalgic person and only about 10% of the old shows I grew up watching have any replay value to me, especially the stuff from the broadcast networks), but I don’t think I’m out of line for thinking that the Hub could be doing so much more at night than just airing reruns of old broadcast TV shows from the 70’s and 80’s. If this is working for The Hub, I can’t argue with success, but if you’re really going to try and be early 90’s Nick at Nite during the prime time hours, can’t we at least get some better shows? Just offer something a little more off the beaten path besides generic family sitcoms. The Adam West Batman show was a good start, why not expand upon that? How about showing The Monkees, Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, The Super Mario Brothers Super Show!, H.R. Pufenstuf, Lidsville, The Bugaloos, Land of the Lost, The Krofft Supershow, Far Out Space Nuts, Saved by the Bell, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, The Muppet Show/MuppeTelevision/Muppets Tonight, The Tick, Get Smart!, Weird Science, Police Squad!, My Hero, Fawlty Towers, Fernwood 2-Nite, The Best of Saturday Night Live, SCTV, The Red Green Show, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, WKRP in Cincinnati, Night Court, heck, even Candid Camera, Carol Burnett and Friends or TV’s Blooper and Practical Jokes would be a nice alternative to the nonstop domcoms. If The Hub’s PM schedule really must consist of old shows, can’t they at least be good, eclectic old shows?
And I know some people will disagree with me, but I still contend that Mystery Science Theater 3000 would be a great fit for The Hub’s nighttime lineup.

 

Talkin’ Nerdy: The Plight of Lila Test

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Hello and welcome to a new segment on Twinsanity: Talkin’ Nerdy, where we take a cartoon character or trope and devote far too much attention to it. Why do we do this? Because we’re huge geeks. Why else?

Today I’m going to discuss the situation concerning one of the supporting characters on Cartoon Network’s Johnny Test, a series that’s like a zombie that refuses to stay dead. Now, I’ve already stated my opinions on JT in an article during the early days of Twinsanity (back when it was still called Astral City) titled “What’s Eating Johnny Test”, and anyone who remembers that article already knows how I feel about the show; I think that Test is a better idea than a show and I think that Johnny himself is the worst part of his own show because he’s a selfish jerky Bart Simpson wanna be. No, I won’t be talking about how much I think that Johnny sucks. Rather, I’ll be talking about his mother, Lila.

Ah, Lila Test. She’s got a white collar office job and legs ’til Tuesday.
**************************************************************
I stopped watching Test quite a while ago, but in the time that I had been watching Johnny Test, Lila has since become one of my favorite characters on the show after Susan & Mary and the Dukey the dog. Hey, I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for a lady in a short-skirted dress suit. The problem is that Lila won’t be seen for several shorts at a time. It’s hard enough to try to enjoy a show when the title character is the one that I like the least, but then add to that the fact that 1 of the few characters that I actually like is hardly ever used.

Lila is one of my favorite characters on JT, and I dislike how sometimes the writers seem as though they forget that she exists at all. I get that Lila is the “super busy” mom and that the Test house is role reversed (I actually like this idea, in fact) and that it’s the mom, rather than the dad who has the job and who works during the day, therefore sometimes the writers can use her being at work as an excuse for her to not be at home, and I’m OK with that. My problem is the other times where logically, Lila should be around, but will still be inexplicably absent. For example, in the episodes “Johnny’s Sleepover”, “Johnny’s Big Snow Job”, “Johnny’s Trophy Case”, “Johnny Germ Fighter” and “Outdoor Johnny”, Lila doesn’t appear, or even get a casual mention, which annoys me greatly. Lila never appears on screen in season 1’s “Saturday Night’s all Right for Johnny”, but she was mentioned a few times, particularly in Hugh’s love speech to Johnny, indicating that she was indeed home, just off camera. She’s not present at the Porkbelly World Record ceremony in “Johnny’s World Record” and she’s even a no-show at Johnny’s going away party in “99 Deeds for Johnny Test”. It makes it look like she doesn’t give a frag. Basically, it’s as though Johnny Test‘s writers made Lila a workaholic so they can say that they have a mom in the Test family without actually having her there most of the time.

The biggest blunder of all has to be the half hour 3rd season finale “JX5”. In this story, Darth Vegan and his forces invade the planet Earth. The invasion is broadcast on live TV and there still no sign or mention of Lila whatsoever! Where the heck was Lila during all of this? There’s no way that Lila was just having a normal day at work when the entire flipping planet was facing imminent doom! The invasion had nationwide news coverage, fer cryin’ out loud! If just once, Johnny or 1 of the Twins had mentioned their mom just once instead of temporarily forgetting that they even have a mom, then I might have cut this episode some slack, but as since “JX5” almost seemed like it was intended as a possible series finale and the writers managed to find parts so many other supporting and recurring characters (including a plot hiccup where Hugh gets frozen by Brain Freezer and then he never shows up again nor is he even referred to by anyone else for the rest of the episode, thus leaving us to wonder for months whether or not he was murdered*), for Lila not to make a single appearance or even get a mention by anyone was unforgivably lazy.

Now I understand that in some cases, it could simply be a case that the shows’ writers don’t have anything for Lila to do in these stories, but often times, it seems as though Hugh gets shoehorned into many stories, even when it’s just a couple of brief scenes. If Test‘s writers can come up with some little parts for Hugh, then why can’t they do the same for Lila?

I’m not suggesting that Test‘s writers change the shows’ focus and make it Lila’s show or anything, but Lila is a member of the Test family and she does live in the same house as Johnny, the Twins, Dukey and Hugh. It would just be nice if they would acknowledge the character’s existence more than once in a while. She doesn’t have to be prominently featured in every story. She doesn’t even have to have dialogue in all of her appearances. Just have here there sitting around or doing something so that the character’s existence can be acknowledged. But I’d rather Lila be there and not do much than not be there at all. I’d just prefer it if the character would show up, even in brief cameos, than not show up at all.

*It was just like in the 3rd season finale of The Powerpuff Girls titled “Slumbering With the Enemy” where Mojo Jojo steals a conveniently placed bottle of “Antidote X” from Professor Utonium’s lab (begging the question of why the Prof should happen to have that in the house) and takes away the girls’ powers and then they don’t get them back at the end of the episode, so for the next 3 months, we were left wondering what was going to happen to the PPGs and then the new season starts with no mention of the previous episode’s events. It’e like that. I’m just saying that it can bug a guy.

Tooning In On Late Night

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The following is a topic that was raised on the Toon Zone Forums that I’d like to address here. To avoid confusion, the original poster’s comments will be typed in italic, while mine will be typed normally.

For the most part, classic cartoons are non existent on American TV. There’s plenty of channels that air classic movies and TV shows, but we only have one all classic cartoon channel (Boom) and as we all know, there schedule is VERY limited. 

…And even the so-called  “classic” movie and TV channels are showing original shows and movies now. Also, Boomerang stopped being a classic cartoon channel a few years ago. Boom is Cartoon Network’s recycle bin. Beyond that the channel serves no purpose. It’s like I said in an earlier post, the audience for 50s to 80s nostalgia is far too narrow a market for a channel devoted solely to it to work now. In no time, the channel would be re-branded as a general entertainment channel.

I remember watching a slew of cartoons in the 70’s and 80’s that hasn’t seen the light of day in years. Is it really that expensive to get the rights to rooms like Battle of the Planets, Voltron, New adventures of Popeye, 70’s Tarzan cartoon and many, many more? 

Dude, you’re going waaaay back. You’re talking about when we were kids back in the ancient 1970s. Back then, there was no such thing as cable and cartoons shows ran wild all over the TV. You had syndicated programs with umbrella titles such as Bugs, Woody and Popeye, Bugs & Popeye, Bugs & Woody, Bugs Bunny’s Buddies, Cartoon Carnival, etc., but the industry has changed a lot since then. We’re not going to see television return to the way that it was in the 1970s because that world doesn’t exist anymore.

The answer to your question is yes. It is that expensive because like I already said, the industry has changed a lot since we were kids. These days all of the old-school cartoons have been bought up by big corporations. Turner Broadcasting currently owns the Warner Brothers, MGM and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Casper, Lassie and the like are owned by Classic Media, which was recently purchased by Dreamworks. The Filmation library of shows are presently tied up in legal red tape over who actually owns the individual franchises. And Disney, well, the Mouse House has never loaned out it’s library of cartoons to anyone, and they’re even less inclined to do so now that they have 4 cable/satellite channels under their belt.

I mean if you really think about it, wouldn’t it be a good idea if local stations aired some of these toons late night? It just seems that a lot of these classic toons are just sitting around in some old warehouse collecting dust instead of being viewed as they should be.

That’s an interesting idea, but it would never work now. Not in this market. First, local stations don’t have the broadcasting rights to those old cartoons; most of them have since been scooped up by big corporations and local affiliates would have to pay these corporations a fee in order to run them on their stations late at night. Second, the late night market has become very cutthroat. The old-school toons would have to compete in a market that’s now dominated by Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Conan O’ Brien, ABC’s Nightline and CN’s Adult Swim block. Most people wouldn’t be willing to switch off a new episode of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report in favor of a 40-year-old rerun of Yogi’s Gang or a 60-year-old rerun of The Flintstones. A few adults might, but not enough of them to justify the cost and trouble that a local station would have to undergo to launch such a venture. Third, most of the local stations are also network affiliates who also air shows like Letterman and Leno late at night, and so the local affiliates would likely just air the old cartoons after the networks’ late night programs, thus pushing them back so far into the wee hours that one would need radar to find them. Finally, the other major issue preventing such a move is of course money. TV stations air what makes them the most money. Local stations make more money airing infomercials than they would airing classic cartoons, so they run infomercials. Network officials know that even a rerun of Conan or Family Guy is going to put more butts in seats than old Popeye cartoons would. The cold hard truth is that nostalgia just isn’t profitable right now.

I know that people are tired of me saying this, but I here it is one mo’ time: I think that instead of trying to get these “classic” cartoons back on TV, that we should instead be lobbying for these old-school shows to get proper video/DVD releases. Seriously, like my brother Damon has said, if you had your own kick-ass collection of cartoons that you could watch whenever you wanted, it wouldn’t matter one wit to you what the local stations were airing.