May 12, 2025 • 31 mins
Cartoon Network used to generate big profits, cranking out nutty, surrealist animation for TV audiences. But with the cable bundle melting and the streaming service Max pulling back from kids programming, the future of the brand looks precarious. By Felix Gillette
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Cartoon Network's last gasp. Cartoon Network used to generate
big profits cranking out nutty, surrealist animation for TV audiences,
but with the cable bundle melting and the streaming service
Max pulling back from kid's programming, the future of the
brand looks precarious by Felix Gillette read aloud by Mark Ledorf.
(00:24):
One night in August, a group of animators headed out
on foot through the streets of Burbank, California, cloaked in
Mission Impossible style black outfits. At about ten p m.
The crew arrived at its destination, a deserted office disconcertingly
close to the neighborhood police station. For decades, the building
had served as the bustling studio of Cartoon Network, which,
(00:46):
like much of the cable universe, has fallen on challenging times.
Until recently, the facility was a place where young animators
day dreamed of launching their creations into the world. Now
it sat empty and foreboding, another reminder of the grizzly
costcuts that had been sweeping through Cartoon Network's parent company,
Warner Brothers. On the sidewalk outside, the animators hurriedly set
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up a generator, a projector and a laptop outfitted with
video loop software, and hit play. For the next several minutes,
an animated vignette played on repeat across the building's facade.
A large disembodied hand clutching a pencil rubs out cartoon
network from the top of the building, then tries to
erase a nearby worker who scampers for safety. After a
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brief pursuit, a pack of colleagues band together and collectively
shove away the menacing pencil pusher. The film ends with
an unsubtle message, dear studios, don't erase animation jobs. The
group circulated the video online, adding to an expanding body
of work bemoaning the state of the US animation industry,
(01:52):
where concerns about unemployment are high. New series scarce oversees
outsourcing rampant, and anxiety over artific intelligence widespread among online commentators.
Much of the resulting ire has been directed at David Zaslov,
the chief executive officer at Warner Brothers Discovery, who's emerged
as a frequent target in Hollywood since orchestrating the stormy
(02:15):
twenty twenty two merger of WarnerMedia with Discovery. Discovery was
best known for low cost reality TV and crime shows,
and not known at all for animation. On Zaslov's Watch,
sweeping cuts have roiled the combined company's animation assets. Beyond
the shuttering of the old Cartoon Network Studios, Warner Brothers
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has backed out of theatrically distributing several almost completed animated movies,
including Fixed, a feature from revered cartoon o tour Gendy
Tartakovsky since picked up by Netflix. It pulled the plug
on the Boomerang Network's standalone animation streaming service. It closed
Rooster Teeth, a subsidiary in Austin that made several popular
(02:57):
animated web series, and it removed numerous animated movies, classic
Looneytunes shows, and Cartoon Network programs from the company's streaming
service Max. Somewhere amid the changes, hashtag rip Cartoon Network
started trending on x while animation fans circulated hashtag fire
David Zaslof on YouTube. Discovery came in and it went
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downhill fast, says Robert Alvarez, a retired animator who worked
on popular Cartoon Network shows from the mid nineties until
twenty twenty three. In August Warner Brothers announced it was
taking a nine point one billion dollar charge writing down
the value of its traditional TV networks, which include, along
with the Discovery Channel and Cartoon Network, the Food Network,
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TBS and TNT. Warner Brothers doesn't break out the individual
financial performance of each channel, but Cartoon Network struggles have
certainly contributed to the downturn. According to estimates from S
and P Global Market Intelligence, the annual advertising revenue for
US Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, its spinoff animation brand
for grown ups, plummeted from six hundred and sixty eight
(04:06):
point three million dollars in twenty fourteen to one hundred
and thirty three point seven million dollars last year. The
viability of the Cartoon Network brand in streaming doesn't look
much more promising. A few years ago, network executives were
touting Max as the next natural step in Cartoon Network's evolution,
but since its debut five years ago, a string of
(04:28):
programming misfires and increased competition from YouTube have meant that
Max has largely failed to emerge as a go to
destination for young viewers. According to data from Precise TV,
a video advertising firm, only thirteen percent of ten to
twelve year old viewers have recently watched programming on Max,
versus thirty two percent for Hulu, fifty seven percent for
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Disney Plus, and seventy two percent for Netflix. Among preschool audiences,
the numbers for Max are even worse. The company recently
decided that children's programming is no longer a core part
of Max's strategy, further clouting cartoon networks prospects. Cartoon networks
struggles have been playing out at a time when animation
(05:12):
at large has arguably never been more popular. From Dog
Man and Inside Out two to the Super Mario Brothers movie,
animated features continue to rule the box office. Bluey, a
cartoon series from Australia that Cartoon Network executives once unsuccessfully
sought to license, has been a huge hit for Disney Plus,
and animated shows such as Pepa Pig and Cocoa Melon
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regularly attract big audiences of youngsters on Netflix. The global
anime market is projected to grow from thirty four point
two billion dollars in twenty twenty four to sixty point
one billion dollars by twenty thirty, according to research by
Jeffrey's Financial Surely, many animation fans still hope there is
room for the Cartoon Network brand to flourish once again.
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Vanessa Brookman, a Warner Brothers executive in London who manages
the brand abroad, says that the network has a strong,
growing presence overseas, and that the company is dialing up
its investment in adult Swim's older skewing shows, which give
better with Max's current strategy. Both Zaslof and Sam Register,
the head of Warner Brothers Animation, who now oversees Cartoon
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Network studios and its diminished output of shows, declined to
speak to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Brookman attributes the online uproar over
the cutbacks at Cartoon Network to pent up nostalgia for
the time when it was first emerging as an engine
of cutting edge animation on par with the most esteemed
anime shops in Japan. She says she's optimistic about the
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network's current direction. It's not maybe how the fans remember it,
the executive says, but it's not dead. About a decade
after Ted Turner started CNN, he came up with an
idea for a new cable channel that would air cartoons
at all hours, not just on Saturday morning or after school.
In nineteen ninety one, he bought Hanna Barbera Productions, a
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mother load of classic series Scooby Doo, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones,
The Jetsons, and The Smurfs, among many others. The next
year he started Cartoon Network, initially reaching some two million
US homes. The tricky job of figuring out which of
the thousands of episodes to air each day largely fell
to an omnivorous consumer of pop culture named Mike Lazo.
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Around Cartoon Network's offices in Atlanta, Lazo was hard to
miss with his shoulder length blonde hair, puckish eyes, and
curious wardrobe including fishing hats and kilts. He looked more
like a new wave pop star than a corporate middle manager.
As they fiddled with the network's schedule, Lazo and his
small team studied the competition. In the early nineties, critics
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were buzzing over Nickelodeon, sum to Redstone's Channel for Kids
and its two growing hits, Rugrats and The Wren and
Stempy Show. Lazzo's crew concluded that rather than just airing
endless Hanna Barbera reruns, Cartoon Network should also make shows
of its own. We went to Ted and said, give
us money for originals, Lazo recalls, and he just threw
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us out of his office. Admittedly, Lazo's team had zero
experience in such endeavors. What they needed was a clever
idea and some minimal proof of production competence. At the time,
the entertainment industry was enthralled with the drama taking place
in late night comedy. In nineteen ninety two, Johnny Carson
retired from The Tonight Show, touching off a fierce succession battle.
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That summer, HBO began airing The Larry Sanders Show, a
parody of a late night show that successfully drafted off
interest in the real world power struggle. Critics adored it,
and so did LASO. The cartoon network staff aimed to
do something similar on a threadbare budget. They cobbled together
a pilot for a parody of a talk show hosted
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by Space Ghost, a caped intergalactic crime fighter with laser
shooting fists who'd starred in a nineteen sixties Hanna Barbera
series by splicing together clips of the vintage cartoon hero
with TV footage of contemporary real world personalities such as
comedian Carrot Top and Bill Nye, the Science Guy. They
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were able to mimic the familiar patter of a Hollywood
talk show. Turner, impressed by the bizarre mashup of animation
and celebrity, gave a thumbs up to Space Ghost Coast
to Coast, which would go on to run for eleven
critically admired seasons, and agreed to fund more series. For years,
American cartoons had been mired in mediocrity for much of
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the nineteen eighties. Shows based on toy lines from Transformers
to Gi Joe crowded the airwaves. The Cartoon Network team
thought the merchandise driven shows lacked the feral ingenuity of
animation's early years, when imaginative, wigged out directors like Tex
Avery and Chuck Jones ruled the rambunctious medium. It was
time they agreed to re embrace a creator driven approach.
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Cartoon Network announced in nineteen ninety four that it was
teaming up with its corporate siblings at Hanna Barbera to
sponsor a new shorts program. Forty eight six to seven
minute cartoons would be chosen from an open call for submissions,
then aired on the network. They would turn the best
ones into recurring series. Before long, the Shorts initiative ushered
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in a wave of popular, long running shows appealing to
elementary school kids and young adults, including Dexter's Laboratory from
Tartakovski about a science prodigy with a flare for mayhem,
Johnny Bravo from Van Partible, about a preening airhead and
his dating misadventures, and The powerpuff Girls by Craig McCracken,
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about a trio of precocious, pint size superheroes. As Cartoon
Network grew, its staff settled into offices at Turner's Broadcasting
Center on the site of a former country club in Atlanta.
There Lazo's team inj Roid Life as the Campus Oddballs.
They held an annual Velma Day in honor of the
nerdy Scooby Doo heroine on April Fool's Day. Each year,
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they pulled pranks on their viewers, such as scheduling around
the clock marathon of Screwy Squirrel, a wickedly deviant cartoon
from the nineteen forties. When they attended animation trade shows,
they'd bring back costumes and parade around the office park
dressed as monsters and villains. Over time, the mischievous spirit
of Lazo's staff came to define the Cartoon Network brand,
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and legions of absurdism loving cartoon heads happily gobbled up
whatever they were serving. Before long, Cartoon Network was starting
to rank as one of the ten highest rated channels
on cable TV, and while the network never spawned a
hit as massively popular as Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants, it consistently
delivered cult classics, including Tartakovsky's Samurai Jack, Pendleton, Ward's Adventure Time,
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John Dilworth's Couraged the Cowardly Dog, and Rebecca Sugars to
Stephen Universe. Those shows hooked fans who eventually found themselves
exploring the broader Cartoon Network cosmos. Primarily, children watch cartoons,
but adults watch cartoons too. Turner would later tell an
interviewer from the Television Academy on the average evening, more
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adults are tuned to the Cartoon Network than are tuned
to CNN. In nineteen ninety six, as a wave of
consolidation swept through the cable industry, Turner sold his company
to Time Warner, an entertainment conglomerate already well versed in
the cartoon business, Warner Brothers Animation was one of Hollywood's
revered studios, home to Bugs, Bunny and Daffy Duck. As
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the merger progressed, Time Warner announced it would shut down
the Hanna Barbera Studios in LA where Cartoon Networks handful
of original shows were in production, and move everyone nearby
under the same roof. The cartoonists would work alongside their
corporate cousins. Right away, the two cultures struggled to mesh.
For the most part, Warner Brothers Animation was focused on
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lavish reboots of its famous characters for a new generation,
while Cartoon Network was all about conjuring novel universes from
scratch on shoe string budgets. Some skeptics inside Time Warner
questioned Cartoon Network's approach. Why not just make shows based
on intellectual property that kids were already primed to devour.
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I remember having huge fights in the nineteen nineties with
the ad salespeople who wanted to put toy shows on
our air. Lazo says we were mostly able to keep
it off the air and concentrate on original voices. By
two thousand, Cartoon Network executives were able to open their
own animation studio in Burbank. To make it feel like home,
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managers handed out cans of spray paint to their incoming animators.
Soon a mosaic of colorful doodles was spreading across the
facility's main stairwell. The same playful vibe that enlivened the
on air brand took root, with each floor featuring a
particular culinary attraction, a soda fountain machine, a candy smorgas board,
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even a pancake station. Cartoon Network studios favored a creator
centric approach. New episodes would unfold with an artist in
front of a storyboard, sculpting the plot lines, writing the dialogue,
and fine tuning the jokes. A lot of control was
given to the artists because we felt that they would
do right by the shows, says Linda Semensky, a creative
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executive who joined Cartoon Network from Nickelodeon during the early
days and who now teaches a class on the history
of animation at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time,
roughly a third of the network's audience was adults, not kids,
a dynamic that shaped its programming strategy, where Nickelodeon intensely
focused on elementary schoolers, Cartoon Network artists pursued edgier, more
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convoluted stories that appealed to a broader demographic, from tweens
to college kids, basically anyone who loved animation. We used
to explain it as we target a psychographic, not a demographic,
Semensky says. The resulting shows, from Maxwell Adams The Grim
Adventures of Billy and Mandy to h Greenblat's Chowder were
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often comically absurd and crammed with slapstick gags, screwy punchlines,
and surreal atmospheres. Disney was the kid in the class
that's sitting in front raising their hand, Simensky says, Nickelodeon
was the kid in the middle making jokes, and Cartoon
Network was the kid all the way in the back
row shooting spitballs. Almost overnight, the studio turned into a
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powerful magnet for early career animators, many of whom arrived
fresh out of art school with their imaginations on fire.
The pay wasn't great, former Cartoon Network animators say, but
the opportunities for creative advancement were unmatched. New arrivals were
integrated into an apprentice system that could quickly transform a
jitterary twenty something into a steady handed showrunner. Everyone was
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encouraged to pitch ideas for series, and most of what
got picked for the line up came from within their
youthful ranks. Meanwhile, the Round the Clock Animation Network was
grappling with a persistent business challenge. Most of their advertisers
were reluctant to buy commercial airtime at night when kids
were asleep, and so in two thousand and one, Cartoon
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Network announced it was turning a chunk of the night
time schedule into a new programming block, beginning at ten
p m. Two nights a week, geared toward grown up audiences.
The network called it Adult Swim. Adult Swim showed a
cackling mix of subversive originals alongside reruns of irreverent animated
programs from other channels, including Matt Grunning's Futurama and Seth
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MacFarlane's Family Guy, which had originally aired on Fox. From
the start, it was a winning late night recipe that,
as legions of college students could soon attest, paired particularly
well with dorm room bong hits. Advertisers feasted on it.
Inside a former carpet factory in Atlanta, across a highway
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from Turner's original campus. Adult Swim built a second studio
dubbed Williams Street, which cranked out droll marketing promos and
batches of new bizarro shows. By the twenty tens, according
to people familiar with the company's financials who asked not
to be named discussing non public information, the two headed
network was regularly generating one billion dollars or so in
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annual sales and roughly five hundred million dollars in profit.
Looking back, former executives say the key to all the
success from Cartoon Network significant profits to its sizeable pile
of Emmy awards was there independence. Without adequate breathing room
from Warner Brothers Animation, they say, none of it would
have been possible. We'll be right back with The Cartoon
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Network's Last Gasp. Welcome back to the Cartoon Network's Last Gasp.
David Zaslov, a dexterous acrobat and prodigious dropper of names,
was just getting started puffing up his new media empire.
It was April twenty six, twenty twenty two, and weeks
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earlier the Telecom giant. AT and T had ended its rocky,
short lived foray into Hollywood by spinning off Cartoon Network's
parent company, WarnerMedia, into the merger with Discovery Zaslov, addressing
investors on a quarterly earnings call for the first time
as the new CEO, praised the company's name, brand, entertainers,
and assets at various points, calling out Oprah, Winfrey, Harry Potter,
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Ted Lasso, Batman, Game of Thrones, Chip and Joanna Gaines, Euphoria,
the Gilded Age, ninety Day Fiancee, the Olympics, the Food Network,
the Big Bang Theory, Looney Tunes, and CNN, which he
described as a true reputational asset and invoked no less
than seventeen times. Not once did he mention Cartoon Network
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or Adult Swim. The previous years under a AT and
T had done much to dull Cartoon Networks shine. Leading
up to the rollout of Max in twenty twenty, AT
and T vowed to build a streaming service that could
compete head to head with Netflix, in part by loading
up on original programming, including series for kids. At first,
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Cartoon Network employees assumed its management team would be tapped
to lead the charge. Instead they were largely marginalized. To
build buzz for the new app, Max executives trolled the
broader market for kids shows based on conventional unlikely to
fail ip. Among other splurges, they acquired an expensive package
of streaming rights to Sesame Street and the latest in
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a long line of rebooted Looneytunes shows from Warner Brothers Animation.
They also commissioned a new talk show starring Elmo. Meanwhile,
Cartoon Network Studios adept at low cost original kids programming
mostly spun its wheels. Behind the scenes, AT and T
began planning a reorganization that, in the months ahead would
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consolidate Cartoon Network Studios back in with Warner Brothers Animation,
essentially reinstating the uncomfortable arrangement that had proved so unpalatable
decades earlier. Feeling sidelined, several team members jumped ship, including Lazo,
who retired in the spring of twenty twenty. When AT
and T finally rolled out HBO Max later rechristened Max,
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sign ups were sluggish, pricing is high, the buzz is
not there, industry analyst Michael Nathanson said a few days
after the app appeared, noting that his own children were
totally indifferent to it. Somehow, a company with three celebrated
animation studios and one of the world's largest collections of
cartoons had failed to generate much interest from young viewers.
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Nobody came to me yesterday and said we should get
HBO Max Now. Dad zaslof Now, dealing with his new
company's ballooning costs and vaporized cash flow, implemented a multi
billion dollar cost cutting plan that touched every part of
the Warner Brothers business. It particularly irked creatives, including cartoonists,
who felt they were even more vulnerable to the scythe
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swinging than their peers in live action. When cutts hit
Turner classic movies. For example, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese
jumped on a zoom with Zaslov and ultimately won some
concessions for the cherished Classic Film channel, who would ride
to cartoon networks rescue. The animation industry's stars weren't famous
actors or silver tongue directors. They were fictional characters, by
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and large, a bunch of anthropomorphic animals and bug eyed
misfits with nebulous executive function skills. Samurai Jack and Gumball
couldn't exactly roll up to the boss's mansion in sweet talk,
budget protections over cocktails and sign autographs for the nephews.
Quite possibly, the cartoonists were screwed. In twenty twenty three,
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Warner Brothers revealed that it would be shutting down Cartoon
Network Studios home in Burbank and moving the remaining staffers
in to the Iceberg, the company's glistening, Frank Gary designed
offices a few miles away. What little remained of the
network's prized independence was over. Workers came in, painted over
the treasured mural of graffiti on the stairwell walls and
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pried the Cartoon Network logo off the building's facade. Van Partible,
the creator of Johnny Bravo, went back for one final
dispiriting look around. It was just really sad, he says.
Last fall, Cartoon Network began airing Barney's World, a sugary,
sweet reformulation of PBS's one time live action show starring
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the soft Purple Dinosaur. In the decade and a half
since the original series went off the air, the toymaker
Mattel had snapped up the Barney ip and concocted a
plan to revive it for the benefit of toddlers and shareholders.
It's exactly the kind of thing that people at Cartoon
Network would have once made fun of, says Semensky, the
former Cartoon Network executive. But in the current media environment,
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the dancing dinosaur is an important draw for the network
in the US and far beyond, according to Vanessa Brookman,
the Warner Brothers executive in London, in some regions such
as Latin America, where cord cutting has yet to decimate
cable and broadcast audiences to the same degree as in
the US, kids still spend sizeable chunks of time in
front of the family TV, she says. Along with Barney,
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the company is also developing a reboot of The Powerpuff
Girls and shooting spin offs of Adventure Time and Regular
Show this year. According to a company spokesperson, a seventh
season of The Amazing World of Gumball will make its
debut on Cartoon Network, as will new episodes of Total Drama,
Island reboot and Wee Baby Bears, both based on previous
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Cartoon Network shows. Brookman disputes the widely held presumption in
the animation community that Cartoon Network has largely given up
on originals. In April, it began airing roy Ocou baz Eanu,
a new series about a teenage girl with magical powers.
But in the current environment, Brookman says, reboots of past
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hits make good business sense. They're easier to market cross
culturally to global audiences, and middle aged parents are eager
to introduce the vintage Cartoon Network characters to their own kids,
the kind of multi generational on ramp that rivals like
Disney have been so good at building over the years.
The easiest way for me to do that now is
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to do it with our really beloved Ip Brookman, says.
Retired animator Robert Alvarez says of the future of the network,
Scooby Doo is like a vampire. You can't kill it.
In the meantime, Warner Brothers Discovery continues to rent out
pieces of its historic inventory as it keeps paying down
debt along the way. Most of Cartoon Network's past shows
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have been pulled from Max, either shelved to save money
on upkeep costs such as residual payments to writers and actors,
or licensed out to other streams services, primarily Walt Disney's Hulu.
The paucity reflects a recent turn in strategy. In December,
when Warner Brothers announced it would no longer pay for
exclusive new episodes of Sesame Street on Max. It conceded
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that the intended audience kids wasn't there. Based on consumer
usage and feedback, we've had to prioritize our focus on
stories for adults and families, a Max spokesman said at
the time. Meanwhile, much of the kid's material commissioned for
Max's launch in the eight and t years has already
been removed from the app, such as the short lived
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Elmo Talk Show, which has mercifully vanished. They went with
safe crap, which obviously failed. Alvarez says a recent perusal
of the Cartoon Network tile on the Max app revealed
a total of eleven series to choose from, out of
the hundreds of shows that have aired on the cable
channel over the years. If there remains a source of
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hope for Cartoon Network's more disillusioned fans and alumni, it
exists some two thousand miles away in Atlanta, where the
Adult Swim team still resides. On a Tuesday morning in February,
Michael Obalene, president of Cartoon Network, and head of Adult
Swim strolled through the hallways at the Williams Street studio.
If you squinted, it almost felt like the heady days
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of peak cartoon. Obaline went past a gaggle of young
art school grads in training and a room with a
guy animating a scene of a tree falling on a
screaming character. He walked into a windowless room where, amid
a smattering of tripods, cameras, and paper machet, workers were
preparing an elaborate April Fool stunt for the amusement of
the network's fans. Several weeks later, on April first, Adult
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Swim would broadcast a half hour special of its hit
show Rick and Morty reimagined as live action theater sketches. Obaline,
who helped to start Adult Swim more than two decades
ago and has worked in almost every aspect of animation
series creation from programming to marketing, says its viistion essentially
remains the same, find talented artists with a unique point
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of view and help them realize their vision. He points
out that it still maintains a shorts program to act
as a pipeline for new talent. Under the current iteration
artists can get between six and eight thousand dollars to
develop brief videos, roughly fifty of which are presented on
Adult Swim's YouTube channel every year. With cable TV audiences
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continuing to skew older, Warner Brothers keeps handing over large
chunks of cartoon Network's daily airtime to Adult Swim, which
at the moment seems poised to have a brighter future
than the Mother's Ship. It currently has two series in
production at Williams Street and five other new or recurring
series that will air new episodes in twenty twenty five.
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In late May, its biggest hit, Rick and Morty, will
come back for its eighth season, albeit without co creator
Justin Royland, who was forced out after being accused of
domestic violence. The charges were later dropped and inappropriate work
place behavior, which he has denied. Obaleene says there's been
no pressure from above to shift into reboot mode. We've
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never been questioned on why we do all originals. Right now,
everyone's fine with it, he says. For now, the network's
fate remains tied to the troubled fortunes of Warner Brothers,
which has lost more than sixty percent of its market
value since Zaslov took over. Earlier this year, the company
completed a reorganization that essentially carves out the legacy basic
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cable networks, including Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, from the
rest of the company's assets. On the morning of May eighth,
Warner Brothers revealed it had added another five point three
million streaming customers in the first three months of the year,
and that adjusted profit from the streaming unit had grown
to three hundred and thirty nine million dollars. Afterward, a
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CNBC reporter speculated on the air that Warner Brothers will
almost definitely spin off its new cable network's division, which
sent Warner Brothers share price soaring by as much as
a two point six percent, a strong sign that the
market is eager for Zaslov to jettison the aging channels.
Having paid down the company's debts significantly over the past
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three years, Zaslov is better positioned than ever to ramp
up the company's investment in original animation if he wants to.
To date, he's remained mum on his plans for Cartoon
Network and Adult Swim, while the future of animated kids
shows for TV looks iffy. At Warner Brothers, the company
is still pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into feature
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length animated movies for kids, which mostly continue to perform
well at the box office. Warner Brothers Pictures Animation has
several big animated movies slated for the actual distribution in
the years ahead, from a reboot of The Cat in
the Hat to a musical comedy titled Bad Fairies. Obaline
isn't worried about the future of animation at Warner Brothers,
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and beyond the entire history of cartoons, he points out,
has been marked by almost non stop technological disruption. Animation
is amazing at adapting to a different economic reality or
a different consumption habit, he says. Even so, Adult Swim
will have to continue to grapple with the same downward
viewership pressure that is affecting all of cable TV. According
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to Variety's year end analysis of Nielsen Raiding's data, in
twenty fourteen, Adult Swim averaged one point three million total
viewers in prime time. By last year, that figure had
dropped to two hundred and ten thousand. Fortunately, Adult Swims
shows tend to live easily these days. Alongside the kind
of prestige HBO dramas, edgy comedies, and DA twenty four
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movies that have come to largely define Max's core offerings.
In February, Adult Swim began airing Common Side Effects, a
comedy caper about an amateur scientist who discovers in the
mountains of Peru magic mushrooms capable of healing just about
every human ailment, and is subsequently hunted down by a
shadowy cabal of big pharma execs. The bloody, paranoid Gonzo
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show seems perfectly engineered for the current make America Healthy
Again moment. It's the output of an impressive creative pedigree
that includes a former writer for Veep, the co creator
of Scavenger's Reign, and Mike Judge from King of the
Hill and Beavis and butt Head. Following its debut, Common
Side Effects regularly appeared in the top ten most popular
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series on Max, and among critics, it has received the
kind of effusive praise often reserved for o tour driven
serialized dramas. In March, Warner Brothers announced it was re
upping the show for a second season, a rare bit
of good news amid the broader funk hanging over the
industry see Obaline says we can have nice things.
The Cartoon Network's last gasp. Cartoon Network used to generate
big profits cranking out nutty, surrealist animation for TV audiences,
but with the cable bundle melting and the streaming service
Max pulling back from kid's programming, the future of the
brand looks precarious by Felix Gillette read aloud by Mark Ledorf.
(00:24):
One night in August, a group of animators headed out
on foot through the streets of Burbank, California, cloaked in
Mission Impossible style black outfits. At about ten p m.
The crew arrived at its destination, a deserted office disconcertingly
close to the neighborhood police station. For decades, the building
had served as the bustling studio of Cartoon Network, which,
(00:46):
like much of the cable universe, has fallen on challenging times.
Until recently, the facility was a place where young animators
day dreamed of launching their creations into the world. Now
it sat empty and foreboding, another reminder of the grizzly
costcuts that had been sweeping through Cartoon Network's parent company,
Warner Brothers. On the sidewalk outside, the animators hurriedly set
(01:09):
up a generator, a projector and a laptop outfitted with
video loop software, and hit play. For the next several minutes,
an animated vignette played on repeat across the building's facade.
A large disembodied hand clutching a pencil rubs out cartoon
network from the top of the building, then tries to
erase a nearby worker who scampers for safety. After a
(01:32):
brief pursuit, a pack of colleagues band together and collectively
shove away the menacing pencil pusher. The film ends with
an unsubtle message, dear studios, don't erase animation jobs. The
group circulated the video online, adding to an expanding body
of work bemoaning the state of the US animation industry,
(01:52):
where concerns about unemployment are high. New series scarce oversees
outsourcing rampant, and anxiety over artific intelligence widespread among online commentators.
Much of the resulting ire has been directed at David Zaslov,
the chief executive officer at Warner Brothers Discovery, who's emerged
as a frequent target in Hollywood since orchestrating the stormy
(02:15):
twenty twenty two merger of WarnerMedia with Discovery. Discovery was
best known for low cost reality TV and crime shows,
and not known at all for animation. On Zaslov's Watch,
sweeping cuts have roiled the combined company's animation assets. Beyond
the shuttering of the old Cartoon Network Studios, Warner Brothers
(02:36):
has backed out of theatrically distributing several almost completed animated movies,
including Fixed, a feature from revered cartoon o tour Gendy
Tartakovsky since picked up by Netflix. It pulled the plug
on the Boomerang Network's standalone animation streaming service. It closed
Rooster Teeth, a subsidiary in Austin that made several popular
(02:57):
animated web series, and it removed numerous animated movies, classic
Looneytunes shows, and Cartoon Network programs from the company's streaming
service Max. Somewhere amid the changes, hashtag rip Cartoon Network
started trending on x while animation fans circulated hashtag fire
David Zaslof on YouTube. Discovery came in and it went
(03:21):
downhill fast, says Robert Alvarez, a retired animator who worked
on popular Cartoon Network shows from the mid nineties until
twenty twenty three. In August Warner Brothers announced it was
taking a nine point one billion dollar charge writing down
the value of its traditional TV networks, which include, along
with the Discovery Channel and Cartoon Network, the Food Network,
(03:43):
TBS and TNT. Warner Brothers doesn't break out the individual
financial performance of each channel, but Cartoon Network struggles have
certainly contributed to the downturn. According to estimates from S
and P Global Market Intelligence, the annual advertising revenue for
US Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, its spinoff animation brand
for grown ups, plummeted from six hundred and sixty eight
(04:06):
point three million dollars in twenty fourteen to one hundred
and thirty three point seven million dollars last year. The
viability of the Cartoon Network brand in streaming doesn't look
much more promising. A few years ago, network executives were
touting Max as the next natural step in Cartoon Network's evolution,
but since its debut five years ago, a string of
(04:28):
programming misfires and increased competition from YouTube have meant that
Max has largely failed to emerge as a go to
destination for young viewers. According to data from Precise TV,
a video advertising firm, only thirteen percent of ten to
twelve year old viewers have recently watched programming on Max,
versus thirty two percent for Hulu, fifty seven percent for
(04:51):
Disney Plus, and seventy two percent for Netflix. Among preschool audiences,
the numbers for Max are even worse. The company recently
decided that children's programming is no longer a core part
of Max's strategy, further clouting cartoon networks prospects. Cartoon networks
struggles have been playing out at a time when animation
(05:12):
at large has arguably never been more popular. From Dog
Man and Inside Out two to the Super Mario Brothers movie,
animated features continue to rule the box office. Bluey, a
cartoon series from Australia that Cartoon Network executives once unsuccessfully
sought to license, has been a huge hit for Disney Plus,
and animated shows such as Pepa Pig and Cocoa Melon
(05:36):
regularly attract big audiences of youngsters on Netflix. The global
anime market is projected to grow from thirty four point
two billion dollars in twenty twenty four to sixty point
one billion dollars by twenty thirty, according to research by
Jeffrey's Financial Surely, many animation fans still hope there is
room for the Cartoon Network brand to flourish once again.
(05:58):
Vanessa Brookman, a Warner Brothers executive in London who manages
the brand abroad, says that the network has a strong,
growing presence overseas, and that the company is dialing up
its investment in adult Swim's older skewing shows, which give
better with Max's current strategy. Both Zaslof and Sam Register,
the head of Warner Brothers Animation, who now oversees Cartoon
(06:21):
Network studios and its diminished output of shows, declined to
speak to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Brookman attributes the online uproar over
the cutbacks at Cartoon Network to pent up nostalgia for
the time when it was first emerging as an engine
of cutting edge animation on par with the most esteemed
anime shops in Japan. She says she's optimistic about the
(06:43):
network's current direction. It's not maybe how the fans remember it,
the executive says, but it's not dead. About a decade
after Ted Turner started CNN, he came up with an
idea for a new cable channel that would air cartoons
at all hours, not just on Saturday morning or after school.
In nineteen ninety one, he bought Hanna Barbera Productions, a
(07:06):
mother load of classic series Scooby Doo, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones,
The Jetsons, and The Smurfs, among many others. The next
year he started Cartoon Network, initially reaching some two million
US homes. The tricky job of figuring out which of
the thousands of episodes to air each day largely fell
to an omnivorous consumer of pop culture named Mike Lazo.
(07:29):
Around Cartoon Network's offices in Atlanta, Lazo was hard to
miss with his shoulder length blonde hair, puckish eyes, and
curious wardrobe including fishing hats and kilts. He looked more
like a new wave pop star than a corporate middle manager.
As they fiddled with the network's schedule, Lazo and his
small team studied the competition. In the early nineties, critics
(07:51):
were buzzing over Nickelodeon, sum to Redstone's Channel for Kids
and its two growing hits, Rugrats and The Wren and
Stempy Show. Lazzo's crew concluded that rather than just airing
endless Hanna Barbera reruns, Cartoon Network should also make shows
of its own. We went to Ted and said, give
us money for originals, Lazo recalls, and he just threw
(08:13):
us out of his office. Admittedly, Lazo's team had zero
experience in such endeavors. What they needed was a clever
idea and some minimal proof of production competence. At the time,
the entertainment industry was enthralled with the drama taking place
in late night comedy. In nineteen ninety two, Johnny Carson
retired from The Tonight Show, touching off a fierce succession battle.
(08:37):
That summer, HBO began airing The Larry Sanders Show, a
parody of a late night show that successfully drafted off
interest in the real world power struggle. Critics adored it,
and so did LASO. The cartoon network staff aimed to
do something similar on a threadbare budget. They cobbled together
a pilot for a parody of a talk show hosted
(08:58):
by Space Ghost, a caped intergalactic crime fighter with laser
shooting fists who'd starred in a nineteen sixties Hanna Barbera
series by splicing together clips of the vintage cartoon hero
with TV footage of contemporary real world personalities such as
comedian Carrot Top and Bill Nye, the Science Guy. They
(09:18):
were able to mimic the familiar patter of a Hollywood
talk show. Turner, impressed by the bizarre mashup of animation
and celebrity, gave a thumbs up to Space Ghost Coast
to Coast, which would go on to run for eleven
critically admired seasons, and agreed to fund more series. For years,
American cartoons had been mired in mediocrity for much of
(09:40):
the nineteen eighties. Shows based on toy lines from Transformers
to Gi Joe crowded the airwaves. The Cartoon Network team
thought the merchandise driven shows lacked the feral ingenuity of
animation's early years, when imaginative, wigged out directors like Tex
Avery and Chuck Jones ruled the rambunctious medium. It was
time they agreed to re embrace a creator driven approach.
(10:05):
Cartoon Network announced in nineteen ninety four that it was
teaming up with its corporate siblings at Hanna Barbera to
sponsor a new shorts program. Forty eight six to seven
minute cartoons would be chosen from an open call for submissions,
then aired on the network. They would turn the best
ones into recurring series. Before long, the Shorts initiative ushered
(10:25):
in a wave of popular, long running shows appealing to
elementary school kids and young adults, including Dexter's Laboratory from
Tartakovski about a science prodigy with a flare for mayhem,
Johnny Bravo from Van Partible, about a preening airhead and
his dating misadventures, and The powerpuff Girls by Craig McCracken,
(10:46):
about a trio of precocious, pint size superheroes. As Cartoon
Network grew, its staff settled into offices at Turner's Broadcasting
Center on the site of a former country club in Atlanta.
There Lazo's team inj Roid Life as the Campus Oddballs.
They held an annual Velma Day in honor of the
nerdy Scooby Doo heroine on April Fool's Day. Each year,
(11:08):
they pulled pranks on their viewers, such as scheduling around
the clock marathon of Screwy Squirrel, a wickedly deviant cartoon
from the nineteen forties. When they attended animation trade shows,
they'd bring back costumes and parade around the office park
dressed as monsters and villains. Over time, the mischievous spirit
of Lazo's staff came to define the Cartoon Network brand,
(11:31):
and legions of absurdism loving cartoon heads happily gobbled up
whatever they were serving. Before long, Cartoon Network was starting
to rank as one of the ten highest rated channels
on cable TV, and while the network never spawned a
hit as massively popular as Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants, it consistently
delivered cult classics, including Tartakovsky's Samurai Jack, Pendleton, Ward's Adventure Time,
(11:57):
John Dilworth's Couraged the Cowardly Dog, and Rebecca Sugars to
Stephen Universe. Those shows hooked fans who eventually found themselves
exploring the broader Cartoon Network cosmos. Primarily, children watch cartoons,
but adults watch cartoons too. Turner would later tell an
interviewer from the Television Academy on the average evening, more
(12:18):
adults are tuned to the Cartoon Network than are tuned
to CNN. In nineteen ninety six, as a wave of
consolidation swept through the cable industry, Turner sold his company
to Time Warner, an entertainment conglomerate already well versed in
the cartoon business, Warner Brothers Animation was one of Hollywood's
revered studios, home to Bugs, Bunny and Daffy Duck. As
(12:41):
the merger progressed, Time Warner announced it would shut down
the Hanna Barbera Studios in LA where Cartoon Networks handful
of original shows were in production, and move everyone nearby
under the same roof. The cartoonists would work alongside their
corporate cousins. Right away, the two cultures struggled to mesh.
For the most part, Warner Brothers Animation was focused on
(13:02):
lavish reboots of its famous characters for a new generation,
while Cartoon Network was all about conjuring novel universes from
scratch on shoe string budgets. Some skeptics inside Time Warner
questioned Cartoon Network's approach. Why not just make shows based
on intellectual property that kids were already primed to devour.
(13:23):
I remember having huge fights in the nineteen nineties with
the ad salespeople who wanted to put toy shows on
our air. Lazo says we were mostly able to keep
it off the air and concentrate on original voices. By
two thousand, Cartoon Network executives were able to open their
own animation studio in Burbank. To make it feel like home,
(13:44):
managers handed out cans of spray paint to their incoming animators.
Soon a mosaic of colorful doodles was spreading across the
facility's main stairwell. The same playful vibe that enlivened the
on air brand took root, with each floor featuring a
particular culinary attraction, a soda fountain machine, a candy smorgas board,
(14:05):
even a pancake station. Cartoon Network studios favored a creator
centric approach. New episodes would unfold with an artist in
front of a storyboard, sculpting the plot lines, writing the dialogue,
and fine tuning the jokes. A lot of control was
given to the artists because we felt that they would
do right by the shows, says Linda Semensky, a creative
(14:27):
executive who joined Cartoon Network from Nickelodeon during the early
days and who now teaches a class on the history
of animation at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time,
roughly a third of the network's audience was adults, not kids,
a dynamic that shaped its programming strategy, where Nickelodeon intensely
focused on elementary schoolers, Cartoon Network artists pursued edgier, more
(14:50):
convoluted stories that appealed to a broader demographic, from tweens
to college kids, basically anyone who loved animation. We used
to explain it as we target a psychographic, not a demographic,
Semensky says. The resulting shows, from Maxwell Adams The Grim
Adventures of Billy and Mandy to h Greenblat's Chowder were
(15:12):
often comically absurd and crammed with slapstick gags, screwy punchlines,
and surreal atmospheres. Disney was the kid in the class
that's sitting in front raising their hand, Simensky says, Nickelodeon
was the kid in the middle making jokes, and Cartoon
Network was the kid all the way in the back
row shooting spitballs. Almost overnight, the studio turned into a
(15:35):
powerful magnet for early career animators, many of whom arrived
fresh out of art school with their imaginations on fire.
The pay wasn't great, former Cartoon Network animators say, but
the opportunities for creative advancement were unmatched. New arrivals were
integrated into an apprentice system that could quickly transform a
jitterary twenty something into a steady handed showrunner. Everyone was
(15:59):
encouraged to pitch ideas for series, and most of what
got picked for the line up came from within their
youthful ranks. Meanwhile, the Round the Clock Animation Network was
grappling with a persistent business challenge. Most of their advertisers
were reluctant to buy commercial airtime at night when kids
were asleep, and so in two thousand and one, Cartoon
(16:19):
Network announced it was turning a chunk of the night
time schedule into a new programming block, beginning at ten
p m. Two nights a week, geared toward grown up audiences.
The network called it Adult Swim. Adult Swim showed a
cackling mix of subversive originals alongside reruns of irreverent animated
programs from other channels, including Matt Grunning's Futurama and Seth
(16:43):
MacFarlane's Family Guy, which had originally aired on Fox. From
the start, it was a winning late night recipe that,
as legions of college students could soon attest, paired particularly
well with dorm room bong hits. Advertisers feasted on it.
Inside a former carpet factory in Atlanta, across a highway
(17:03):
from Turner's original campus. Adult Swim built a second studio
dubbed Williams Street, which cranked out droll marketing promos and
batches of new bizarro shows. By the twenty tens, according
to people familiar with the company's financials who asked not
to be named discussing non public information, the two headed
network was regularly generating one billion dollars or so in
(17:26):
annual sales and roughly five hundred million dollars in profit.
Looking back, former executives say the key to all the
success from Cartoon Network significant profits to its sizeable pile
of Emmy awards was there independence. Without adequate breathing room
from Warner Brothers Animation, they say, none of it would
have been possible. We'll be right back with The Cartoon
(17:48):
Network's Last Gasp. Welcome back to the Cartoon Network's Last Gasp.
David Zaslov, a dexterous acrobat and prodigious dropper of names,
was just getting started puffing up his new media empire.
It was April twenty six, twenty twenty two, and weeks
(18:09):
earlier the Telecom giant. AT and T had ended its rocky,
short lived foray into Hollywood by spinning off Cartoon Network's
parent company, WarnerMedia, into the merger with Discovery Zaslov, addressing
investors on a quarterly earnings call for the first time
as the new CEO, praised the company's name, brand, entertainers,
and assets at various points, calling out Oprah, Winfrey, Harry Potter,
(18:33):
Ted Lasso, Batman, Game of Thrones, Chip and Joanna Gaines, Euphoria,
the Gilded Age, ninety Day Fiancee, the Olympics, the Food Network,
the Big Bang Theory, Looney Tunes, and CNN, which he
described as a true reputational asset and invoked no less
than seventeen times. Not once did he mention Cartoon Network
(18:56):
or Adult Swim. The previous years under a AT and
T had done much to dull Cartoon Networks shine. Leading
up to the rollout of Max in twenty twenty, AT
and T vowed to build a streaming service that could
compete head to head with Netflix, in part by loading
up on original programming, including series for kids. At first,
(19:17):
Cartoon Network employees assumed its management team would be tapped
to lead the charge. Instead they were largely marginalized. To
build buzz for the new app, Max executives trolled the
broader market for kids shows based on conventional unlikely to
fail ip. Among other splurges, they acquired an expensive package
of streaming rights to Sesame Street and the latest in
(19:39):
a long line of rebooted Looneytunes shows from Warner Brothers Animation.
They also commissioned a new talk show starring Elmo. Meanwhile,
Cartoon Network Studios adept at low cost original kids programming
mostly spun its wheels. Behind the scenes, AT and T
began planning a reorganization that, in the months ahead would
(20:00):
consolidate Cartoon Network Studios back in with Warner Brothers Animation,
essentially reinstating the uncomfortable arrangement that had proved so unpalatable
decades earlier. Feeling sidelined, several team members jumped ship, including Lazo,
who retired in the spring of twenty twenty. When AT
and T finally rolled out HBO Max later rechristened Max,
(20:23):
sign ups were sluggish, pricing is high, the buzz is
not there, industry analyst Michael Nathanson said a few days
after the app appeared, noting that his own children were
totally indifferent to it. Somehow, a company with three celebrated
animation studios and one of the world's largest collections of
cartoons had failed to generate much interest from young viewers.
(20:45):
Nobody came to me yesterday and said we should get
HBO Max Now. Dad zaslof Now, dealing with his new
company's ballooning costs and vaporized cash flow, implemented a multi
billion dollar cost cutting plan that touched every part of
the Warner Brothers business. It particularly irked creatives, including cartoonists,
who felt they were even more vulnerable to the scythe
(21:07):
swinging than their peers in live action. When cutts hit
Turner classic movies. For example, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese
jumped on a zoom with Zaslov and ultimately won some
concessions for the cherished Classic Film channel, who would ride
to cartoon networks rescue. The animation industry's stars weren't famous
actors or silver tongue directors. They were fictional characters, by
(21:31):
and large, a bunch of anthropomorphic animals and bug eyed
misfits with nebulous executive function skills. Samurai Jack and Gumball
couldn't exactly roll up to the boss's mansion in sweet talk,
budget protections over cocktails and sign autographs for the nephews.
Quite possibly, the cartoonists were screwed. In twenty twenty three,
(21:53):
Warner Brothers revealed that it would be shutting down Cartoon
Network Studios home in Burbank and moving the remaining staffers
in to the Iceberg, the company's glistening, Frank Gary designed
offices a few miles away. What little remained of the
network's prized independence was over. Workers came in, painted over
the treasured mural of graffiti on the stairwell walls and
(22:15):
pried the Cartoon Network logo off the building's facade. Van Partible,
the creator of Johnny Bravo, went back for one final
dispiriting look around. It was just really sad, he says.
Last fall, Cartoon Network began airing Barney's World, a sugary,
sweet reformulation of PBS's one time live action show starring
(22:38):
the soft Purple Dinosaur. In the decade and a half
since the original series went off the air, the toymaker
Mattel had snapped up the Barney ip and concocted a
plan to revive it for the benefit of toddlers and shareholders.
It's exactly the kind of thing that people at Cartoon
Network would have once made fun of, says Semensky, the
former Cartoon Network executive. But in the current media environment,
(23:02):
the dancing dinosaur is an important draw for the network
in the US and far beyond, according to Vanessa Brookman,
the Warner Brothers executive in London, in some regions such
as Latin America, where cord cutting has yet to decimate
cable and broadcast audiences to the same degree as in
the US, kids still spend sizeable chunks of time in
front of the family TV, she says. Along with Barney,
(23:25):
the company is also developing a reboot of The Powerpuff
Girls and shooting spin offs of Adventure Time and Regular
Show this year. According to a company spokesperson, a seventh
season of The Amazing World of Gumball will make its
debut on Cartoon Network, as will new episodes of Total Drama,
Island reboot and Wee Baby Bears, both based on previous
(23:48):
Cartoon Network shows. Brookman disputes the widely held presumption in
the animation community that Cartoon Network has largely given up
on originals. In April, it began airing roy Ocou baz Eanu,
a new series about a teenage girl with magical powers.
But in the current environment, Brookman says, reboots of past
(24:08):
hits make good business sense. They're easier to market cross
culturally to global audiences, and middle aged parents are eager
to introduce the vintage Cartoon Network characters to their own kids,
the kind of multi generational on ramp that rivals like
Disney have been so good at building over the years.
The easiest way for me to do that now is
(24:28):
to do it with our really beloved Ip Brookman, says.
Retired animator Robert Alvarez says of the future of the network,
Scooby Doo is like a vampire. You can't kill it.
In the meantime, Warner Brothers Discovery continues to rent out
pieces of its historic inventory as it keeps paying down
debt along the way. Most of Cartoon Network's past shows
(24:50):
have been pulled from Max, either shelved to save money
on upkeep costs such as residual payments to writers and actors,
or licensed out to other streams services, primarily Walt Disney's Hulu.
The paucity reflects a recent turn in strategy. In December,
when Warner Brothers announced it would no longer pay for
exclusive new episodes of Sesame Street on Max. It conceded
(25:14):
that the intended audience kids wasn't there. Based on consumer
usage and feedback, we've had to prioritize our focus on
stories for adults and families, a Max spokesman said at
the time. Meanwhile, much of the kid's material commissioned for
Max's launch in the eight and t years has already
been removed from the app, such as the short lived
(25:35):
Elmo Talk Show, which has mercifully vanished. They went with
safe crap, which obviously failed. Alvarez says a recent perusal
of the Cartoon Network tile on the Max app revealed
a total of eleven series to choose from, out of
the hundreds of shows that have aired on the cable
channel over the years. If there remains a source of
(25:56):
hope for Cartoon Network's more disillusioned fans and alumni, it
exists some two thousand miles away in Atlanta, where the
Adult Swim team still resides. On a Tuesday morning in February,
Michael Obalene, president of Cartoon Network, and head of Adult
Swim strolled through the hallways at the Williams Street studio.
If you squinted, it almost felt like the heady days
(26:18):
of peak cartoon. Obaline went past a gaggle of young
art school grads in training and a room with a
guy animating a scene of a tree falling on a
screaming character. He walked into a windowless room where, amid
a smattering of tripods, cameras, and paper machet, workers were
preparing an elaborate April Fool stunt for the amusement of
the network's fans. Several weeks later, on April first, Adult
(26:42):
Swim would broadcast a half hour special of its hit
show Rick and Morty reimagined as live action theater sketches. Obaline,
who helped to start Adult Swim more than two decades
ago and has worked in almost every aspect of animation
series creation from programming to marketing, says its viistion essentially
remains the same, find talented artists with a unique point
(27:04):
of view and help them realize their vision. He points
out that it still maintains a shorts program to act
as a pipeline for new talent. Under the current iteration
artists can get between six and eight thousand dollars to
develop brief videos, roughly fifty of which are presented on
Adult Swim's YouTube channel every year. With cable TV audiences
(27:25):
continuing to skew older, Warner Brothers keeps handing over large
chunks of cartoon Network's daily airtime to Adult Swim, which
at the moment seems poised to have a brighter future
than the Mother's Ship. It currently has two series in
production at Williams Street and five other new or recurring
series that will air new episodes in twenty twenty five.
(27:45):
In late May, its biggest hit, Rick and Morty, will
come back for its eighth season, albeit without co creator
Justin Royland, who was forced out after being accused of
domestic violence. The charges were later dropped and inappropriate work
place behavior, which he has denied. Obaleene says there's been
no pressure from above to shift into reboot mode. We've
(28:08):
never been questioned on why we do all originals. Right now,
everyone's fine with it, he says. For now, the network's
fate remains tied to the troubled fortunes of Warner Brothers,
which has lost more than sixty percent of its market
value since Zaslov took over. Earlier this year, the company
completed a reorganization that essentially carves out the legacy basic
(28:28):
cable networks, including Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, from the
rest of the company's assets. On the morning of May eighth,
Warner Brothers revealed it had added another five point three
million streaming customers in the first three months of the year,
and that adjusted profit from the streaming unit had grown
to three hundred and thirty nine million dollars. Afterward, a
(28:49):
CNBC reporter speculated on the air that Warner Brothers will
almost definitely spin off its new cable network's division, which
sent Warner Brothers share price soaring by as much as
a two point six percent, a strong sign that the
market is eager for Zaslov to jettison the aging channels.
Having paid down the company's debts significantly over the past
(29:09):
three years, Zaslov is better positioned than ever to ramp
up the company's investment in original animation if he wants to.
To date, he's remained mum on his plans for Cartoon
Network and Adult Swim, while the future of animated kids
shows for TV looks iffy. At Warner Brothers, the company
is still pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into feature
(29:30):
length animated movies for kids, which mostly continue to perform
well at the box office. Warner Brothers Pictures Animation has
several big animated movies slated for the actual distribution in
the years ahead, from a reboot of The Cat in
the Hat to a musical comedy titled Bad Fairies. Obaline
isn't worried about the future of animation at Warner Brothers,
(29:52):
and beyond the entire history of cartoons, he points out,
has been marked by almost non stop technological disruption. Animation
is amazing at adapting to a different economic reality or
a different consumption habit, he says. Even so, Adult Swim
will have to continue to grapple with the same downward
viewership pressure that is affecting all of cable TV. According
(30:15):
to Variety's year end analysis of Nielsen Raiding's data, in
twenty fourteen, Adult Swim averaged one point three million total
viewers in prime time. By last year, that figure had
dropped to two hundred and ten thousand. Fortunately, Adult Swims
shows tend to live easily these days. Alongside the kind
of prestige HBO dramas, edgy comedies, and DA twenty four
(30:38):
movies that have come to largely define Max's core offerings.
In February, Adult Swim began airing Common Side Effects, a
comedy caper about an amateur scientist who discovers in the
mountains of Peru magic mushrooms capable of healing just about
every human ailment, and is subsequently hunted down by a
shadowy cabal of big pharma execs. The bloody, paranoid Gonzo
(31:02):
show seems perfectly engineered for the current make America Healthy
Again moment. It's the output of an impressive creative pedigree
that includes a former writer for Veep, the co creator
of Scavenger's Reign, and Mike Judge from King of the
Hill and Beavis and butt Head. Following its debut, Common
Side Effects regularly appeared in the top ten most popular
(31:23):
series on Max, and among critics, it has received the
kind of effusive praise often reserved for o tour driven
serialized dramas. In March, Warner Brothers announced it was re
upping the show for a second season, a rare bit
of good news amid the broader funk hanging over the
industry see Obaline says we can have nice things.
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In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.