ThoughtnamiA friendly little reminder from your bud over at Thoughtnami. Something I made many, many moons ago, but the message remains the same.
Do keep this in mind before you go crazy spazzing out about whatever new live-action thing pops up there. The cycle repeats itself over and over:
… it would be nicer if they put some of the many OTHER new non-Teen Titans DC Nation shorts that’s already done.
Otherwise, it kind of cements the belief they only want to see the more comedic Teen Titans Go instead of Young Justice every week.
So, it’s possible that you folks over at Cartoon Network could be losing Clone Wars by the end of the spring.
Don’t cry.
Seriously, don’t cry about this Cartoon Network. When Disney bought Lucasfilm … hell, when Lucasfilm gave syndication rights of Clone Wars to an outside company rather than Warner Bros … you know your time was up.
Kind of surprised Clone Wars went on as long as it did to be honest, but now comes an uncomfortable truth.
You guys are screwed when it comes to straight action, but for some odd reason, I don’t think you guys mind. I mean, granted, you scrapped DC Nation two weeks after it returned from a three-month hiatus and gave it yet another three-month hiatus and burying repeats on Boomerang, which, like Disney XD, is a network barely anyone gets.
You cancelled ThunderCats because of low toy sales and Sym-Bionic Titan because … low toy sales? I always thought you had to have toys to sell low before you pull that excuse, but what do I know? And when this season of Clone Wars ends, the only action franchise you’ll have is Ben 10.
And forget Toonami. That bridge has burned, and you and that block are never, ever, ever getting back together. And I’m cool with that; it’s in a much better place.
Then again, maybe you guys are happy about that. Now you can get your wish and only have one action cartoon on the lineup. All comedy’s the future of Cartoon Network, right? Rerun upon rerun of your nine major shows (Adventure Time, Gumball, Regular Show, The Looney Tunes Show, Mad, Ninjago, Annoying Orange, Johnny Test, and Level Up) in every open slot.
Notice I didn’t point out Dragons: Riders of Berk in that list. While it is repeated a lot, that show may be headed to an all-animation channel that Dreamworks and Fox are contemplating creating together. And that has a lot of interesting possibilities too, including one that could pretty much destroy the drawing power of Adult Swim, namely the Seth MacFarlane repeats that rule the ratings there.
But that’s further down the line and still in the planning stages. The Clone Wars leaving Cartoon Network is happening sooner than that.
My question is does action cartoons even have a place at Cartoon Network? Maybe expanding DC Nation to two hours every week could bring new life to it, especially if you bring back a library series like Batman: The Animated Series (pry that bad boy away from The Hub, a channel that, like Boomerang and Disney XD, barely anybody gets), Legion of Super Heroes, or Justice League (I’d recommend Teen Titans, but Teen Titans Go airing during the block would make it half Teen Titans in total, and that’s more of a comedic series than an action series). Or, better yet, turn the shorts that aren’t made by Aardman into a weekly showcase series ala the old Space Ghost or Galaxy Trio shorts.
Speaking of those characters, perhaps now is the time to reinvent those old Hanna-Barbera Super Adventures characters for the 21st century in a new, action-packed series. Produce it in-house at Cartoon Network Studios rather than Warner Bros. Animation. It could be something worth getting into, especially if you have the right creators who were actually fans of the originals.
Just don’t let the end of Clone Wars on Cartoon Network give you guys an excuse to get rid of serious action cartoons altogether. You need it. It’s a part of you. And a Cartoon Network without serious action-animated programming is a Cartoon Network I don’t want to see.
Memo to self: Forward this trade ad from 1957 to the powers-that-be at Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. Still relevant in 2012 as it was 55 years ago.
(Via Don M. Yowp)
You see this?
It’s fan art by a fan who happens to be one of the greatest action cartoon creators of our generation.
The problem is that he’s one of the last of a dying breed - the action cartoon creator. There’s a lot of them, but nobody really wants to show them in accessible timeslots.
It’s not that unfathomable that original 1st/2nd party action titles won’t be on Cartoon Network by 2022. Anything that isn’t Ben 10 tends to go away after a season due to lack of sales of products that don’t exist or some nonsense. Generator Rex’s last episodes were Lyokoed to iTunes. The final episodes of Sym-Bionic Titan and ThunderCats burned off their remaining episodes on Saturday mornings with VERY little promotion. The last episodes of Brave and the Bold weren’t advertised at all when they aired on Friday nights. And out of the blue, DC Nation was thrown off of Cartoon Network with the network saying it’ll be back in January.
Now, back to this Bruce Timm drawing of Wolverine.
This presents an interesting scenario that Cartoon Network has brought onto itself:
What if Bruce Timm jumped ship and joined Disney? It’s not as unthinkable as one would believe since there has been an exodus from Warner Bros to Disney in the last six years. You already have Paul Dini and Man of Action there doing Marvel shows.
Just imagine if Bruce Timm was the showrunner of a traditionally-drawn X-Men animated series.
It’s not that unfathomable to visualize, and I’m sure Disney wouldn’t mind having another one of the architects of the DC Animated Universe and the DC Universe animated films unit in their employ working the same kind of magic for the Marvel characters. And Warner Bros would have no one to blame but Cartoon Network, a channel that is pretty much adamant that comedy should be the dominant format of their programming, even inside their action shows.
That’s kind of depressing, and yet on the Marvel side, which is FINALLY getting their act together on the animation front, exciting to think about.
(via drawology)
@ the crossroads of Cahuenga Boulevard West and Barham Boulevard, Los Angeles, California.
Cahuenga Boulevard.
Cahuenga Boulevard.
CAHUENGA BOULEVARD!
My animation history fanboyism LOVES the fact that this sign’s on Cahuenga Boulevard, especially considering there was a great animation house that has a lot of ties to this network that was once on the 3400 block of that street.
And that’s … awesome.
(via adventuretime)
Here’s what I don’t understand about the whole DC Nation removal by Cartoon Network, besides the obvious (you know, the fact they removed the block two weeks after it returned):
Why are people blaming Young Justice’s inclusion of Stephanie Brown and the Milestone characters for it?
I’m scratching my head about why DC Comics seem to get rid of anything involving Stephanie Brown, a character who has gone by many monikers, including Spoiler, Robin, and Batgirl. They replaced her as Nightwing in the Smallville comics (they replaced her with Barbara Gordon), and hasn’t really appeared in the New 52 DC Comics universe.
Of course, neither has Cassandra Cain, but it seems more people tend to care more about Stephanie because … um, line please?
But then the fact that people are blaming the fact that there’s some kind of situation with the rights with the Milestone characters. Two of them, Icon and Rocket, previously appeared on the series, and another, Virgil Hawkins (better known by most folks as Static but erroneously referred to by many as Static Shock), was scheduled to be in the new episode. And if Milestone Media is having issues with the way DC Comics is handling their properties … more power to them! After the barely-there merger of the Dakota and DC Universes and the travesty that was Static Shock (mired by a lot of behind-the-scenes drama), DC Comics treated those properties like crap.
Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti gave Icon and Rocket their biggest audience by putting them on Young Justice, but now, maybe Milestone is looking to bring those characters elsewhere in another platform especially considering DC Comics isn’t willing or even thinking of giving those characters another showcase any time soon in any medium. It’s weird.
But right now, as far as I’ve been studying the situation, neither of those cases are the reason Cartoon Network scrapped DC Nation until at least January. Want to know why?
Because Green Lantern’s gone too.
Green Lantern didn’t have any issues that could have proven problematic as rights issues or some weird hang-up about a character some folks have an issue with for some odd reason. DC Comics owns everything about Green Lantern lock, stock, and barrel.
If there was an issue with ONE show, they wouldn’t get rid of BOTH shows.
It wasn’t a ratings issue either. Both Green Lantern and Young Justice have been strong performers for the network’s Saturday morning block, even against heavy-hitters like Spongebob Squarepants and Phineas and Ferb.
It has nothing to do with Cartoon Network’s poorly-managed 20th anniversary programming (I’ll explain why it’s poorly-managed on another site later on). Otherwise, they’d bring it back in November, not January.
So, what’s the real reason for why DC Nation was scrapped until January? Nobody knows. But I have a theory:
Cartoon Network paid a lot of money for a series that just isn’t working out for them.
The series spinoff of How to Train Your Dragon, Dragons: Riders of Berk, hasn’t been doing well on Cartoon Network’s lineup. The series recently moved from Tuesday nights to Wednesday nights. And they’re not doing well there either. So, and this is me doing some critical thinking, they started airing reruns on Saturday mornings after Clone Wars to try to siphon that series’ audience to watch that show. If audience numbers grow, Cartoon Network would more likely move the premiere of the new episodes to Saturday mornings after Clone Wars, probably in November. And by the time the series finishes its first season of 20 episodes on Saturday morning, DC Nation will return in its slot, and they’ll have an audience for Dragons when the second cycle of 20 episodes air.
Call me strange for thinking about this theory, but aside from declaring the programmers of Cartoon Network to be complete idiots, I have nothing else.
Just a theory, mind you.
Okay.
Trying to understand this.
Trying to piece together this series of events. I may skip a few things, so, bear with me a bit, or at least humor me.
Cartoon Network premieres DC Nation, a new block showcasing a pair of DC Comics-based programming, on March 3, 2012.
The block went on hiatus for the summer after the last new episode of Young Justice aired in June. The summer passed, and the block returned on September 29 with very little promotion on-air.
Two weeks after the block returns with new episodes, Cartoon Network unceremoniously takes DC Nation off the lineup replacing it with reruns of Dragons: Riders of Berk on Saturdays and reruns of Johnny Test on Sundays. No explanation was offered until many hours later in the tweet that is pictured above:.
Hey #DCNation fans! Have you heard?? DC Nation will return in January with all new episodes!
Now, people are panicking thinking they’re going to scrap Young Justice and Green Lantern altogether and replace it with Beware the Batman and Teen Titans Go when it returns in January. No proof to that, but the whole situation seems … what’s the word? … stupid.
It seems really really stupid.
I’m not panicking nor trying to cause alarm.
It just seems that something seems kind of off about this series of events and the way it transpired. Creators are left in the dark, and fans are disappointed, especially considering the block just came back two weeks ago. If it came back two months ago, there probably wouldn’t be such an uproar about the January return. But considering there was a three-month hiatus and now there’s another three-month hiatus happening, frustration is probably the tamest emotion to some fans.
Just seems … off. And stupid.
According to Cartoon Network’s official online schedule, DC Nation’s been put on hiatus for reasons unknown to us by Cartoon Network,replaced by an hour of Dragons on Saturday and Johnny Test on Sunday effective immediately.
There weren’t any clips released by the network this week for this weekend’s lineup, and now we know why.
Actually, no, we don’t know why. We don’t have a reason, we don’t have any answers, and we it just sort of happened. People are quick to blame Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Nickelodeon, a show that comes on a minute after DC Nation, although Cartoon Network tried to cut into that show this past weekend by overflowing the last minute of Young Justice.
No warning should make for an interesting morning and weekend. That said, here’s the feedback button.
You know what to do.
For those wondering where the Adult Swim reference was is that Cartoon Network 20th Birthday Party animation, look at 0:54.
The reference is related to these series of clips presented here.
At 2:30 PM on Saturday, October 6, 2012 on the coasts.
On Cartoon Network.
Actual Cartoon Network.
In the daytime.
Not Boomerang.
Cartoon Network.
Not lying.
Why do so many people think that the lineup is mostly live-action?
I see that response in nearly every outlet that talks about Cartoon Network. Someone makes a crack saying that the network’s crap because they got rid of the cartoons and replaced them with live-action shows. Someone else jumps in and say that the lineup is nearly all live-action and very few cartoons.
Neither statements are correct. The fact is for the first time in a good while, there are very few live-action shows on the Cartoon Network lineup right now (October 2012). There are exactly one and a half, Level Up and The Annoying Orange.
Here is today’s (10/05/12) schedule:
That’s a pretty typical daily lineup for Cartoon Network. But as you can see, it’s pretty much an all-animated lineup.
Not the half that so many people claim it is.
By comparison, here’s the Cartoon Network lineup from the same day (10/05) in 2009:
A live-action movie, three live-action shows.
Too far back? Well, let’s see the lineup from last year on the same day (10/05):
If you compare 2012 and 2001, you’ll see that 2012 has 300% less “CN Real” and 500% less Johnny Test.
Shocking, I know.
Today’s Cartoon Network really isn’t as bad as people think it is. Sure, they could cut back on the double airings and such, but still, a pretty solid, virtually live-action-free regular lineup.
