It is trying to appeal to a broad audience thorough a clever use of scheduling. That, unfortunately, backfired.Toecutter wrote:The problem with Cartoon Network is that it tries to satisfy all the genres of cartoons, thereby trying to satisfy way too many audiences (the toddlers and pre-schoolers, 5-10 year-olds, 11-18, and then the Adult Swim crowd).
Yes, I'd agree. Too bad it's a premium channel.Boomerang is a step in the right direction, for all the adults and kids who like the older stuff (especially the classic Hannah-Barbara cartoons). However, Toonami, Adult Swim, and the Action Saturday line-up are mixed breeds of anime, American action cartoons, and adult comedy stuff ("Family Guy", "Sealab 2021", etc).
While jeopardizing their content "exclusive on CN" system. But, not a bad idea... a "Carton in the stereotypical sense" channel then. XP.There are two courses of action Cartoon Network can take. The first is to cut the anime (which they've butchered as it is), along with some of the crappier adult cartoons they've fabbed with stock footage ("The Brak Show", "Sealab 2021"), replacing their line-up with nothing but the big animator-produced, American stuff (everything from the kiddie cartoons, to "Family Guy", but nothing Cartoon Network-made). For the successful stuff, like "Dexter's Laborotory", and "Powerpuff Girls", they should get a major player in the animation industry (i.e.: Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, etc) to make the cartoons, using the existing staff (so the animation style and plotlines aren't jeopardized). I'd suggest using Warner Bros. This way, they can solidify their WB-Cartoon Network sharing, as they have done with "Sailor Moon", "X-Men: Evolution", and "Jackie Chan Adventures".
Great idea. Instead of currently mixing in anime and organizing their blocks by type, they could just run theme/type blocks. Anime on the weekends, Crappy Cartoon^2 shows on weekdays, with crummy adult stuff at night.The second option, which I think is the better shot, is to re-organize all their cartoons into the appropriate categories, and make all-new specialty-cartoon shows (like Adult Swim, or Toonami), based off of those categories. For example, all anime would be shown on Saturdays, 11pm-2am again (like the original Adult Swim, which worked extremely well for college students with 8am classes). This program would be run the same way as the old-school Adult Swim (none of the crappy, "humorous" black backgrounds with white, Helvetica text, that chews up the extra time commercials or anime could be run).
The all-anime show would have the advantage of the "Adult Swim" scheduling, meaning they could run the anime un-editted. Having the anime-only crowd watching on Saturday nights would also allow them to put on appropriate commercials for that time-slot (RPG, gamesystem, and other anime/gamer related adult commercials, and not the crappy "Polly Pocket", life-insurance, or Zoobooks commercials they usually run at that time of night). The opportunity for the anime/gamer related industry to run their commercials at a particular time-slot, where they have a vast majority of their target customers watching would not only put us through less vomiting watching "Barbie" commercials", but would offer more business to the appropriate corporations, and give Cartoon Network the appropriate funding to get their hands on better anime.
Of course. Unfortunately, CN only sees one half of the audience, and that's the stereotypical ten year old who watches cartoon after school and on weekends. Although not intended to be an "adult swim" access control mechanism, CN just assumes aniem fans all have PVR boxes.Another plus in having the anime-only crowd watching, is that Cartoon Network could get away with running subbed-only anime! I know a lot of the more refined anime folks have nowhere to turn on digital cable to watch subbed-stuff, except for "Slayers" on the International Channel, or the non-subbed, non-dubbed versions of "Dragonball Z" and "Dragonball GT".
The same advantages for the other adult, American cartoons would be seen. In order for this plan to work, however, Cartoon Network has to ditch their least-favorite cartoons, and re-work their entire schedule, depending on the most efficient viewing times for the particular audiences. Also, more cartoons to fill the gaps in 13+ action cartoons would be required. For this category, C.N. has to get their hands on "Gargoyles", and the original animted version of "X-Men", which still has a huge following, and would be a great pre-cursor to running "X-Men: Evolution" (if they ever finish the series).
CN could use a new programming department.