Official Cartoon Network Thread!

[rocklobster]

Great news everyone! As I've read on the net, CN's new idea to do stupid reality shows is a resounding bomb. (does victory dance)
OK, so is anyone else happy to hear this? SHould we all get clue sticks to beat the execs with?

[Etoh*the*Greato]

This news is very excite for me.

[Yamamaya]

I think I officially despise CN now.


Come on, do not join in on the crapfest CN!

[Atria35]

CN might get the point with the ratings dropping. They want to make money. You can't do that if nobody's watching!

[Roy Mustang]

SHould we all get clue sticks to beat the execs with?

This wouldn't do any good. The only way for any changes at CN is to get rid of their current management, as Rob Sorcher, Rob Schwartz, and Stu Snyder need to get the axe. These guys don’t know what their doing and their track record proves it. They have a single-minded agenda obviously isn’t working and they are the source of all the problems at CN.

Look how much better USA Network is now since Rob Sorcher left it.

Most of CN Real have been canceled along with the block itself. However Dude, What Would Happen and Destroy Build Destroy continue to air on CN Real's old Wednesday night timeslot.





[color="Red"][font="Book Antiqua"]Col. Roy Mustang[/font][/color]

[battletech]

"CARTOON Network" " REALITY Show" DAH!!!!

[ShiroiHikari]

I was hoping this concept would fail miserably.

[Tsukuyomi]

*Sigh* The only reality-ish show on CN I liked was "Total Drama Island" XDD

Please notice I siad "ish" at the end of "reality" XD

[Nate]

Whoa, what happened? Last I checked, it was August 2010. Now it seems to be October 2009! Since, well, none of the shows outside of the two that Roy mentioned have even consistently aired since 2009, meaning it's in effect been dead for almost an entire year. And we're just NOW having a thread on it?

Looks like someone was going gravedigging on another site!

Oh I also like the double-standard for Nielsen ratings. When you hate something and the ratings are bad, it's always "HA HA LOOK AT THE TERRIBLE RATINGS THAT PROVES THIS SUCKS." When you like something and the ratings are bad it's always "NIELSEN RATINGS ARE UNRELIABLE AND I BET TONS OF PEOPLE ARE WATCHING THIS SHOW THE RATINGS DON'T MEAN A WHOLE LOT."

*wanders off to a thread with substance*

[bigsleepj]

This is the first that I've heard of CN Real, and I'm glad it hasn't reached our shores yet...

[TheSubtleDoctor]

Slightly off-topic but..

The conscious (and ultimately stubborn) decision to, by and large, phase anime out of the schedule has so obviously backfired. When CN discontinued showing Naruto, let Disney DX pick up Shippuden and allowed Nick Toons to snap up Dragon Ball Kai, they dug their own grave. Not that I particularly love the aforementioned shows, but Dragon Ball made Cartoon Network, and Naruto is a license to print money.

*EDIT: removed b/c I don't want to get into a debate about how easy/profitable it would/would not be to show anime five days a week

Back on topic...

Never heard of CNR either.

[ShiroiHikari]

Yeah, Cartoon Network has really slipped since the late 90s/early 2000s. Then again, what cable network hasn't slipped since then?

[ADXC]

Yay! I'm uber happy about this news. You see, kids don't want to see reality shows about kids, they want to see cartoons about kids.

[Roy Mustang]

All CN has to do is start showing Boondocks in the evening and boom, watch the ratings go up! But that is on Adult Swim and not the same network as CN anywa so, it was more of a laugh.


[font="Book Antiqua"][color="Red"]Col. Roy Mustang[/color][/font]

[ADXC]

So basically, if they sprinkled in Boondocks every other hour, they could show as much anime as they want? Maybe, pleeeeease?


*begging for a bone here*

Yeah right, like that would ever happen. XD

Honestly, to me, those comedy shows that they put on AS don't make a lick of sense to me. But I guess that's what ratings of 18-34 year old males is though....

[Roy Mustang]

The thing is, CN and AS as rating numbers don't go to each other as they treat them as two networks on the same channel.



[color="Red"][font="Book Antiqua"]Col. Roy Mustang[/font][/color]

[Yamamaya]

Oh I also like the double-standard for Nielsen ratings. When you hate something and the ratings are bad, it's always "HA HA LOOK AT THE TERRIBLE RATINGS THAT PROVES THIS SUCKS." When you like something and the ratings are bad it's always "NIELSEN RATINGS ARE UNRELIABLE AND I BET TONS OF PEOPLE ARE WATCHING THIS SHOW THE RATINGS DON'T MEAN A WHOLE LOT."

*wanders off to a thread with substance*

Whether or not a show has good or bad ratings does not prove if it is good or not. All it proves is that the target audience who watches that particulary network don't like the show.

[Nate]

Yeah, Cartoon Network has really slipped since the late 90s/early 2000s.

It got better, then started a slow decline. I remember when CN first started all they really had was a bunch of really old cartoons, mostly Looney Tunes and stuff like Tom and Jerry, Top Cat, Flintstones, that kind of thing.

CN really started picking up when it did its "What a Cartoon!" thing with its own original cartoons, many of which got turned into their own shows (Dexter's Lab, Cow and Chicken, Johnny Bravo, so on). And of course there was Toonami.

It's only recently started slipping with a bunch of really dumb decisions, mostly the fault of the executives in charge now (as Roy pointed out).

Then again, what cable network hasn't slipped since then?

...Cinemax?

[MomentOfInertia]

Good maybe they can replace it with an expansion of the Friday night block, or bring back Toonami.

Does anybody know how Unnatural History is doing? or if it's any good? Because I just pegged it as a Warehouse 13 knock off and skipped it.

Also why is Nicktoons running live action stuff?

[Roy Mustang]

Good maybe they can replace it with an expansion of the Friday night block, or bring back Toonami.

Why bring back Toonami, when it failed at the end. Toonami was great back in the day but around say 2006, it was a shadow of it's former self and the ratings went to crap on it.

Then again, what cable network hasn't slipped since then?

USA Network, they have some very good shows on like Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, Psych, Royal Pains, and White Collar. Really, a lot of our good shows on the cable network channels and not your base networks like NBC, ABC, CBS and CW.

One of the major problems is having Rob Sorcher as the Chief Content Officer at Cartoon Network. The reason why he is there is he has history at Cartoon Network, his TV producing career started at CN in 1995. He left and went to work at USA Network and then in 2005, he became the AMC programming executive in 2005. He’][color="Red"]Col. Roy Mustang
[/color][/font]

[MomentOfInertia]

I don't mean just turn it back on, the fact that it died indicates that it needed a serious overhaul.

[ashfire]

Adult Swim seems to have locked their forums sometime around July. I haven't received a message from the forum and when I went on there are locks on all discussions. I guess they got tried of dealing with the anime fans complaining about the lack of wanted anime.

[rocklobster]

What really irks me is that CN and others don't have to do this. There actually are some networks out there that still play to their niche. Two great examples are Comedy Central, which still plays (surprise!) comedy. Even The Colbert Report and The Daily Show count as comedy because they're parodies of Fox News. Another example is TCM, which still plays classic movies and shorts. They've even managed to snag some live-action movies from Disney's vault (like Pollyana), which I thought would never happen. So if those two networks can still play to their niche and get ratings, why can't CN?

[Nate]

"Still?" It may surprise you to learn that Comedy Central has not always played comedy shows 24/7. In fact, late at night, Comedy Central was (like quite a few cable channels) home to infomercials. And I can assure you those infomercials were not funny, at least, not intended to be funny, and were only funny in a "Ha ha this is so terrible" sort of way.

You're also, in fact, ignoring that "cartoon" is a very broad definition. Look at Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast. Yes, it was animated, but it had live-action guests on it. Does CG stuff count as cartoons? What about Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Does that count as a cartoon? It has cartoons IN it. What about Cool World?

I really don't care if CN wants to show live-action shows, as long as they're, y'know, GOOD. That's the funny part, is that everyone was ready to boycott CN Real and say "OH IT'S SO TERRIBLE" before they had even seen a single show. What if the shows had been really good? They weren't of course, but nobody cared. They only hated it because it was live-action, regardless of how good it is. The fact that the shows ended up sucking helped add fuel to the complaints and is why CN Real failed miserably and was ended in October of 2009 (though the two more popular shows stayed on, and a couple of the others have been rerun periodically).

You know a lot of people hated it when CN added anime. They were like "IT'S CARTOON NETWORK NOT ANIME NETWORK." But oh, when it's something you like, it's totally okay for the network to do. Double-standard ahoy!

[ShiroiHikari]

I still think that if they're going to show a lot of live action, a name change is in order because animation and live action aren't the same medium and a name like "Cartoon Network" implies all animation, all the time.

The programs' quality is largely irrelevant to me-- I still don't think they belong on an animation channel unless they were somehow relevant to the subject of animation.

Also, Cartoon Network seemed to be trying to imitate Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, because hot diggity dog, those networks both make tons of money. I'm just kind of offended by the fact that instead of trying to go after the same demographic with original, different programming, they're trying to lure them in by saying "HEY WE ARE JUST LIKE NICK AND DISNEY, AREN'T WE COOL?"

[Nate]

I dunno, I don't see it that way. I'm not offended that Papa John's, Pizza Hut, and Domino's Pizza serve chicken wings and breadsticks and pasta. I'm not upset that Taco Bell sells burritos. I'm not angry that Dunkin' Donuts sells bagels.

So why would I be angry at Cartoon Network showing live-action shows if the shows are of genuinely good quality?

I understand that yeah, they are trying to copy Nickelodeon to a degree, but if they can do it and have something worthwhile to watch, that's what matters to me.

Besides, you still have to answer the question of, what about shows like Reboot? Is that a cartoon or is it not? Some people might think that CG shows do not count as cartoons and thus Reboot should not be shown on there. You might disagree, but in their point of view, you're wrong because Reboot is clearly not animated.

[Sapphire225]

You have to wonder why Cartoon Network featured CN Real in the first place. I mean, it was on a downward slope already since most cartoons and Toonami was removed several years ago, but you would have thought they would realize that introducing reality TV to a network specifically for cartoons was a bad idea (C'mon, CARTOON Network). It just completely misses the point of the network.

Another funny thing is that the shows could have made better hits if they were on a different channel that was actually made for showing children reality game shows kinda like Nickelodeon or something.

[Nate]

My posts seem to have mysteriously turned invisible again. I wonder if there's a way to fix that?

[ShiroiHikari]

I dunno, I don't see it that way.

I see your point about taking names too literally. However, tacos and burritos are the same only one is rolled up and the other isn't. Unless you're talking about crunchy tacos, which are basically the same thing as tostadas except one's flat and the other isn't. Also with bagels and donuts-- well, they've both got holes and they're both bread-like, so what's the problem? Food is food. But animation is not live action. See what I mean?

Also, the problem I have with cable networks all trying to imitate each other is...well, why do we need 60 carbon copies of the same network? But that's a whole other topic.

[Nate]

Well yeah. All Mexican food is pretty much the same. "Meat, cheese, beans, and vegetables in a tortilla." Quick, which Mexican food did I describe there? The answer is all of them.

Well okay, maybe bagels were a bad example, but Dunkin' Donuts also serves bacon egg and cheese flatbread sandwiches, which have no holes. They also sell turkey sandwiches which aren't even breakfast. Also, Dairy Queen sells hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken strips, and fries, and "dairy" is even more vague than "donuts."

To answer your second question, we really don't need 60 carbon copies of the same network. That's very true. Still, when it existed, CN Real didn't make CN a carbon copy of Nickelodeon...CN still showed mostly cartoons except for a few hours a week. Now, the question is, and it cannot be answered because CN Real was of course axed almost a year ago, is "If CN Real had been successful, would CN have showed more live-action stuff and become more like Nickelodeon?" There's no way to tell, and I can certainly see how, if it had been wildly successful, the execs could've said "Okay then let's expand this brand further!" At the very least, I have nothing against its premise or how it was executed, since again, CN was still showing cartoons way more often than not.

Food is food. But animation is not live action. See what I mean?

Hmm, not really. Because "food" is pretty subjective too. Some cultures think grasshoppers and grubs are food. We don't. We think of cows and chickens as food but if there was some crazy ultra-vegan civilization somewhere they might be shocked that we thought of those animals as food.

But even putting "animation" in an overly broad sense doesn't work. Heavy Metal is vastly different from Spongebob Squarepants, and both of those are very different from Looney Tunes, and none of those are quite like the Flintstones.

This is a big reason why some people were very against Cartoon Network having anime, because anime feels and looks vastly different from American cartoons. This is why they were like "It's CARTOON Network not ANIME Network," and there are people out there who make a distinction between anime and cartoons, just like they make a distinction between manga and comics like X-Men. Whether that's right or not, is a matter of opinion I guess, but it happens.

Besides there are plenty of really "cartoony" live-action shows, like those Japanese game shows, or the Three Stooges. There are also a lot of "live-actiony" cartoon shows (though those tend to be anime).