Friday, April 21, 2006 |
16:33 - It was fun while it lasted
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/archives/2006_04.html#001871
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Lots of insight into Cartoon Network's perplexing move to live-action programming here, at Cartoon Brew.
Apparently it's about money. Even though Adult Swim has been rated the #1 block among the biggest money-spending demographic since it launched in 2001, there just isn't any commercial tie-in or merchandising to speak of, which means the cost of developing animated shows—even the masterful examples of limited, ultra-cheap animation that make up the core of the block—can't be offset as they normally would. So they have no choice but to snap up old shows from the remainder pages of the catalog and cram them in where they think they'll get the same number of eyeballs as they had for the preceding half-hour, because people won't bother changing the channel.
Well, joke's on you, Turner brass: I'm changing the channel. I'll leave it on Family Guy with the sound turned off if it means Futurama will be on later; but I'll be damned if anyone's going to walk into my room and see me "watching" Saved by the Bell.
So I guess that's it then. There's nothing left on Cartoon Network that I actually want to watch; and Adult Swim has lost all traces of being something I can convince myself to watch as a block. Now I'm no longer going to take the bad with the good, and I'll start taking my late-night shows a la carte, like I did before 2001. And thus dies Adult Swim. Of self-inflicted wounds.
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