December 28, 2011

Via: Wikipedia (yes, I’m old school)

Today’s the turn of Carton Network, a channel that I used to watch religiously at my friend’s house back it had a lot of Wacky Races on it.

There’s a few hardcore folks out there who feel that calling it “Cartoon Network” is now false advertising considering that it has live-action as well as animation on it. That’s missing the point though, because when compared to the other networks, it still has by far the most and broadest range of animation of the lot.

While there are the channel’s current offerings in Adventure Time, Regular Show and the Amazing World of Gumball, it’s somewhat dismaying that the network seems to banish slightly older shows like Billy and Mandy and Foster’s from the schedule. They then remain in limbo before they’re considered ‘old’ enough to be broadcast on sister channel, Boomerang (which by they way, features the likes of The Secret Saturdays and Johny Test if that didn’t confuse you enough already).

In fairness, there’s nothing particularly ‘wrong’ with the network, it just seems to be all over the place when it comes to the programming. I mean, who are they targeting? Yes, they’re gunning for 6-14 year old boys but how well do they compete with Disney XD, a channel created for and devoted solely to, boys? My guess is they’re coming up short.

They had a massive hit in the original Ben 10, but they’ve been riding that horse for years now with nothing similar appearing to replace it. On top of that, there was/is the bizarre situation where the network is in the same corporate family as Warner Bros. and DC (comics) yet the content of those divisions are more often seen on other channels owned by competitors!

That doesn’t make an awful lot of sense as CN could be leveraging those libraries, and those that it owns; think Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry. Yes, there is the new Looney Tunes Show, but that simply updates the characters to the modern era in a manner that keeps the characters alive but in no way endangers the viewing numbers with Baby Boomer content.

Cartoon Network has been lurching from hit show to hit show as of late but in fairness to them they’ve been on the ball for Adventure Time when it comes to merchandise, an area they’ve traditionally been spectacularly weak in.

It would be nice to see some more cohesion between shows as well as a more robust lineup that doesn’t skew so hard towards different tastes.

Overall, Cartoon Network remains the best choice of all the channels for animation, but it has been slipping of late, and it is still uncertain how far that will continue.