THE RISE AND FALL AND RISE AGAIN OF CARTOON NETWORK
This is the story of the rise and fall of the world's most loved and hated kids TV channel – Cartoon Network.
Cartoon Network is at a weired place in a lot of people lives, it started off as one of the most memorable brands of a lot of people's childhoods then all of a sudden it changed its nostalgic connotation.
But before we can fully appreciate the importance of Cartoon Network, we have to understand where it came from: An entrepreneur by the name of Ted Turner, who is responsible for bringing us TV channels such as TNT (Turner Network Television), TBS (Turner Broadcasting System) and even CNN. The latter would go on to lay the foundation of what Cartoon Network would become, as CNN was the first TV program which would run dedicated news content 24 hours a day.
In 1992, Ted Turner would apply the same mindset to a kids TV channel that would air cartoons for 24 hours a day, which he called Cartoon Network. At the time of its initial release, Cartoon Network would only broadcast old cartoons that the network bought the rights to. Think Looney Tunes with Bugs Bunny and MGM cartoons like Tom & Jerry. In fact, the first-ever cartoon shown on Cartoon Network was MGM's Droopy.
Cartoon Network employed a creative executive by the name of Betty Cohen who would later approve a handful of new cartoon shows. These were the first range of cartoons that were Cartoon Network original content, from 1993 until 2001, which included Courage The Cowardly Dog, The Powerpuff Girls, Ed Edd & Eddy and Dexters Laboratory, which would prove to be some of the most successful cartoons ever.
However, after 2001, Cohen resigned from Cartoon Network and was replaced with Jim Samples. At this time, Cartoon Network also changed its logo, which has been associated with the "death" of Cartoon Network.
Shortly after his start, Jim Samples introduced a few new highly successful cartoon shows, such as The Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy and Samurai Jack, to the Cartoon Network lineup. A few short years later, Samples observed what Cartoon Network's competitors were offering, like kid's reality TV shows, and implemented that into Cartoon Network. It proved to be a total failure and wasn't well-received at all. This was the first time that the kid's TV show was at major risk of shutting down.
It wasn't until 2010 that Cartoon Network would cleanse itself from all the badly received content. It yet again changed its logo and focused on purely cartoon content for the next generation of kids.
Take a look at the video by YouTube channel, Company Man, on Cartoon Network - The Rise And Fall...And Rise Again!