Aug 27, 2017
Does CN hate their own shows?
The year is 2015. The month is January.
Steven Universe lost every single slot it had on the CN schedule except for one on Thursday, when it aired new episodes.
The fandom (still small since the show hadn’t even aired “Jailbreak” yet) reasonably panicked.
“Oh my god, is Cartoon Network trying to kill the show?!” some fans worried.
Turns out, they didn’t. Reruns did return (partially due to the backlash), and then the show grew dramatically in fandom size over the years. Nowadays, the SU fandom is possibly much bigger than what’s left of Adventure Time.
Speaking of Adventure Time, that show’s fate has also been worried about by its fans. Around the same time in 2015, the show started losing reruns quickly. By June, it didn’t rerun at all. And it wouldn’t rerun again until late October (with one day in September being the exception). The fandom (shrinking over the network’s constant hiatuses and mixed reception to recent episodes) reasonably panicked.
“Why is Cartoon Network trying to kill off their most influential and well known show in years?!” some fans worried.
Turns out, they didn’t. They gave it 3 more seasons before deciding to end the show (most likely a decision made by the show creators). New episodes are still airing, albeit with some long hiatuses in between.
However, the reruns never really returned. It’d air for maybe an hour a week until reruns would be pulled again. CN tried to give it and Regular Show its own Saturday night premiere block in 2016 with “Regular Time Adventure Show,” but the ratings blew. It’s time of being adored on air was over. In fact, if anything, it’s being ignored on air now. The only way to know if new episodes are even airing is if its announced on social media.
Speaking of Regular Show, it’s fate had also been worried about by its fans. Yet again, around the same time in 2015, the show started losing rerun slots quickly. By July, it didn’t air at all.
“Why is Cartoon Network trying to kill off this hilarious and well loved show?!” some fans worried.
Turns out, it didn’t. It came back in August for new episodes, and in November it got its own TV movie. The show was renewed for one more season before airing its series finale in January 2017.
So what else do Steven Universe, Adventure Time, and Regular Show fans all have in common? They all have one enemy:
Teen Titans Go.
Teen Titans Go! already had the ire of the online community when it premiered in 2013. It wasn’t a reboot, or a season 6 of the original Teen Titans, but a brand new comedic spin-off of the show featuring flanderized and dumbed down characters.
Needless to say, people hated it immediately. Some thought CN cancelled Young Justice just to make room for this show, even though that’s now how TV even works. Some were furious this existed while the original Teen Titans never got a 6th season to finish its plots. It wasn’t a good start.
But the hatred of the show grew, for three reasons. CN started rerunning it excessively in 2015, and it still hasn’t stopped to this day. CN briefly called it “your new favorite show!” in promotions. But the thing that really takes the cake, is that the show itself went from subtly mocking its critics to full on making episodes just to mock the #haters.
Now its hated even more than any other cartoon imaginable. Not even Johnny Test received this much of a pounding when it was spammed on CN.
Fans of Steven Universe, Adventure Time, and Regular Show have to deal with Teen Titans Go! a lot. Plenty of incidents have happened where reruns of these shows were replaced by TTG. A new episode of Regular Show was pulled in September 2015 after a promo of it came out to make more room for TTG. Adventure Time lost its spotlight to Teen Titans Go! and never regained it. Regular Show aired its series finale after a Teen Titans Go! marathon and airings of Shrek, and never got reran again. In February 2017, new episodes of Steven Universe got no on-air promotion while a RERUN of Teen Titans Go! got heavy promotion.
So, does CN hate those shows or what?
No.
Cable TV as we know it is dying. Ratings are sinking for every network and streaming is becoming more and more popular every day. Who uses and love streaming the most? Teens and young adults.
Who loves Steven Universe, Adventure Time, and Regular Show the most? Teens and young adults.
Why rerun those shows heavily on air when you can just redirect them to watching it on demand, on the CN app, or on Hulu? And that’s what they did.
Really, that’s what they’ve been doing with every single show on the network. CN very often releases new episodes (yes, plural) of multiple shows on the network all at once on demand before they air on TV. CN wants you to binge it all in one fell swoop. They even advertise on TV to just watch it early on the app!
Does it work? We won’t know, because CN doesn’t have to make those viewership numbers visible. And they won’t. Who would? Dealing with Nielsen is hell enough as is. CN in particular has had a significant hit in TV ratings this year, with some new Teen Titans Go! episodes that weren’t even released early online getting less than 1 million viewers total. The highest rated anything on CN this year has been the finale to this year’s Teen Titans Go! miniseries, with 1.8 million viewers. But last year’s TTG miniseries and SU’s 100th episode got over 2 million! It’s not a real bright time when it comes to that.
CN doesn’t care. Because, like I said, they have on demand.
“But what about the promotion? CN always pretends SU or AT never existed and they gave Regular Show a pathetic sendoff!” you might be asking.
Have you tried checking CN’s social media? It has a huge reach. 27 million users like the network on Facebook and 700k follow it on Twitter. Even if new episodes for AT and SU aren’t come out, CN gives it all the attention in the world on there. They post fan art, music videos, old clips, new trailers exclusively for the social media, and a lot more. Teen Titans Go! gets pretty much ignored on it. SU gets extra attention. It gets a weekly podcast hosted by one of its biggest fans. CN made a “Stronger Than You” music video featuring all the Comic Con fans who came and cosplayed as their favorite characters. The show is 3 months into a hiatus and its still the show the network talks about the most. Adventure Time has its own Facebook page that still gets regularly updated and Regular Show also has its own page that still gets occasionally updated now that the show is over. When the show was getting close to airing its finale, the network constantly posted on Facebook and advertised it heavily on TV. Should they have given it a marathon? Yeah, they really should have. But it’s not like CN was giving the show’s finale a stink eye.
The network is also aware you guys have money, so they’ve released merch for the three shows. Steven Universe in particular is getting a lot of it right now; there’s a soundtrack available on digital and vinyl, a new wave of Funko POP figures, a brand new comic book series by Kaboom, a Garnet Halloween costume by Spirit, and a brand new console game by Grumpyface Studios.
Adventure Time still gets merch now and then. They sometimes get new Funko POPs, shirts, and they still release DVDs for each season (despite stopping the Blu-Rays after Season 6). Regular Show didn’t exactly get the best stuff, admittedly. They got ugly Funko POPs and action figures (ones that they mocked in an Evangelion parody episode), and they tried releasing it by season on DVD/Blu-Ray, but after only one release (Season 1 & 2), they gave up with releasing it on Blu-Ray and then gave up entirely after Season 3.
Even if Steven Universe never gets a Blu-Ray, or you really want your Adventure Time and Regular Show content in 1080p, why not try purchasing it online through iTunes or Google Play or Amazon? That’s an easy way to get extremely high quality versions of the show, and you help support the show directly. They’re a bit pricey admittedly, but its worth it for your favorite show, right?
CN wants their fans to have cable. If they can’t get it, they at least want their fans to buy merchandise. If they won’t buy merch, they want you to watch their stuff through iTunes or Hulu, at least. If you watch it illegally on Kimcartoon or YouTube, then CN really doesn’t give a crap if you think they hate their shows.
But CN still loves all its shows, even if it isn’t that profitable.
Think about it. If Cartoon Network truly hated Steven Universe or whatever and wanted it dead, wouldn’t they have killed it off by now? Wouldn’t they have burned off the rest of the show at 6am with no advertising? Why would they keep hyping it up online or keep releasing merchandise for it?
But they haven’t. Even though there’s been no Season 6 announcement yet, the fact the crew are still working on the show probably would lead you to believe that they’re working on Season 6, right? Well, I’d think so.
Despite being ignored by CN on air since 2015, they kept renewing Adventure Time for so long that it ends next year. They know it has a decent sized fanbase still who want to see how the show ends.
That’s another thing: the shows at CN have much more creative freedom than the other kids networks. Would you have ever seen something like Regular Show on Nick or Disney? Heck no. And if it did air on Nick, it would have been canned after Season 2 and put on Nicktoons to burn off and die.
Speaking of stuff dying, what about the shows CN HAS cancelled recently, like Clarence and Uncle Grandpa? Clarence still got heavily advertised when new episodes aired every single day for a month in June. Uncle Grandpa aired new episodes at the same time, leading to the series finale. However, it didn’t get advertised, but there’s this one thing: the show had 153 episodes. That show was never extremely popular, but CN still gave it a lot of episodes. When CN cancels one of their own shows, they still end up with a lot of episodes for the show. It isn’t 2011 anymore, where you had four shows get cancelled after 30 or less episodes (Sym-Bionic Titan, The Problem Solverz, Robotomy, Secret Mountain Fort Awesome, the latter being made by the creator of Uncle Grandpa). That most likely won’t happen anymore.
The future is also looking bright for CN. New shows like OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes have already gained a fandom online, and pilots like Infinity Train and Welcome to My Life have gained online popularity. The new series coming next year, Summer Camp Island, Apple and Onion, and Craig of the Creek have a ton of promise and were made by former crew members of AT, SU, and Gumball.
Will the schedule ever improve? Hopefully, but I doubt it. But the sole idea of a television schedule is becoming increasingly irrelevant. There’s a reason CN is putting so much into its on-demand and app efforts. It’s because streaming is the future now.
They have done interesting stuff with the schedule recently. Variety is increasing, the ORIGINAL Teen Titans returned and now has a 5pm weekday slot (which is essentially CN primetime), and they’ve been airing a ton of old Ben 10 and Teen Titans movies. Could the schedule actually be improving through our very own eyes? I don’t know.
But seriously, CN doesn’t hate their own shows. They love each and every one they make. They care about their beautiful little children. They might love one more than others, but they still love them all.
