Gephyrophillia #238

Originally Posted on 04/08/2011 by Jeff Harris

There is a large gap people at Planet Techwood don't want to talk about publicly.

Parents don't watch Cartoon Network.

Sure, they'll catch a few things now and then, but for much of the last decade, audiences who are old enough to remember the Reagan administration in its entirety are mostly unwanted by the current hierarchy of Cartoon Network, which is the main reason Nickelodeon is the most dominant brand in entertainment in this country.

How can I illustrate that while, in twain, showing my age? I know.

Back in the halcyon days of Saturday mornings in the 1980s, there used to be a bunch of ads telling kids to say no to drugs, but a few stood out. There was this one ad with a dad discovering his son's marijuana stash (good ol' reefer madness still exists, but this isn't the time for that) and scolding him for that. When he asks his son where he learned how to use this stuff, the kid tearfully shouts "YOU, ALRIGHT?! I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU!" The end of the ad, which probably should have "the Conan O'Brian stamp of disapproval" on the dad's face, had a monotone voiceover saying "Parents who use drugs have children who use drugs"

Despite the cheesiness of the ad, there is a bit of truth to it. If parents do like something, chances are their kids will enjoy it too. If a parent is a Yankees fan, the kid is a Yankees fan too. If a parent is a weekend DIY warrior, kids will have their toolbox at hand. If a parent is a fan of modelbuilding or war reenactments, the kid will follow. When they're young, kids rarely rebel, which helps the parents introduce them to things they like.

Including television shows and networks. Wrestling may be seen as an oddity to the mainstream media, but for over 50 years, it has been a generational attraction for families, and every week for about 20 years, Monday Night Raw has been a ratings hit for USA and for a brief spell, Spike TV. There was a reason there the Monday Night War existed between WWF and WCW. People watched both and they both had the pop culture on lockdown. Meanwhile, over a 30 year span, a cable network grew from a bland, uninteresting "young people's station" to a kid-powered, media-redefining "first kids network." And as I've said on this site on many occasions, the current generation of Nickelodeon viewers exist largely because a majority of their parents were the first generation of Nick viewers. And guess what? Those parents are still watching Nickelodeon to this day, making up half of Nick's total audience.

The anti-drug ad is true in this case. Parents who watch Nick have children who watch Nick. Same thing with Disney Channel. That brand only got larger because they dropped the premium subscription label from the network. Most likely, the parents of most Disney Channel viewers were kids of parents who subscribed to the network because they enjoyed everything the Disney brand had to offer. It's a rich legacy that found its roots in the baby boomer era.

So, this is something I don't get about Cartoon Network. Instead of driving older audiences who aren't the fratboy audience of Adult Swim, why not keep them around? Why not air programming the entire family will enjoy aside from movies? Why not bring back family-friendly favorites to the lineup? Boomerang hardly has a subscriber base because Cartoon Network isn't pushing the network hard enough. Like I mentioned in the master plan for rebuilding Cartoon Network within 10 years, Cartoon Network could easily bring older programs at least to the morning hours instead of burying them on an island where nobody goes.

If Cartoon Network wants to know why there's no real brand loyalty aside from the handful that does watch every week, they have to look beyond the occasional Nick/Disney Monday night double-teaming and realize that in a lot of households, if parents in the 25,000 Nielsen households don't look at Cartoon Network (yes, there are ONLY 25,000 households determining the destiny of everything on television, I'll talk about that another time), neither are their kids for the most part.

The older half of the first generation of Cartoon Network viewers are becoming parents, and by alienating that group, they're missing an opportunity to have that generational attraction that Nick and Disney enjoy, which is a shame. I think they should rectify that sooner rather than later because, otherwise, they're going to remain in a permanent third place.

Keep creating.

Jeff Harris,
Creator/Webmaster, The X Bridge.