Gephyrophillia | Watch This Space #134

Originally Posted on 11/01/2005 by Jeff Harris

Cartoon Network, the world's first 24-hour animation network, will air its first non-animated film on Sunday, November 13. Cartoon Network is preparing to air Small Soldiers, The Goonies, and Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, a trio of movies with no animated scenes in it at all. Like Toon Disney before it, Cartoon Network has completely lost its identity.

There was a time when things made sense at the little checkerboard network, and that was 2000. In 2001, when the bottom basically dropped after the network was completely taken over by individuals with little to no experience in animation. This ain't horse judging, this is cartoon network management.

The rule is simple and it should be a no-brainer: If a network is branded a particular way (especially if its in its network's name), then that's what they show.

You don't see Comedy Central running A Streetcar Named Desire or Gone With The Wind. You don't see the X-Games on C-SPAN. You don't see NHK News on Telemundo. You don't see The Al Franken Show on Fox News Channel. Otherwise, you become a network like MTV or G4, which have deviated from their original branding over the years.

I'm not saying that live-action programming has no place on Cartoon Network. I'm saying that live-action programming with no animation REALLY has no place on Cartoon Network. I could understand shows like Space Ghost Coast To Coast (which interviews live-action celebrities), Sunday Pants (which as live-action sequences bridging animated shorts), Cartoon Planet (which used to air the Count Floyd segments from The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley), and Tom Goes To The Mayor (which is basically cutouts of live photos transformed into stamped stopframes) being on the network, and I could seriously see them picking up a show like Zixx, which basically feels like a cross between Code Lyoko and The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest with animated sequences from Mainframe Entertainment (I'll explain later) or Delta State, a rotoscoped series in the tradition of the original Fleischer Superman shorts, and movies like Osmosis Jones, Looney Tunes: Back In Action, or, heaven help me, Space Jam. But to actually put programming with no animated sequences on a channel whose first name is Cartoon. I don't want Cartoon Network to be turned into Pogo, the Indian service from Cartoon Network that airs preschool programming, cartoons, live-action series and movies, and family programming.

Now, unless some things change, Cartoon Network is heading in that direction, and we, the remaining fans of Cartoon Network, must think of a plan of action or at least engage in some kind of dialogue because the network's misguided efforts to become Nickelodeon just isn't working. Otherwise, the end is near.

*end transmission*

Jeff Harris,
Webmaster/EiC/Lead Writer, The X Bridge
November 1, 2005