Finishing my point from yesterday, there's two other big reasons that these networks are declining.
I'm not going to beat around the bush here, the corporatism behind these companies is actively driving away good content in lieu of stuff that can be aired repeatedly for quick cash. It's funny that Foxscotch mentions Sym-Bionic Titan as something that wasn't a highlight, because the show has a comparable IMDb rating to Samurai Jack, mostly because the show was created by Genndy Tartakovsky, who not only created Samurai Jack but created Dexter's Laboratory and worked on the original Powerpuff Girls and the first Clone Wars series that aired in between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. It absolutely would've been a highlight had it not been for corporatism. The show is very short, because it was canned after only its first season, not for being bad, but because they were unable to acquire a toy license for it. I recommend you guys watch it. It's a good show.
But this is the reason why Teen Titans Go and Spongebob are aired to literal death on live television, and why Cartoon Network out of nowhere rebooted Ben 10 and Scooby Doo for the tenth time this week and rebooted the Powerpuff Girls, not hiring McCracken to head it and making it a dumb slice-of-life comedy with smartphones and "le me-mes" and all of that. It's because they want money, and no massive corporation actually knows what people want, so they do what they think they want. Spongebob may be having a revival, but the Powerpuff Girls has devolved into creepy imagery, twerking, animation errors, and what could be seen as self-inserts with creepphilic interests towards the main characters, and Teen Titans Go has devolved into poking fun exclusively at the people who don't like the show and revelling in how hated the show is, neither of which objectively makes good content.
I hate to drive this point into the ground for the umpteenth time, but this is this week's schedule on Cartoon Network:
Of these shows, how many are reboots and corporate tie-ins? What percentage of the schedule do they take up?
Where has this left other shows? With absolutely stuffty scheduling, not just on Cartoon Network's part but on
their part, too. This is a huge problem that people talk about exclusively with regards to Steven Universe. The "Steven Universe bombs" are the worst way to release new episodes. They're the reason I just stopped watching the show altogether. Every time a bomb is coming, they make it out to be the second coming of Michael Jackson and promise that it's going to answer all of your questions, and EVERY time it's just more filler with maybe one or two episodes in which something "significant" happens. This is not the only problem either; Steven Universe is prone to leaks. Often. It does not help the show to have episodes leaked online before their premiere on the app or on TV, but Cartoon Network doesn't take action against leakers and episode bombs because why would they? The show only makes up 1.6% of the schedule. Notice how there aren't leaks of episodes for shows like Teen Titans Go and Spongebob. If an episode of one of those shows were leaked early, they'd probably fire everyone and spray down the offices with hydrogen peroxide or something.
Regardless of any of that, this is all indicative of a bigger problem. Master Matthew is half-right; interest in television isn't dying, interest in
cable is. It has been since the internet came out with YouTube, and it's probably been sped up dramatically with services like CrunchyRoll and Netflix. These are independent platforms that can do anything that cable can't do. The reason these networks have gotten ridiculously corporate in the past few years is because people are going to Netflix and not coming back, so they air shows that they think they like non-stop. Problem is, it isn't working. The solution would be to make online apps to show the cartoons on, but this is difficult for a telecom company to do, PLUS CrunchyRoll and Netflix have already beat them to the punch. It doesn't help that you still need cable to watch these shows online, despite being, y'know, ONLINE. That, and the apps are a mess even without all of this. This is a nightmare for places like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. They don't know how to deal with it, and the way they're trying to deal with it is only making it worse.
So what happens? Well, this is the free market. The most likely solution to this is that a new company rises out of the ground and takes over Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. It'd be high-time for it. The only way it would work, though, is if this company put artistry first. It's how Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network got big in the first place. Fortunately, that's part's pretty much obvious to anyone running a small business.
What's NOT going to happen is the death of cartoons. People already like cartoons too much to just abandon them entirely because two companies aren't doing so well. It's why I make topics about cartoon pilots; because people have an interest in them. Saying cartoons will die because of this is like saying because of the NFL kneeling fiasco, football as a sport will become less popular until the NFL dies, at which point everyone will just drop football. It's ridiculous.
That's my opinion. Go hog-wild.
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