April 21st: Cartoon Network vs. Toonami
I am sure everyone reading this article has their own personal Golden Age for Toonami. It is hard not to say, however, that the TOM-1 era saw the block at its most successful. Dragonball Z proved so popular during this time that it finally prompted the long-awaited airing of the remainder of the series, past the syndicated run’s cancellation mid-way through the Frieza saga. Likewise, ReBoot managed to have a revival of its own with the Virus War story arc and Enzo’s time as a Guardian. These and other episodes that had gone all but unseen on ABC now got a far larger audience this time around, and eventually lead to completely new episodes. The venerable Transformers franchise also got to bring its Beast Wars incarnation to more people’s attention, if only for a limited time. Gundam Wing made quite a splash as well. And of course, there was the one-of-a-kind Intruder mini-series, which allowed the block to promote itself like never before.
Hard to imagine such a success story with the Toonami of today, isn’t it? Pretty much the only show left in its corner is Naruto, and even THAT receives little-to-no promotion whatsoever. The block itself has received even less attention, cut down to a mere two hours, half of which is the aforementioned Naruto. How did we get here? How did we go from a Toonami successful enough to earn a theatrically-aired promo, to one that might as well not exist? There are a lot of possible answers and theories, but for my money, the blame rests squarely on Cartoon Network’s shoulders.
Time after time after time, the Network has made decisions that are counterintuitive at best (and at worst downright harmful) to the block’s continued success. Forcing Hamtaro onto the block when it clearly did not belong, introducing a competing action block in the form of the Saturday Video Entertainment System, the case of the mysterious disappearing Yu Yu Hakusho, etcetera...ad infinitum. We have already had other articles that have gone over these repeated blunders in great detai, however, so I want to take my time in this column to ask a rather vital question: why the heck is CN so willing to shoot itself in the foot when it comes to Toonami?
Short of crawling inside the head honchos’ minds, we cannot answer such a question for certain, but looking at the surrounding context, Cartoon Network’s current treatment of Toonami is in keeping with the channel's general direction for the last three years. I know I was grumbling pretty loudly when the checkerboard station started airing live-action movies other than Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and such behavior has only gotten worse since then (Jurassic Park III? Really?). Re-Animated received ten times the level of promotion of any given Toonami show at ANY point in the block’s history, and its spin-off series Out of Jimmy’s Head (which somehow manages to have even LESS cartoon involvement than the movie it's based on) likewise just seems to keep going and going, even though it hasn’t exactly lit the ratings world on fire. In other words, Cartoon Network is making a concentrated effort to de-emphasize the "Cartoon" in its name. You can see it in its bumpers: the full name "Cartoon Network" never appears anymore, replaced instead by the more eponymous "CN".
The question becomes “Why?”, and the “Why” would seem obvious: Disney Channel’s High School Musical has become one of the biggest successes in the last several years, Nickelodeon’s Teen Nick block has achieved a far firmer foothold than Nick’s previous attempts at prime time programming (anyone remember “The O”? No? Didn’t think so.), and even Toon Disney has managed to get some decent mileage out of the venerable “Power Rangers” franchise. For obvious reasons, Cartoon Network - my apologies, "CN" - wants a piece of that pie.
However, I don’t think bandwagon mentality necessarily accounts for the whole problem. After all, CN only has one live-action program (not including the live-action bumpers), and live-action movies have been airing with far less frequency as of late. So, while CN’s efforts to be like everybody else certainly account for SOME of Toonami’s deterioration, it does not account for its entirety.
The remainder of the problem, if I had to guess, is regime change. We see it all over in every field of business in the world: in order to distinguish themselves, the new Head Honchos go about destroying the work of the old Head Honchos to axe potential comparison and place the emphasis more squarely on their own current achievements. I suspect THIS may be the primary reason as to why Toonami has been more or less cut off at the knees in terms of its place in CN’s future plans. Toonami, after all, has survived several administrations of creative control at CN; it was really only a matter of time before one of them decided, for whatever reason, that it was just Toonami’s time to go.
Of course, cancelling the block outright would be suicide. Not only would it cause a massive backlash from the fanbase, it would deprive the Network of the many ratings-winners the block has provided. Again, this is somewhat speculative, but if the current administration wanted to circumvent those problems, they’ve done a perfect job of setting themselves up to do so. By cutting Toonami down to size and keeping new properties away from it, CN has been able to foster successful action shows outside the Toonami line-up, like Ben 10 and Transformers Animated. On the flip-side, the majority of Toonami’s successful shows reached the end of their runs a long time ago, like Gundam Seed, and Justice League Unlimited. Those shows went into re-runs, which can only last so long, and the majority of what remained of Toonami’s line-up failed to take root. So long as CN did not provide new shows (something it has been conspicuously adamant about doing as of late), it would mean the only successful shows left on the block would be of such a small number that they could afford to cut Toonami's length to only two hours, without risk of losing its successful programs. CN would thus have the perfect excuse to leave the block alone: they could claim it was no longer successful or substantial enough to warrant the attention.
I do not want to suggest this as an absolute truth. It is equally possible that Toonami simply started to lose its appeal to the broader audience, which led to the decisions that have so harmed it. The problem, however, is that even if that is true, CN has done precious little in the last few years to keep it from happening. Extremely limited promotion, fewer and fewer new shows, and an incredibly erratic schedule are all trends that have become exacerbated recently, but which began long before - back when Toonami first made the jump to Saturday nights. So long as they continue, there is no chance of Toonami recovering from its current downward spiral.
However, the situation is far from hopeless. Toonami has been in similar spots before, and it has always managed to come back, strong as ever. Even though things look grim now, it will be a long time yet before anyone can say that Toonami is done for with absolute certainty, because no matter what the reason is for its failure, the reason for its success in the past was and is quite simple: action and atmosphere, working together to build a better Cartoon show. So long as even a shred of that philosophy remains intact, Toonami will yet continue to live on.
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