Forum - View topicINTEREST: GameRant: Warner Bros. Discovery Has No Plans To Cut Toonami
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TD912
 Posts: 274 |
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I think the bigger thing here is that Crunchyroll no longer exists under WarnerMedia at all as it's a part of Sony now. I'm guessing there's some stuff that's been in the works for a while that is yet to be released, but I doubt you'll be seeing many CR+Toonami co-branded productions in the future. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4595 Location: New York |
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Simply put, according to his Twitter, he’s a fan of linear, appointment television on a strict schedule since he believes people can’t appreciate media otherwise. I think that’s ridiculous, but I guess old habits die hard. |
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 687 |
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Yeah old habits like making shit up do die hard when you’re so used to doing them all the time. https://twitter.com/clarknova1/status/1466838411113865230?s=21&t=qflCiLRJzsT3KnsM0bttnA |
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Wyvern
 Posts: 1596 |
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His excuses don't even make sense. What sort of "legendary status" does Rebecca Sugar supposedly have at Cartoon Network? She had only worked on one other show for CN (Adventure Time) before she created Steven, it's not like she was some famous veteran at the time. And given how the network treated Gennady Tatrakovsky around the same time (he was an ACTUAL legend who worked at CN for 15 years and created some of their biggest shows, only for the network to abruptly fire him after ratings on one of his series dipped) the idea that Sugar would somehow be magically immune from cancellation is laughable. Steven Universe is actually a great example of a hit show that took a long time to find its audience; it didn't really become a hit until a year and a half into its run, when a musical number from the season 1 finale went viral on Youtube. I mention this because it's a great example of how utterly stupid it is for HBO Max to be removing so many great shows simply because those shows didn't instantly become huge successes. Sometimes it takes time for viewers to notice a great show. It took 17 months for Steven Universe to do it, but once it did it became one of the most popular shows in the history of the network. The next Steven Universe may have been among the shows that WB/Discovery needlessly erased. (I realize this has all gone pretty off-topic, but I will add that I've loved Toonami since I was a kid and I'm glad it's not going anywhere.) |
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Weird Guy
 Posts: 139 |
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Has no plans but yet they cut the latin America version of toonami
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Beatdigga
Posts: 4595 Location: New York |
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Really? His Twitter is full of negative opinions about streaming. I'm not making this up, he's said it. Happily. He keeps saying it. He is a proponent of linear television. That's not the business reason that Toonami isn't a streaming service, the business reason is they don't have much in the way of a permanent library, the shows they do own are already on HBO Max and before Warner sold Crunchyroll that was their streaming service, but he isn't a fan of streaming and he's repeatedly said that he builds Toonami in mind for the linear service, not programs one can see on a streaming service. |
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Aura Ichadora
 Posts: 2302 Location: In front of my computer |
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Still sucks that it's being cancelled, though. |
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Spawn29
Posts: 556 |
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I feel like most people who watch Toonami now are the hardcore fans, kids, and casuals. Kids stay up late on weekend nights back when I was younger. It's probably no different now.
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thepepin
Posts: 69 |
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Let me tell you about Hollywood's "focus testing." Back in the 1980s and 1990s - I know an absolutely horrible time when dinosaurs ruled the earth and stuff! - hit TV shows would have 25-30 million viewers. But the suits came out with "studies" that claimed that reaching all those people were unnecessary. That they could make more money by targeting certain demos, which all JUST HAPPENED to be young urban adults especially on the coasts. Result? TV ratings declined immediately and so did ad rates and revenue. (Despite what anyone tells you, this was long before the shift to video games, the Internet wasn't widely used back then, and of course this was long before YouTube and social media.) So obviously whatever "testing" and "studies" they used were wrong. Did the suits backtrack? Nope. They doubled down by continuing to narrowcast even more, with The CW network dedicated entirely to the strategy. (The CW Network has never once turned a profit in this 15 year history.) Continued even as ratings got so bad that the only thing that was consistently profitable was sporting events and reality TV. On the former, network TV actually used to get better ratings than sporting events, so much so that one network infamously switched from the end of a close NFL game in order to rebroadcast "Heidi" and reality shows were considered bottom of the barrel programming. So what was going on? The suits wanted to stop "broadcasting" and start narrowcasting to certain demos anyway. So they went with "studies" that showed that it was a good idea and kept at it even after it was demonstrated that the studies were clearly wrong. As a result we have an entire generation that has grown up basically without watching network TV at all, and NBC is considering dropping 1/3 of their programming. And guess what? The streaming folks are still doing the same. Look at the programming on Apple TV (especially), Hulu, HBO Max, Netflix (although admittedly to a lesser degree on Amazon and Paramount+) everyone is still chasing the same young coastal urban demos that network TV destroyed itself going after. Why? Because it lets them make the shows that they want to make in the first place. So yeah ... I have real difficulty believing that there has been some fundamental change in 5-15 year old boys between the time that powerhouse action shows like Ben Ten, Justice League, Adventure Time, The Clone Wars, Kids Next Door, Teen Titans, Samurai Jack etc. dominated Cartoon Network and today. (Especially considering the very same elements that are entertaining in Teen Titans are in, say, My Hero Academia and Naruto.) What happened is that the management at Cartoon Network changed and the new management didn't want those shows anymore. They wanted shows like Clarence, Craig of the Creek and Uncle Grandpa. So sure, they will put on Green Lantern, Thundercats and Justice League Action but pull them immediately if they don't break out right away. Meanwhile the stuff that they like stays on for years in the hopes that it will catch on. And to address some other comments: Steven Universe ratings averaged less than 1 million viewers per episode. Their big finale movie had less than 1.6 million viewers. The show's creators didn't end it willingly. It was finally cancelled by the network. Meanwhile Green Lantern averaged 1.9 million viewers and was cancelled after 1 season. Thundercats had almost 2.5 million viewers and was cancelled after 1 season. So yeah, a huge difference between the types of shows that the suits will allow to linger around hoping that they succeed and the types of shows that they will ditch if they have half an excuse. The suits are able to get away with this nonsense because the "entertainment media" doesn't do its job. In times past Variety, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly etc. gave comprehensive data on Nielsen ratings, album sales, how the entertainment companies were doing financially etc. Even a tabloid show like Entertainment Tonight gave that info (whose success with young males had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Mary Hart, trust me). These days? Nothing. So ... the American entertainment industry has been in a nosedive for decades with a massive drop in consumers, major companies going bankrupt or getting acquired and milked for their catalogs by private equity and other conglomerates etc. and absolutely no one is talking about how bad things are and how there likely won't be a Hollywood 15 years from now unless changes are made. So yeah, you have 15 year old boys in Nebraska watching subtitled anime on Crunchyroll and Hulu (or they are pirating the stuff) because every single American entertainment company would rather go bankrupt than give them something that they actually want to watch. I mean when Michael Bay had to justify making billion dollar hits by aiming "I make movies for teenage boys. Oh, dear, what a crime" at industry types and critics, it really makes you wonder if those "studies" that the WB suits were looking at were thesis and agenda driven. Which is what allows them to get away with nonsense like claiming that the Ms. Marvel show on Disney Plus was this massive hit (it wasn't ... only 750,000 people tuned in for the debut episode and it was downhill from there) so OBVIOUSLY that means their pulling Batgirl was wrong because it had the same directors. Yeah ... the converse is actually true: it was because the Ms. Marvel ratings were so bad that there was no reason to believe that something similar from the same team would do well for HBO Max. |
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OjaruFan2
Posts: 673 |
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If I may ask, what's your source for all of this information? |
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Wyvern
Posts: 1596 |
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Okay, I was being sincere when I asked before, but now I really AM sure that you're making this stuff up. In real life, broadcast TV ratings began declining in the 80's and 90's primarily because of the rise of cable channels, which gave broadcast more competition than they had ever had before. It wasn't because of some absurd racist theory about "urban" people "on the coasts." (Come on, buddy, don't hide behind dogwhistles. We all know what you really mean when you say that.) (And if you really want to get into that, more diverse programming probably saved network TV in the 80's especially. You know what the highest rated TV series of the 1980's was? The Cosby Show, a show about a (pardon my French) "Urban" family who lived "on the coast." A show that had no white people in its main cast. It was the #1 show on television for five straight years. No program has matched that achievement since then. And yes, Cosby himself turned out to be a piece of trash, but the public didn't know that at the time.) The fact that cable is what caused the initial decline of broadcast networks is incredibly well documented and common knowledge in the industry. Just because the facts don't line up with your prejudices, that's no reason to make stuff up. (Also, you do know that video games already existed by the 90's, right? Like, we had a whole console war about this.)
Yes, 1.6 million viewers, which was the highest ratings Cartoon Network had gotten in over two years, and the highest rated scripted program on cable TV that day. You don't seem to realize this but anything over a million viewers is a hell of a lot for a basic cable channel in the post-streaming world.
I just found every single thing you just mentioned with a few google searches. This information isn't hidden, in fact it's easier to find than it's ever been in history. Here are the current Nielsen ratings. Here are this week's album sales figures. If you want to know how a company is doing financially, stock prices can be found here among other places. It took me less than one minute to find this information. I don't think you understand the things you're talking about. |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2296 |
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Just wanna say I like how you use parentheses. Carry on. (Also, jeez, the top syndicated game shows are getting numbers bigger than any of the primetime network stuff? (And Nielsen's top "game to get next" is the decade-old CS:GO?)) |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14886 |
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Ever since Warner Bros got bought by Discovery earlier this year, Toonami has been on holding pattern, while the new owners decide what to do
The previous Warner Bros head's priority went "streaming 1st, theater and traditional pay-TV 2nd" due to the pandemic, and that's reflected by the decisions that could work well for streaming, but not necessarily work well on theaters and traditional media. But as soon as they took over, the new owners at Discovery are going 180-degrees, and their decisions reflect that. They have expressed that they want to beat Disney - and so they believe that they can't beat Disney unless they make their shows and movies rise to the level of "events" like Disney properties do (think MCU properties, Pixar movies, Mandalorian, etc.) Anything that doesn't rise to the level of being an "event", the new Discovery owners are cancelling even when they lose money on it. They've cancelled the Scoob movie that's already 95% finished and already cost them $40 million because it won't be an "event" must-see show. They had cancelled Batwoman that'd cost $90 million because it won't rise to the level of MCU movies that cost several hundreds of millions dollars but people go to see because must-see "events". In short, their new masters from Discovery are going big or they're going home! |
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Los Nido
Posts: 132 |
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The change is that anime is far more accessible and available now. That's really all there is to it. Towards the end of the 2000s and the beginning of the 2010s we saw the rise of streaming services starting to pop up and basically let anyone watch anime very easily, legally or otherwise. It's not a coincidence that that was around the time action animation in America completely died off. There was an extremely notable drop between Avatar the Last Airbended (2006-2008) and The Legend of Korra (2012-2014) in terms of viewers and ratings to the point Korra was moved off the network due to it's flounding viewership and stuck on Nick.com. Kids would rather watch iCarly. Other action shows like Young Justice at the time notable bombed Those years were the last time we saw a notable attempt at a serious, action-oriented cartoon. At least on television. There's been a slight resurgence in recent years on platforms like Netflix which try to do adult-oriented action cartoons like Castlevania, but the fact that those are marketed as anime is also intentional. Almost like calling them a cartoon would be a bad word. I certainly would love to see more cartoons in the older 90s and 2000s style, but the market is just not there anymore and is dominated by anime and manga. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6275 |
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If you’re going to cite history take time to do your research as to how and why this happened. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Game Tl;dr the event you’re citing was accidental not intentional.
KnD, Teen Titans, & Samurai Jack were such powerhouse shows they were awkwardly cancelled leaving some plot lines unresolved. In Samurai Jack’s case for 12 years.
…..Your timeline is wonky since it weirdly jumps from 2001 at the earliest to 2014 at the latest. Clarence, CotC, & Uncle Grandpa all showed up on the network in 2014, 2018, & 2013. And weirdly ignores stuff like Chowder, Flapjack, Gumball, Batman The Brave & The Bold, Transformers Animated, Generator Rex, Symbiotic Titan, Secret Saturdays that all debuted in that same time period. Alongside Ben 10 (2005), Clone Wars (03 or 08 depending on which version), & Adventure Time (2010) In other words that shift you’re alluding to took time to occur and wasn’t just something that happened at the snap of someone’s finger. It’s been often speculated that attempt at promotion for Aqua Teen Hungerforce in 2007 that lead to the resignation of CN’s General Manager & Vice President was the catalyst for the shift but who can say for certain.
Anything that’s cheap to produce and has a decent enough viewership usually the former specifically, stays while anything that isn’t or can’t goes. That’s TV 101 Execs don’t keep shows around based on them liking it.
See above. Thundercats in particular was most definitely not a cheap to produce show.
Yeah and this is why some comments made by Meagan Fox have been biting him in the ass. Also LOL at Micheal Bay making movies for 15 year olds both Bad Boys movies he directed along with Pain & Gain were rated R. Also explosions, sexual fanservice,& action scenes will only get your movies so far if your movie doesn’t have good acting, dialog, & cinematography to reinforce it.
Your argument makes no sense by virtue of the fact you’re comparing a TV show which isn’t designed to make money to a movie which is supposed to make money. Writers and directors can have weak works (Micheal Bay has had a number of them) unless they’re a screwup like Josh Trank studios are not going to say “hey you made a not good movie we don’t want you working on our film”. Also fun fact the directors of Batgirl only worked on 2 of Ms.Marvel’s 6 episodes. Their last work that likely got them the directing job for Batgirl in the first place ? Bad Boys For Life which you clearly either did not watch or hear about. Otherwise you’d be aware the movie raked it nearly half a billion dollars. And on the same budget as Batgirl. But yeah Batgirl had a 100% chance of making no money based off two episodes of a six episode show 
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