Cartoon and Cable Television history were made on this day! Oddly, I was living in a market lucky enough to have it on day one. I used to feel the same way about the Sci-Fi Channel but everybody soured on that network in a couple months.
The Cartoon Network was not an entirely original channel. It was more of a couple clever decisions by former cable mogul Ted Turner. Firstly, Turner had acquired more catalogs of old films, shorts and cartoons back in the Eighties. I think the majority were from MGM. Turner earned a lot of negative attention when he some colorized. Secondly, he bought the parent company that owned Hanna-Barbera since 1969 about a year before CN’s launch. This provided an incredible amount of stuff. About three decades of Saturday Morning shows made by the two legends along with their former employees Ruby and Spears. There was also the syndicated material from weekday afternoons. Lastly, CN was a response to the new threat Turner recognized yet I think Disney was indifferent to…Nickelodeon!
The infamous “Slime Network” was finally branching out into making new shows after airing stuff from Canada and the UK for a decade; remember Danger Mouse, The Seven Cities of Gold and You Can’t Do That on Television? They used to show Looney Tunes in the late Eighties despite Viacom buying the MTV Networks from Warner Communications in 1985. Nickelodeon transformed into a 24-hour channel in the late Eighties with Nick at Night, this would lead into the creation of TV Land. What got everybody to pay more attention? Their three original shows: Rugrats, Doug and Ren & Stimpy. The last program launched a million T-shirts to replace all the tired Simpsons!
CN wasn’t as exciting in the beginning. It was mostly 24 hours of stuff most Americans had seen a hundred times through Looney Tunes syndication packages for non-affiliated TV stations. Much of the Hanna-Barbera shows weren’t their best work neither, mostly the company cranking it out to fill time on the big three broadcast networks. There were times it was excited to get re-acquainted with the numerous Scooby knockoffs which only lasted a season or two: The Funky Phantom, Clue Club and Speed Buggy? A cable network can be more convenient than hunting down a videotape would be another advantage.
After several years, the Cartoon Network caught up to Nickelodeon thanks to Turner getting the Hanna-Barbera studio back into gear. It had the adding advantage of being exclusively animation while Nick did live action kid-friendly shows (Clarissa Explains it All, The Adventures of Pete & Pete) and went back to old TV after 7 PM. Turner had a better relationship with the former Time-Warner empire as he got dibs on their popular Batman syndication show from 1992 and I think they were making Saturday morning stuff for Fox. It didn’t matter, by 1996, Time-Warner bought up Ted. Now Scooby and Bugs were friends alongside Batman and Space Ghost.
Keep watching the header as I update it every day with three additions CN aired as they matured into a major reason why HBO Max isn’t a complete waste of dough.