Cartoon Network Cartoonival Notebook

Cartoon Network (abbreviated CN, corporately known as The Cartoon Network, Inc.) is an American cable television network owned by Turner Broadcasting which primarily airs animated programming. The channel was launched on October 1, 1992 after Turner purchased the animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1991. It was served as a 24-hour outlet for classic animation properties from the Turner Broadcasting libraries and was all-ages-oriented, but now the channel serves as a platform for the up & rising animation medium with various programmes catering to both adult and child audiences respectively.
It also broadcasts many shows, ranging from action to animated comedy. Original series started in 1994 with Space Ghost Coast to Coast, along with Cartoon Cartoons original programmings like Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel, The Powerpuff Girls, Ed, Edd n Eddy and Courage the Cowardly Dog. In 2009, it started airing live-action programming, including movies from Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema.

In 1986, Ted Turner's cable-TV conglomerate acquired most of the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television library (which also included Gilligan's Island and its animated spin-offs, the U.S. rights to a majority of the RKO Radio Pictures library, and the Associated Artists Productions catalog which includes the pre-1950 Warner Bros. feature films, the pre-September 1948 Warner Bros. short subjects, the Harman and Ising Merrie Melodies except Lady, Play Your Mandolin!, the pre-August 1948 color Warner Bros. cartoons, and the Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios Popeye cartoons released by Paramount Pictures). In 1988, its cable channel Turner Network Television was launched and had gained an audience with its film library. In 1991, it purchased animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions and acquired its large library as well as most of the Ruby-Spears library.

At 12PM ET on October 1, 1992, Cartoon Network was launched as an outlet for Turner's considerable library of animation, and the initial programming on the channel consisted exclusively of reruns of classic Warner Bros. cartoons (the pre-August 1948 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies), the 1933–1957 Popeye cartoons, MGM cartoons, and Hanna-Barbera cartoons.[citation needed] At first, cable providers in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Detroit carried the channel. By the time the network launched, Cartoon Network had a 8,500 hour cartoon library. From its launch until 1995, the network's announcers said the network's name with the word "The" added before "Cartoon Network", thus calling the network "The Cartoon Network".
Cartoon Network was not the first cable channel to have relied on cartoons to attract an audience. Nickelodeon had paved the way in the 1980s. On August 11, 1991, Nickelodeon had launched three "high-profile" animated series: Doug, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and Rugrats, further signifying the importance of cartoons in its programming. The Disney Channel and the Family Channel had also included animated shows in their programming. In each of these cases, until 11:59AM ET on October 1, 1992, cartoons were only broadcast during the morning or the early afternoon. Prime time and late night television hours were reserved for live-action programs, following the assumption that television animation could only attract child audiences, while Cartoon Network was a 24-hour single-genre channel with animation as its main theme. Turner Broadcasting System had defied conventional wisdom before by launching CNN, a channel providing 24-hours news coverage. The concept was previously thought unlikely to attract a sufficient audience to be particularly profitable, however the CNN experiment had been successful and Turner could hope that the Network could also find success.
Initially, the channel would broadcast cartoons 24/7. Most of the short cartoons were aired in half-hour or hour-long packages, usually separated by character or studio—Down Wit' Droopy D aired old Droopy Dog shorts, The Tom and Jerry Show presented the classic cat-and-mouse team, and Bugs and Daffy Tonight provided classic Looney Tunes shorts. Late Night Black and White showed early black-and-white cartoons (mostly from the Fleischer Studios and Walter Lantz cartoons from 1930s), and ToonHeads, which would show three shorts with a similar theme and provide trivia about the cartoons. There was also an afternoon cartoon block called High Noon Toons which was hosted by cowboy hand puppets (an example of the simplicity and imagination the network had in the early years). The majority of the classic animation that was shown on Cartoon Network no longer airs on a regular basis, with the exception of Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, The Flintstones, and The Jetsons as of January 12, 2012.
The first challenge for Cartoon Network was to overcome its low penetration of existing cable systems. When launched in October 1992, the channel was only carried by 233 cable systems. However, it benefited from package deals. New subscribers to sister stations TNT and WTBS could also get access to Cartoon Network through such deals. The high ratings of Cartoon Network over the following couple of years led to more cable systems including it. By the end of 1994, Cartoon Network had become "the fifth most popular cable channel in the United States".