Cartoon Network is an American cable television network created by Turner Broadcasting which primarily shows animated programming. The original American channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 with the Daffy Duck short The Great Piggy Bank Robbery being its first-ever aired program.[1] Cartoon Network originally served as a 24-hour outlet for classic animation properties from the Turner Broadcasting libraries. Cartoon Network is mainly youth-oriented, but shares channel space with a late-night adult-oriented channel skein called Adult Swim, helping to boost being popular with kids and adults. In recent years, Cartoon Network began airing more live-action programming, mainly being movies.
In 2008, Cartoon Network made a music video stating that comedies are the heart of the network and action is the soul of the network. Cartoon Network West was also introduced in 2008, three hours behind regular networks.
History[]
Late 1980s-1995: Early Days[]
By the end of the 1980s, Ted Turner's cable-TV conglomerate had acquired the MGM film library (Which included the older catalog of pre-1948 color Warner Bros. cartoons) and its cable channel Turner Network Television had gained an audience with its film library.
In 1990, it purchased animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions and acquired its large library as well as most of the Ruby-Spears library. Cartoon Network was created 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. (Like Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies), MGM (Like Tom and Jerry and Droopy Dog) and Hanna-Barbera cartoons (Like The Jetsons and The Flintstones), with many Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons like Wally Gator used as time fillers. Most of the short cartoons were aired in half-hour or hour-long packages, usually separated by character or studio — Down With 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. The majority of the classic animation that was shown on Cartoon Network no longer airs, with the exception of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The New Scooby-Doo Movies and Tom and Jerry.
Pre-Adult Swim[]
In 1994 Cartoon Network produced it's first series, Space Ghost Coast to Coast was created by Mike Lazzo after he was asked to create a cartoon to appeal to adults. The original name of the show stemmed from early 1993, while Andy Merrill and Jay Edwards were coming up with names for a marathon of the original Space Ghost TV show to air on Cartoon Network, trying to find things that rhyme with Ghost. The series premiered on April 15, 1994, having aired initially at 11:00 P.M. ET on Friday nights, with an encore showing of the episode on Saturday night. Later, the program was moved to various late-night time slots, having usually been on weekends.
In February 1995, an episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast was simulcast on Cartoon Network, TBS and TNT for the World Premiere Toon-In special debut of Cartoon Network's World Premiere Toons series. In the special, Space Ghost interviewed a few of the new directors, while the Council of Doom were the judges of the cartoon clips.
On September 2, 2001, new episodes of the series, along with re-runs of the existing episodes, moved to Adult Swim, a late night programming block, launched by Cartoon Network that night. The series ended its television run in 2004 with Live at the Fillmore.