Cartoon Network third logo (May 28, 2010 - present)
A product of Ted Turner's vast empire (since merged into TimeWarner), Cartoon Network was a showcase channel for Hanna-Barbera's extensive archive of classic animation. It became an instant powerhouse for cable in the 1990s, airing both older and new cartoons. The newer projects led to pioneering shows in their own right, amongst them Ed, Edd 'n Eddy, Dexter's Laboratory, Cow and Chicken, Johnny Bravo, The Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack, the latter leading to two original Star Wars: Clone Wars mini-series.
Cartoon Network eventually expanded itself with greater amounts of original content, soon shuffling its "vintage" animation to a new channel, "Boomerang". New programming blocks such as Toonami, "Miguzi" and "Adult Swim" aimed more towards early-teen and adult animation fans, and helped to bring in a new lease on life for the anime movement.
In 1998, the Toonami block broadcast the final five episodes of season two of Beast Wars, a welcome development since otherwise American fans would not have seen them for many months and would have been vulnerable to spoilers from dirty Canadians. In 2002, Cartoon Network revived He-Man for all of ten minutes, and also turned their heads towards Transformers, airing all three "seasons" of the Unicron Trilogy. Near the end of the 2000s, they served as producers and distributors of Transformers Animated, which featured many of the talents who brought Cartoon Network some of their bigger action-cartoons like Teen Titans and Ben 10.
Unfortunately, Cartoon Network has a nasty habit of moving Transformers shows to early morning "death slots," before most of the target audience (yannow, kids) were awake and/or getting ready for school. While this didn't have much of an impact on the Unicron Trilogy because the shows had 52 pre-planned episodes from the get-go, Transformers Animated suffered from almost-nonexistent advertising and the dreaded early morning "death slot". While this was only one of the many factors that led to Transformers Animated's untimely ending, Cartoon Network certainly contributed to the show's cancellation.
Cartoon Network TOO, Cartoon Network Europe and Cartoon Network Brazil have the broadcast rights to Prime.
Cartoon Network is the home of the new Robots in Disguise cartoon since the Hub Network has been reworked into Discovery Family. Let's hope they treat it better than they treated Transformers Animated... although the decision to put the series in the prestigious Saturday morning 6:30 AM timeslot probably doesn't bode well. International Cartoon Networks in Australia and the UK and Ireland also air the program.
Cartoon Network Japan has rerun a number of Transformers series over the years, including Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers, Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers 2010 and Beast Wars Returns. They also were the first station in Japan to air all three episodes of "The Rebirth", which before then had only ever been seen as laserdisc and DVD bonus content.
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