Bloomberg publishes a lengthy but paywalled article on the last gasps of Cartoon Network, highlighted by a huge drop in ad revenue

[Jman]

Remember, last week Warner took the next steps towards divesting their cable channels from the Warner Bros Discovery whole.  

[Blatch]

Here's the full unpaywalled article if anyone wants it. Nothing particularly revelatory, but I do like how it cuts a more optimistic jib for [as]. Maybe they'll manage to figure it out? I probably shouldn't say that, but I wasn't expecting WBD to come this far regarding profitability.

Edited May 13 by Blatch

[PokeNirvash]

If only Pibby were here...

[Toonamiguy321]

Typical slop piece that bundles every part of the network together into one category of “kids content” even though that isn’t the case. I don’t disagree that CN has a foot in the grave, they aren’t really putting anything out and seem to have resigned themselves to just slowly fading away. But on the adult swim side, they are at least making an attempt to be relevant. Common Side Effects was a stroke of good fortune of putting out something people really liked. 
 

The ad revenue issue doesn’t surprise me. It’s gotten better in recent months, but last year we went months where an ad for Friday Plans boner pills was on nearly every single break. Companies like that just buy up all the unsold ad space for peanuts. 
 

Unfortunately though, it does seem that the entire channel is going to end up paying for the failings of CN
 

 

[Sketch]

CN isn’t quite dead yet and Iyanu is doing well with their kid audience, is getting another season and some movies. So maybe CN on cable still has a future?

Scratch that, the network is dead.

They still air Gumball like 3 hours a day but Hulu / Disney+ gets the new season/series first and possibly exclusively in the US. It will air on CN internationally but that might not include the US.

Given that I will theorize Adventure Time spin-offs might still go to HBO Max but I strongly suspect the new Regular Show series will end up on Hulu. Youth targeted DC stuff in the works could go to HBO Max but Amazon or Hulu or even Netflix seem plenty likely.

Best case scenario, these shows still air on CN after they stream elsewhere but I have my doubts.

[Jman]

Iyanu has to be a nepo project.  That's the only explanation.

Zaslav seems all in on getting the kids content out of HBO Max.  HBO traditionally has not had a lot of kids content, and they probably want to emphasize that with the branding.