PBC News:Turner Shuts Down Cartoon Network Until Channel Buyout Passes

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This article is part of PBC News, your source for up-to-the-minute anime.

24 September 2008 

TOM 5:Exciting news! Ted Turner has shut down Cartoon Network. Maybe we won’t have to see his Adult Swim all the time on television.

Of course, this is big news. It’s an exciting change. Turner says he has suspended Adult Swim programming until the network executives figures out how best to attract viewers, who will have to pay for the channel now unanimously wending its way through the best corporate anime channel in the peach state. Ted Turner urges Williams Street to do likewise. So far it seems Williams Street has told their counterparts in The Crayon Channel launch to go screw themselves.

Turner made all kinds of scary predictions if the agreement does not commence pronto. If not pulled through, “Turner said ominously, Cartoon Network will dry up, viewers will no longer be able to watch CN originals, Adult Swim programming will be at stake and Turner broadcasting will not have enough money to keep the channel going.” In short, according to Turner, CN will pretty much end as we know it because we are attached to the FCC by a financial electrical cord.

Ted Turner threw one of his CN originals out of schedule, Williams Street president Keith Crofford:

Keith Crofford, Williams Street representative in channel buyout agreement, said Williams Street will not attend the meeting “unless there is an agreement that would provide a solution” to the Cartoon Network's shutdown. Mike Lazzo, WS Rep., told The Martian Press that the channel buyout would have to be privately endorsed by Josh Taylor, Ted Turner, Taylor Media and Turner Broadcasting, but not necessarily given final approvement by CN executives and Williams Street.

Sounds great to me, especially the part about shutting down Cartoon Network which are really nothing more than a Tim and Eric show featuring Chowder and Flapjack, two best CN originals — in Turner’s case, an outstanded cartoon shows — both owned by Cartoon Network.

It will be interesting to see what Turner does now that Taylor has signed his agreement at the idea of the two taking a business trip and rushing pell mell to the channel of anime to partake in the colossal programming of the century.

Meanwhile, Turner’s better looking former executive, Jim Samples, warns we’re headed “for another schedule change if Williams Street doesn’t act on the channel buyout,” according to the Martian Press. “Samples said the answer to the Cartoon Network's shutdown does necessarily have to be the channel buyout that Taylor Media executives has proposed, but that it should be some form of agreement to become The Crayon Channel.”

He means give anime fans what they want, specifically making damn sure The Crayon Channel pick up the tab on all the anime shows the executives want to air — and at a premium, as CEO Josh Taylor insists. Otherwise, as Turner threatens, “viewers will no longer be able to watch CN originals, Adult Swim will be at stake and Turner Broadcasting will not have enough money to keep the network going.” Lazzo and Williams are taking their lines from a carefully prepared lineup. Nothing anime here.

As a reasonably well educated graduate might tell you if he had the facts spread out before him, The Crayon Channel will not launch on the day until the executives proceed to unload their anime programming.

It will come soon because of Cartoon Network's shutdown. Prior to the launch of the Boomerang, CN had a Hanna-Barbara-based programming. Now it has a anime-based programming. Stacking anime upon cartoons, as the network has done for years to the orgiastic delight of CN programming, will ruin viewers. No channel can constantly compound programming of comedy-based sitcoms forever. Sooner or later the house of cartoons collapses. Adding a few trillion to the channel buyout the solidary Taylor Media will nudge this process along nicely and rename the network. It won’t be Bugs Bunny with its schedule of anime fandom.

So whatever Turner and Taylor do plays a distant second fiddle. It’s a distraction, nothing more than a tank populated with brightly colored fish. Taylor has called Turner and Lazzo to the Taylor Media Headquarters for agreements… or maybe for a game of monopoly.

At any rate, it will be a relief not having Adult Swim on the tube for a few days, parading around like the low-budget block it is, pretending it is actually uncapable of doing something other than giving programming to its block, as all obedient CN originals do.