Cartoon Network has been known to screw good shows by messing around with their schedules and time slots. Young Justice went from prime time to Saturday a.m. before it got canceled (and thankfully picked up by Netflix) and Cartoon Network let The Life and Times of Juniper Lee founder with too little advertising.
Cartoon Network may done both with the latest episodes of Adventure Time, pushing it to the Sunday night time slot instead of Friday or Saturday while their advertising focused on the fourth Powerpuff Girl.
Fans have noted (and hated) the emphasis Cartoon Network has placed on low-quality shows such as Teen Titans Go. The reasons are likely because TTG is cheap to produce and does well enough with the target audience of young children.
Powerpuff Girls, by contrast, seems more of an attempt to appeal to older fans and nostalgia. Unfortunately, this attempt has failed spectacularly as Cartoon Network does not seem to understand why fans loved the original in the first place. Tara Strong, original voice of Bubbles and most beloved voice actress for fans of any American cartoon, said it was not her decision not to resume her previous role. She said it was a “purely creative decision” to recast her and the other voice actors and it felt like “a stab in the heart.”
But while Powerpuff Girls is likely to go under, Teen Titans Go is coasting because it brings in enough ratings compares to its cost to produce.
The mystery here is why Cartoon Network seems to have forgotten about Adventure Time, which is still making episodes. The abstract animation in Adventure Time can’t cost much more than that of Teen Titans Go (Although the writers hopefully get paid more), and where is the logic in advertising a show like Teen Titans Go which plays six timed a day at the expense of a special event from Adventure Time?
It could be Cartoon Network feels Adventure Time has run its course and is getting a little stale. If that’s the case, it doesn’t explain the focus on Teen Titans Go and Powerpuff Girls.
It could also be that Cartoon Network feels television is getting old and stale. With more and more viewers dumping their cable providers and switching to streaming Services on demand, it doesn’t much matter what day or time Adventure Time airs, and younger viewers (fans of TTG) are likely to just let just anything play on the TV or playlist while while they play with their phones, games or toys.
In any event, there is a silver lining. Adventure Time fans are going to find new episodes, when they finally hear about them and when Hulu picks these episodes up. That supply of new episodes may dry up because of Cartoon Network’s decisions killing the show’s ratings, but we have new episodes for now.
Which is more than can be said for Steven Universe.
For more nerd rage, follow follow The Southern Nerd on Facebook or Pinterest
The Southern Nerd 