Cartoon Network

• 1. Introduction

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  Cartoon Network launched on the 1st of October 1992, as the first 24-hour single-genre cable channel devoted entirely to animation. At a moment when most cable channels mixed their programming across many genres, one network staked everything on cartoons alone. How did a channel built on borrowed libraries become a factory for some of television's most beloved original animation? And what happens to a channel for children when its audience grows up faster than its identity can follow?

  The answers begin not with animators or writers, but with a corporate deal made six years before the channel ever existed, and a senior television executive named Betty Cohen who was handed a library and told to build something.

• 2. A Library Looking for a Home

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  On the 9th of August 1986, Turner Broadcasting System acquired Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists. The deal lasted only weeks before Turner was forced to sell the studio back, but he kept something invaluable: a vast film and television library made before May 1986, including portions of the UA catalogue. From that acquisition came Turner Entertainment Co., the custodian of a trove of animated history.

  Turner Network Television launched on the 8th of October 1988, finding a loyal audience through its film holdings. Then in 1991, Turner acquired the library of animation studio Hanna-Barbera, adding The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, and the Snorks to a catalogue that already included Tom and Jerry from MGM. Ted Turner turned to Betty Cohen, then Senior Vice President of TNT, and asked her to imagine a channel that could house all of it.

  On the 18th of February 1992, Turner Broadcasting announced the plan publicly. The parent company that would carry the network's name was incorporated on the 12th of March 1992. Within months, Cartoon Network was on the air. Cohen became the network's first president, a title that acknowledged just how much of the channel's early direction rested on her decisions.

• 3. Original Voices

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  Access to classic animation was a powerful starting point, but borrowed libraries have a ceiling. In 1994, a new division of Hanna-Barbera called Cartoon Network Studios was founded specifically to produce original programming for the channel. The first major project it developed was What a Cartoon!, an anthology of original animated shorts that debuted in 1995.

  From those shorts grew some of the network's most enduring series. Cartoon Network Studios produced Dexter's Laboratory, Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel, Johnny Bravo, and The Powerpuff Girls, all falling under a programming umbrella called Cartoon Cartoons. Not every major show came from the in-house studio, however. Ed, Edd n Eddy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Codename: Kids Next Door were each produced by outside studios, giving the network a broader creative footprint than any single studio could provide.

  The Cartoon Cartoons brand served as the flagship label for original animated series for nearly a decade, before the network retired it in 2004 following the CN City rebrand on June 14 of that year. The name was formally discontinued in 2008, then unexpectedly brought back in 2021 for a new animated shorts program, a deliberate nod to the channel's origins.

• 4. What Got Cut and Why

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  Cartoon Network broadcast most of the Warner Bros. animated shorts originally made between the 1920s and the 1960s, but not without modification. Scenes depicting gunfire discharge, alcohol, tobacco, cowboys and Native Americans gags, and humor that would later be judged as politically incorrect were edited out before broadcast. The unedited versions were withheld from both broadcast and the wider video market.

  Some films were handled more severely than others. Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, a 1943 short that is politically controversial but critically regarded, was omitted from the schedule entirely. The Scarlet Pumpernickel from 1950 and Feed the Kitty from 1952, both well-regarded among animators, had their final scenes heavily cut because of violence.

  The editing drew national attention in June 2001 around the network's annual June Bugs marathon, a 49-hour event that promised to air every Bugs Bunny short in chronological order. The network had originally intended to include 12 shorts that year, including one from the Censored Eleven list of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons effectively shelved from general distribution. The plan was to broadcast them past midnight and to preface each with contextual introductions acknowledging their historic value as documents of a different era. The level of public scrutiny that decision attracted illustrated how freighted the question of which cartoons a children's network chooses to show had become.

• 5. Blocks, Brands, and Toonami

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  Toonami launched on Cartoon Network on the 17th of March 1997, built around action-oriented American cartoons and Japanese anime aimed at an older youth and teen audience. The block's name is a portmanteau of "cartoon" and "tsunami", evoking a tidal wave of animation. Its identity was anchored visually by an animated robot host named TOM, who was later voiced by Steve Blum. Toonami ran its original course until the 20th of September 2008, then returned on the 26th of May 2012, relaunched under Adult Swim's Saturday night programming.

  The Boomerang block, which first aired on the 8th of December 1992, gave classic and theatrical cartoons their own dedicated slot before spinning off into a standalone cable channel on the 1st of April 2000. A video-on-demand version launched in 2017, bringing new episodes of original series alongside the classics.

  In 2011 the channel introduced DC Nation, a block built around properties adapted from DC Comics. Two years later, in September 2021, new head Tom Ascheim introduced Cartoonito for preschool viewers and ACME Night for family audiences on Sunday evenings. ACME Night eventually moved to Adult Swim on the 3rd of September 2023, as Adult Swim's daily sign-on shifted to 5 p.m. ET/PT, a migration that reflected just how much of the channel's evening hours had organically shifted toward an older demographic.

• 6. Adult Swim Grows Up

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  Adult Swim began as a late-night block carrying animated and live-action programming for mature audiences, treated by Nielsen as a separate channel in its ratings calculations because its target demographic diverges so sharply from Cartoon Network's daytime viewers. Over time it moved steadily earlier in the evening. By 2009 its start time had moved to 10 p.m., then to 9 p.m. in 2010, then to 8 p.m. in March 2014.

  On the 1st of May 2023, Adult Swim's sign-on shifted again to 7 p.m. ET/PT on weekdays and Saturdays. The move produced a measurable ratings gain in the 18-34 demographic, lifting Cartoon Network to 6th place among ad-supported networks during prime time in the month that followed. A second expansion was announced on the 7th of June 2023, initially targeting a 6 p.m. start on August 28 before the sign-on was pushed further to 5 p.m. as confirmed on August 8.

  The 5 and 6 p.m. weekday hours now feature a programming strand called Checkered Past, running Cartoon Network original series from the 1990s and 2000s Monday through Thursday, with classic Toonami programming filling Fridays under the banner "Toonami Rewind". The channel's peak reach was 100 million pay television households in 2011. By the time of the most recent figures, that number had fallen to approximately 66 million.

• 7. Online and Beyond

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  CartoonNetwork.com was registered on the 9th of January 1996, and officially launched on the 27th of July 1998. In its early years, small studios partnered with the network to produce exclusive Web Premiere Toons, short cartoons made specifically for the site. A section called the Department of Cartoons offered storyboards, episode guides, model sheets, and production notes. In January 1999 it showcased the MGM Golden Age Collection, much of which had not been published or seen in over 50 years.

  In October 2000, CartoonNetwork.com surpassed Nickelodeon's website with 2.12 million unique users compared to Nick.com's 1.95 million. By July 2007, Nielsen data showed visitors spent an average of 77 minutes on the site, up from a previous record of 71 minutes set in 2004, placing it 26th in time spent across all U.S. domains. The same month in 2000 that saw the site outpace its rival also saw the launch of Cartoon Orbit, an online gaming network centered on digital trading cards called cToons. Cartoon Orbit ran until the 16th of October 2006.

  On the 8th of August 2024, CartoonNetwork.com was closed and redirected to the Cartoon Network hub on the streaming service Max. A network spokesperson described the shift as a decision to focus on social media as the space where audience engagement was most meaningful. Reports noted that the shutdown removed access to flash games and archival clips that had accumulated over decades, though some materials remained accessible through international versions of the site in regions where Max had not yet launched.