Cartoon Network had several eras influenced largely by one generations of viewers—millennials. The generation encompasses the main viewing base for either of Cartoon Network’s two programming blocks. Not only that, the generation covers those blocks in each era. Even if older millennials got older, we still watched some cartoons aimed at another part of the generation plus we had the Adult Swim block.
If anything, the end of an era here is in the sense of cable is just fading and streaming is more convenient and big business. Cartoon Network was one the first networks that was really made for 90s-early 2000s broadcasting where marathons were the key to surviving midday hours and late night.
Why Cartoon Network is Ending
Simply put, it’s a network of a former time both in general and for WB Discovery. Like, it was a network for cartoons 24/7. That’s mostly it and that’s what viewers expected and why live-action attempts often failed.
Cartoon Network was cartoons and eventually, that was going to be dated with streaming. You can watch whatever cartoon you want either for a subscription price to multiple services or via other means.
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Not only can you can do this whenever without a bunch of commercial breaks. That beats broadcast and cable television each and every time! If anything, it should’ve moved to being a digital network years earlier and exist as something like Crunchy Roll or Netflix for animation. Remaining an actual network was going to be a problem for this particular part of the WB Discovery networks.
