Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Cartoon Ratings

... on the t.v.

... Adult Swim programming—including Family Guy and Robot Chicken — accounted for 14 of the top 50 telecasts for the week on basic cable among adults ... The #1 television network among boys, Cartoon Network once again ranked as the #1 television network--broadcast & cable--in early prime time (7-9 p.m.) among all boys (2-11, 6-11, 9-14) 18-34 ...

Robot Chicken (Sunday, 10 p.m.) continues to chart solid double-digit delivery gains among targeted young adult and young male demos. ...

The pattern in cartoon cable networks has been: Cartoon series fall a bit. Execs panic, order up live-action, which does even worse. Cable network orders up more animation. which pulls the fat out of the fire.

... Adventure Time (Monday, 7:30 p.m.) ranked as the #1 telecast of the WEEK among boys 6-11 on all TV

The success Viacom allowed to get away must rankle execs at Nickelodeon. They had AT in their wheelhouse, since it had been produced as a network pilot under their "shorts program." But the powers-that-be declined to greenlight it to series, and Fred Seibert shopped the series elsewhere.

Cartoon Network came to the pilot's rescue and did a series order. Next thing you know, Adventure Time is a hit and (I'm guessing here) Nick execs are gnashing their rectums.

No corporate higher-ups like to be shown to be "wrong." But somebody in the Viacom hierarchy was clearly wrong about AT. Let's hope that no heads were lopped off for this screwup.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

They seemed to have realized their mistake, since Nick is apparently taking a second look at "Bravest Warrior", another pilot Pen Ward created.

Steve Hulett said...

I recently lunched with a Nick exec who had urged upper management to pick up "Adventure Time" as a series.

The response he got was "Nah."

We all make mistakes, don't we? It's but seldom when exec types cop to theirs.

Anonymous said...

This catering towards boy sickens me. Don't girls watch cartoons anymore?

Anonymous said...

Of course girls don't watch cartoons anymore.

They either watch live-action sitcoms like iCarly, or they go watch anime/manga.

American animation doesn't really cater to girls, so they have to go towards either Japan's stuff or the live-action stuff on TV.

Anonymous said...

You know, with the success of the new My Little Pony cartoon, you'd think network executives will take another look at the girl cartoon genre...

Fernando said...

Nah, My Little Pony is not a BIIIIGG HIT. Ah, and Adventure Time does very well among girls...

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