Precarious314159 t1_j9f6myk wrote on February 21, 2023 at 2:10 PM

Reply to comment by n3rv0u5 in Why did the 90's offer a larger variety of broadcast kids shows than the 2000's-present? by sgavary

This is the answer. It's not like there's some conspiracy to stop production on kids show, it's just that they weren't a viable option.

As a kid in the 90s, there used to be tons of programing blocks for kids on every channel but over time, people just stopped watching. CBS kids used to have some classics but then Fox News, Kids WB, and ABC's One Sautrday Morning got all the quality shows and no one cared about Muppet Babies. Same thing with after school blocks; Disney Afternoon was huge but then Kids WB and Fox Kids got Animanics, Batman, X-Men and whatnots and no one cared about Bonkers or Snoochums and Meat.

My niece is 14 so I've gotten to see the current generation's connection with cartoons and they don't need a 6:30am airing of Beast Wars or a 4pm airing of Mucha Lucha when they watch something on Netflix, YouTube, or OnDemand. They don't need saturday morning blocks because they have their favorite episodes of the Loud House or Steven Universe available instantly.

Let's be real, if we had HBO Max with every episode of Adventure Time, we wouldn't still choose to watch it on broadcast tv and sit through commercials. Cartoon Network and other kid-focused channels are struggling because kids just aren't watching broadcast tv so if they aren't watching, why would other channels like ABC, Fox, etc continue to waste money?

WeDriftEternal t1_j9in5cz wrote on February 22, 2023 at 6:07 AM

I assure you, 80s and 90s kids content boom was long dead before youtube, netflix, streaming, or any of this other stuff came about, instead those were the beneficiaries of their demise on broadcast as they could pickup shows cheap and many networks would offer kids content streaming free on their websites, as their value was basically zero on the network