Last month, Cartoon Network USA viewership continued to plummet and now channels such as Nick Jr and Disney Junior pull in more viewers than them. Even the Adult Swim block on the channel which airs at 10pm to 5am pulls more viewers than the channel.
This is due to the fact that more people are opting to streaming and also that WarnerMedia stopped putting much effort towards the channel and proved that ratings don't matter anymore.
If you look at Cartoon Network now, the channel lacks variety and is flooded with constant reruns of Teen Titans GO! at some point viewers enjoyed the show now they're irritated over the fact that it's the only thing available there.
The decrease is not only coming through Cartoon Network but other kids brands such as Disney Channel and Nickelodeon which are dealing with a similar situation. Except it seems like WarnerMedia doesn't intend to recover from that.
Since HBO Max inception in 2020, most of Cartoon Network's programs became HBO Max exclusives and for the first time in many years the channel had no original programming.
Later in that year, WarnerMedia greenlit a bunch of programming under Cartoon Network most of them were tagged with HBO Max.
Now the question remains on how long this format will go on. WarnerMedia has been doing a lot of reconstructing part of it may include putting their focus on less brands even aligning them together and perhaps scrapping Cartoon Network to some extent and converting it to HBO Kids or Family.
HBO Kids runs as a programming block on HBO Family in the United States and also the Family brand has a 24/7 channel in Asia. None of which have any original content but since HBO Max is around chances are they'll use these brands for reruns.
Perhaps HBO will revive the kids block on their channel and use it for all the original content and launch a seperate kids channel for reruns. To do this they'd probably take HBO Family and change the name to HBO Kids.
HBO Kids launches as a replacement channel for Cartoon Network and Boomerang. Adult Swim will only have animation under the HBO Max branding everything else remains to some extent.
I'm not expecting it to happen out of the blue perhaps the objective now is put as much HBO Kids titles on HBO Max and Cartoon Network. So them airing it on Cartoon Network is their way off trying to make viewers familiarise HBO on the kids space so they don't pull a Universal Kids and fans are completely turned off by the brand.
The change could only occur when WarnerMedia feels they got enough HBO Kids titles to fill up the channel and less Cartoon Network originals. Right now there's like 5 pending CN originals and 1 that's coming from Europe.
WarnerMedia International operates Cartoon Network, Boomerang and a bunch of other regional channels such as ToonCast, Cartoonito, Pogo, Boing and Toonami. The regional part feels a little pinch while Cartoon Network and Boomerang adapt to the U.S. counterpart.
Toonami functions as a 24/7 channel perhaps they'll change it to DC Kids if you look at the the overload of DC Animation perhaps Cartoon Network will incorporate itself there for selected shows that aren't DC while Toonami gets the anime. That's one way to follow the U.S. counterpart.
Then ToonCast and Boing use the Cartoon Network branding since all they're doing there is airing reruns perhaps Boomerang will manage the non-English feeds. Pogo has regional content so they'll likely use the HBO Kids branding leaving Cartoonito unscathed.
Cartoon Network could get back up and salvage the little viewers left on the brand but since cable is becoming expensive is it worth saving. The only thing they can do now is reduce TTG's airtime perhaps that's what will get viewers engaged again but before this mess popped up and after the variety was gone the brand reserved itself for 2-3 shows, do you think that's what their future will be when TTG ends or something much different.
