Cartoon Network Studios Won’t Shut Down, Warner Bros. Says

On Wednesday, Warner Bros. TV Group laid off 82 employees in its scripted, unscripted and animation departments, a Warner Bros. Polygon representative confirmed. The company is leaving 43 of the currently vacant positions vacant. While the three brands Warner Bros. Animation (WBA), Cartoon Network Studios (CNS) and Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe will remain separate, the development and production teams of WBA and CNS will be combined into one division.

Corresponding meetingWarner Bros. also has resigned his initial decision Complete the Warner Bros. Television Workshop, which is designed to nurture new talent and provide a pipeline that many in the animation industry have deemed invaluable in helping marginalized creators break into a highly competitive arena. The workshop will be relocated to Discovery’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion department.

These changes at Cartoon Network Studios come at a time when some of its cartoons have already become more difficult to track down and watch. The cuts also come immediately after Discovery acquired Warner Media from AT&T. HBO Max and Discovery Plus are set to become a streaming service in 2023. After the acquisition in April, CEO David Zaslav, who previously ran Discovery, pledged to cut $3 billion from the company, and he’s taken an aggressive approach to get there.

Zaslav kept his promise, especially in the entertainment genre. In August, Discovery laid off 14% of HBO Max’s employees and fired the bat girl Movie. Later that month, popular cartoons were ripped from HBO Max, blinding the cartoons’ creators. dozens of Sesame Street Episodes have been removed from the streaming platform and other shows have been removed entirely – including Fan Favorite OK KO! – Let’s be heroesas well as Infinity train, which ran for four seasons and no longer airs on Cartoon Network. (It’s still available on other streaming services, thankfully.) Other shows like Summer camp island and Victor and Valentino still airs on Cartoon Network, even if you can’t find them on HBO’s streaming service.

Corresponding diversity, “Performance will stay the same,” following the consolidation of WNA and CNS — but the response from animation industry residents and experts has not been so optimistic. cartoon brew declared the studio “gone”, who inspires Rejection from a Cartoon Network employee. Polygon spoke to a Warner Bros. representative who said CNS is not going away and there are still many projects in development. The real question is how this joint division will prioritize, which more or less depends on what viewers are actually watching and what the company thinks is profitable.

More often than not, digging through each animation studio’s back catalog reinforces the differences between the two over the years – a difference that many of us who grew up watching and obsessing over Cartoon Network’s various cartoon blocks could easily tell, even before the consolidation and the layoffs. It’s hard to say how these two studios will come together, especially after these layoffs have left so many talented employees out of work.

Warner Bros. Animation (WBA) created some real gems especially in the 1950s-1960s including tom jerry, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, the flints; ‘The Flintstones, Scooby Dooand of course, Looney Tunes. But over the years, the WBA has stuck to that familiar formula, rehashing its classic IPs more or less over and over again and airing them on Cartoon Network. As a kid, I tuned in to see versions of Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes, and Tom & Jerry. As an adult, I can still see those identical characters – and not just through repetition.

While the Warner Bros. Animation imprint feels like a symbol of the past, Cartoon Network Studios has produced significant and groundbreaking shows The course of the time that also stood the exam from time. Yes, there are reboots, particularly Cartoon Network’s incredibly popular series from the late ’90s and early 2000s, such as Powerpuff Girls and numerous iterations of Ben 10. But there are also bangers and plenty of paradigm-shifting programming from shows that cemented the all-girl action team (Powerpuff Girlsof course), to shows inspired by anime, like Samurai Jack. Not to mention Cartoon Network’s Toonami block, which introduced scores of kids across the US to anime before captivating Western audiences – and which aired Pokemon for many years.

Image: Cartoon Network

CNS was also one of the few major animation studios to shine a spotlight on queer characters — particularly Sapphic romances — in the 2010s, laying the groundwork for other animated shows. adventure time, which debuted in 2010 and ran for 10 seasons, recently paid off the “Bubbline” romance sparked between Princess Bubblegum and Marceline; The two met while flirting in 2011’s Go With Me. Princess Bubblegum later sleeps in Marceline’s shirt, and the show’s 2018 finale sealed the deal with a kiss. 2013 Steven universe later becoming one of the most popular and influential contemporary queer animated films, featuring a cast of non-binary Crystal Gems, numerous gay characters, and a wonderful wedding episode.

The steady trickle of animated LGBTQ+ television now found across streaming services owes so much to these Cartoon Network Studio titans. Warner Brothers’ own Velma is a lesbian! This would have been unthinkable years ago, even when Hayley Kiyoko (nicknamed “Lesbian Jesus‘ by her fans) portrayed her in the TV movies that aired in 2009 and 2010.

Although CNS still exists after this consolidation, layoffs still have very real consequences. Corresponding the daily beast, Many of the HBO Max executives who were fired in August were people of color. Former Warner Bros. employees speculated to The Daily Beast at the time that this was due to an ideological shift in which content was geared towards a less diverse and more “Central American” audience. Now we’re seeing changes at an animation studio known for forward-thinking programming. How the WBA and CNS will work together is an open question — as is whether memorable, groundbreaking animation will remain a priority for a conglomerate with a philosophy rooted in reality entertainment.