WI: No Cartoon Network?

Lets say Turner is never able to get the Cartoon Network off the ground. How would this affect animation in the US? Would some of the iconic CN shows like Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls (to say nothing of modern classics like Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Steven Universe) still get made, only to air on Nickelodeon or Disney or even Saturday Morning? Also, no CN means no Toonami or Adult Swim, so how are anime and adult animation affected?
 
One thing is that the network helped cultivate a generation of animators - kiss everything from Family Guy to Fairly Oddparents goodbye based on that alone.
 
Likely you get the same volume of US cartoons spread over multiple channels, but the cartoons are going to get more and more different the further on you go. Let's look at Dexter's Lab on its own: Tartakovsky came up with it as a student but it got produced because he won a popular vote on What A Cartoon!, which happened because Cartoon Network were desperate to make and show content. (It's a pretty niche idea if you're not a cartoon channel) It's quite likely Tartakovsky would have sold it some day but it wouldn't be to a hungry new channel, it wouldn't be starting on an anthology run by a guy who was open to anything, and it wouldn't have aired & got a thumbs-up before a series was made. That's a recipe for getting to make a cartoon with less compromises. We'd get a very different, less weird Dexter's Lab in this timeline.

And that's just one cartoon! Now butterfly all six of the WAC! spinoffs, and the influence they'd have on future creators. You probably don't get Adventure Time and Regular Show, and while you could get adult animation (The Simpsons has opened a door there) I doubt it'd be stuff like China IL.

Anime would probably still show up, but without a central "WATCH THIS PLACE FOR IT NOW NOW" broadcast it might make less of a splash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter's_Laboratory#Development
 
Anime did air on Sci-Fi for a time. With no CN, the recent remake of MLP might not exist.

That would be due to knock-on not from no CN directly if that happened.

I think all you'd see is a slight downward bump in anime fandom, and perhaps an earlier commercial Crunchyroll.

Anime fandom was doing well before CN, anime's decline didn't happen until it started pandering to the moe crowd in Japan (which I attribute to Evangelion)

* I'm not attacking Eva. I'm just saying the reaction to Rei and Asuka was what sparked a lot of the pandering that caused anime's decline in popularity in the US, and the process of anime fans diversifying from anime (which you can see in anime cons)
 
I'd find it easier to get my sons to actually do something other than watch the tv :D
(Guilty admission: I actually quite enjoy "The Regular Show", but don't get "Adventure Time":eek:)
 
If it were so, I know I would not have encouraged my friend to work at Dreamworks China with its parent company's CEO's attitude of "Chinamen are untrustworthy". Yuck. But on the other hand, Dreamworks probably wouldn't have grown so quickly. Hm, hm. Well, cartoons contributed to the adjacent industry of gaming, so I suppose it's even possible that gaming wouldn't have had its over 50% YOY growth. Then those jerks at Tencent wouldn't be dominating everyone in the 'net industry and I'd probably have a easier time! :D
 
my childhood gets a lot sadder. Maybe some other alternative would arise like say nickeleodeon having a bigger stake?
 
* I'm not attacking Eva. I'm just saying the reaction to Rei and Asuka was what sparked a lot of the pandering that caused anime's decline in popularity in the US

Could you elaborate on that? (I'd heard people talk about a decline but not this as a reason)
 
Most of the anime that aired on Sci-Fi in the 90s were movies, not series, and even then, a lot of them were very niche (ie, Roujin Z). Another thing about this timeline that could be interesting, the Powerpuff Girls was originally called "The Whoopass Girls". With no CN, maybe it gets picked up by MTV or even Comedy Central with its original name as an adult cartoon.
 
Cartoon Network also made major impact of anime from Japan like Pokemon, Yugioh, etc. and other anime on Toonami to Western world. If Cartoon Network did not exist, then anime probably be going somewhere else to another channel like Nick, or who knows maybe ABC. (I don't know)
 
Most of the anime that aired on Sci-Fi in the 90s were movies, not series, and even then, a lot of them were very niche (ie, Roujin Z).
With regards to Sci-Fi, there was also the Ani-Monday block that ran from 2007 to 2011, which aired series as well as films.
 
Could you elaborate on that? (I'd heard people talk about a decline but not this as a reason)

Anime is not declining, and Evangelion (a 1995 series) isn't responsible for any decline in popularity that the medium had over here in the 2000's. Otaku-pandering and the "moe crowd" in Japan are nothing new.

Relevant cherry-picked comparison:
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In the 90's and early 2000's, American fans didn't have the instant access to currently-airing anime shows that we do today. As a result, we only got a partial picture of what the industry was producing back then - consisting of the stuff that was on US TV and what was available on store shelves. The build-up to that era of American anime fandom was the early fansubbing trend, where OVAs (original video anime) on unofficial VHS tapes were circled around early fan groups and given fan translations.

Nowadays, we get legal streaming of most current shows just hours after they premiere in Japan, giving us the best modern anime along with the crap. So, long-time fans who weren't exposed to (or forgot about) the less-than-stellar anime of bygone years end up viewing the past through nostalgia goggles.

Without Cartoon Network and its Toonami and Adult Swim programming blocks, anime probably wouldn't be as popular in the US. Sure, other networks could include anime in their line-ups, but I can't really picture Nickelodeon/Disney Channel/Sci-Fi giving the medium as much exposure as CN did. The internet-based fandom will of course still exist, albeit on a smaller scale.

The thing about American TV is that, AFAIK, the networks and channels prefer to have content that's under their editorial control - and anime, being a foreign thing made for Japanese viewers first, doesn't mesh too well with that. This is why many of the early runs of anime on US airwaves had the shows become heavily edited and censored - from "Star Blazers" and "Robotech" to Sailor Moon and whatever 4Kids got their hands on. It's also why we even have American remakes of certain UK shows, despite the originals being in the same friggin' language.

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Regarding the impact on American/Canadian animation in a world without CN: Well, certain OTL industry figures obviously wouldn't get their big breaks - at least not in he same manner.
 
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