More About The New Live-Action Cartoon Network

A quick follow-up to last Friday’s post about Cartoon Network’s first original live-action production. An individual who’s familiar with Cartoon Network politics, but who prefers to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, wrote me the following:

“Who says a cartoon has to be animated?”

This was said/asked constantly by Atlanta programming execs, Burbank development execs, and marketing execs in their attempts to “explain” their interest in live action projects. I heard it at least once a week the last few months I was at the studio.

The other excuse often tossed around was that it was all Ted Turner’s fault. The story going around was that Ted was “originally going to call it the ‘Acme Network’ but changed his mind at the last moment.” As one head of development kept saying, “If only Ted had gone with the original name, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

It’s great that they’ve been able to rationalize this boneheaded programming shift to themselves. Now if they could just explain to the public why a station called Cartoon Network is increasingly creating and airing live-action content.