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The Streaming Service Cartoon Purge

firefossil

firefossil

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He/Him
Plans to reorganize HBO, HBO Max, and Discovery+ is putting many shows on the chopping block, but most prominently a pile of cartoons, both those licensed from Cartoon Network but originals and others:
Shows leaving HBO Max THIS WEEK:
- Aquaman: King of Atlantis
- Close Enough
- Dodo
- Elliott from Earth
- Esme & Roy
- The Fungies
- Infinity Train
- Little Ellen
- Mao Mao
- Messy Goes to Okido
- Mia's Magic Playground
- Mighty Magiswords
- Odo
- OK KO
- The Ollie & Moon Show
- Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures
- some Sesame Street specials
- Summer Camp Island
- The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo
- The Runaway Bunny
- Theodosia
- Tig n' Seek
- Uncle Grandpa
- Victor and Valentino
- Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs
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This is not comprehensive, I know they already cut Final Space some time back.

Not to be satisfied with making these shows unwatchable with a subscription, they seem determined to unperson some entirely:
Interesting observation... @cartoonnetwork
has removed almost all tweets mentioning Infinity Train or Mao Mao's existence.

They've also removed every Infinity Train or Mao Mao video off of their YouTube.

Looks like similar things are happening to OK K.O. as well.

Infinity Train's soundtrack also seems to be in the process of getting removed online, too.

Infinity Train book 1 and 2 can no longer be bought on DVD new from Amazon. Still available through third-party sellers on the site.
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Not watchable with a subscription. Not purchasable on a per episode basis. No buying the music either. Oh and any social media content mentioning them? Gone. Keep in mind that some of these shows do not and in some cases never ran on TV, so you are down to buying surviving DVD copies on Amazon, if DVDs were even made in the first place.

I'm still holding out hope and that this is going to end with them shuffling them all into their own little Cartoon+ subscription pen or something, but I fear that it'll be more like Symbionic Titan or Megas XLR, where the only legal method is limited to buying episodes for $2/episode on Apple+, or quite possibly zero legal method besides bidding wars for copies on Amazon.

This isn't meant to be just a 2MH thread or something. More to sound the alarm, consolidate any news about what's on the chopping block, and check whether or not there's a light at the end of the tunnel that isn't an oncoming train.
 
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And the reasoning I heard is just so stupid, petty and short-sighted. Not wanting to pay the people who made it pennies on the dollar, so you make no money at all?
 
This article had an update:
Update, 8/18/21 at 2:05 p.m.: Cartoon Network sent us a statement this morning, noting that "Victor & Valentino and Summer Camp Island will continue to air on Cartoon Network." Dates are TBD, but, "fans can look forward to the remaining new episodes of both shows on CN this year."
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These two Cartoon Network shows being pulled from HBO Max while having a complete but unreleased season will still reportedly have said season air on Cartoon Network, so there's that at least.

Speaking of some CN shows like OK KO or Mighty Magiswords I know are also on Hulu.
 
I've actually seen ads for the next season of V&V on the actual cartoon network channel (I occasionally switch the TV to cartoons for my grandparents, turns out they're better than a lot of TV programming for folks with dementia, and the commercials that play in between are far less bad than the bastard scumshit stuff specifically aimed at elderly), for what that's worth. Unless they pull it in contravention of that, it'll run at least some in the near-ish future.
 
firefossil said:
I'm still holding out hope and that this is going to end with them shuffling them all into their own little Cartoon+ subscription pen or something, but I fear that it'll be more like Symbionic Titan or Megas XLR, where the only legal method is limited to buying episodes for $2/episode on Apple+, or quite possibly zero legal method besides bidding wars for copies on Amazon.
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From what I've heard, the plan is apparently to write off a lot of those shows for tax purposes, which I am given to understand means that for some it'll be illegal piracy or nothing if there wasn't a physical release (or just becoming lost media entirely). So it'll be just like Megas XLR, except without as much in the way of physical media for some of them.

And they say it's for residuals but honestly the guy in charge of HBO/Discovery seems like an absolute shitheeled dumbfuck with his whole "HBO should be for men and Discovery for women, which is why Discovery will focus on unscripted content, because women prefer reality TV and don't like scripted shows" thing. And the writing off of the new Batgirl and Scooby-Doo films which were nearly complete.
 
AmbarGriss said:
Really? How do they expect to make money like that?
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It's another thing about old-school, financial logic involving maximizing profit by focusing on demographics. Same reason cartoons with mature themes get cut - Infinity Train for example - while incredibly juvenile* cartoons get promoted and merch'd beyond all belief. In this scenario, you are being efficient with budgeting by only funding and marketing content that your given demographics are most likely to follow, according to the statistics. The issue with this is it's incredibly outdated, very obviously based on rigid gender norms, and finally is also a shallow take based on seeing "men follow HBO Max and women follow Discovery...ergo we should switch their content to what we assume men and women watch respectively" rather than actually looking deeper into the studies about why such a lean might exist and what content they were already following before the gendered strategy is implemented. A closer look at data rather than a basic "X% of women subscribe to this while X% of men do that" typically provides a picture much different than what the people in charge of these kinds of decisions assume is supposed to be normal.

*referring to the cartoons that are a funhouse mirror version of what top execs think children like most
 
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WestOrEast said:
And the reasoning I heard is just so stupid, petty and short-sighted. Not wanting to pay the people who made it pennies on the dollar, so you make no money at all?
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The CEO of Discovery/HBO actively hates non-reality tv content, and has been upfront about wanting to purge it.

arstechnica.com

WB Discovery merger strikes down “nearly finished” live-action Batgirl film

Reports blame tax write-off strategy; HBO Max also quietly delists six films.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
The new CEO of the combined company, David Zaslav, was the previous CEO of Discovery and has been since 2006. He's apparently largely responsible for Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and TLC's shifts away from documentaries towards primarily reality programming during the late-2000s and 2010s, and he's apparently not a fan of any kind of scripted content at all. This is reflected in his decisions: he's begun the process of eliminating HBO's award-winning documentary department and HBO's reality department in favor of retaining his existing unscripted team from Discovery, he's inexplicably cancelled a number of quite popular scripted series across all of Warner's platforms over the past couple of months, has been insistent on ending the practice of putting theatrical movies on HBO Max the same day they release in theaters and has been cancelling most of their direct-to-streaming movie projects supposedly out of fear of "diluting the brand", he's apparently considering firing J.J. Abrams after the company under AT&T spent half a billion dollars buying his exclusivity (which was a good deal; I'll be the first one to point out the now well-known issues with J.J. Abrams productions, but the guy is consistently bankable and a very good hire from a money-only perspective), and it seems that essentially all of Zaslav's decisions are being based on focusing development on unscripted content and eliminating any kind of "duplication" or "brand dilution" he can find, even if it means firing successful teams and killing nearly finished projects.
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Enmascarado said:
I'm going to be honest, it really feels like the CEO wants to kill HBO.
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It's always possible the CEO and some of the other top people are trying to "Golden Parachute" their way out of Warner Bros. That's usually the end result of "reorganizations" that involve cutting just about every single thing and kneecapping most/all subsidiaries of a major company anyhow.
 
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PyrrosWarrior said:
It's another thing about old-school, financial logic involving maximizing profit by focusing on demographics. Same reason cartoons with mature themes get cut - Infinity Train for example - while incredibly juvenile* cartoons get promoted and merch'd beyond all belief. In this scenario, you are being efficient with budgeting by only funding and marketing content that your given demographics are most likely to follow, according to the statistics. The issue with this is it's incredibly outdated, very obviously based on rigid gender norms, and finally is also a shallow take based on seeing "men follow HBO Max and women follow Discovery...ergo we should switch their content to what we assume men and women watch respectively" rather than actually looking deeper into the studies about why such a lean might exist and what content they were already following before the gendered strategy is implemented. A closer look at data rather than a basic "X% of women subscribe to this while X% of men do that" typically provides a picture much different than what the people in charge of these kinds of decisions assume is supposed to be normal.

*referring to the cartoons that are a funhouse mirror version of what top execs think children like most
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Wasn't that all part of why Teen Titans got cancelled back in the day? It had crossover appeal with girls and the execs didn't like that it wasn't just/predominantly boys watching so they canned it? "Girls don't buy the same toys boys do (according to execs, and not paying attention to how male characters get more toys made of them than female ones rather than full lineups getting equal treatment usually) so therefore if too many girls watch the show you can't get the same profit from toy ads." being part of the justification.

Here's an interview about that sort of ass-backwards thinking.

But, yeah. They say all this is for tax write-offs but even that seems to be based on outdated stereotypes than actual necessity (even if HBO hasn't been doing well, apparently, despite HBO Max being often talked about as the best streaming service ATM in places I see).
 
Ok, from the point of view of someone that got an HBO subscription as a bonus from my telco provider...

This looks pretty bad and reinforces my decision of not renewing once my "free" (free as in "we will give you X months of HBO and Amazon Prime if you sign up with us") period ends.

I don't usually watch cartoons, but even so, paying a monthly fee for a content service where chunks of the line-up just get thrown away suddendly? No thanks.
 
Tylonius said:
You absolutely should. Thankfully, there are some kindly sailors that might have it lying around if you want to go
MOD EDIT :Removed the piracy link
hank you so much for this. Also this person is truly a hero. I'm about halfway through Season 3, so I don't have too much more to finish from what I can tell.

Also what the hell are DC/HBO doing over there? Like I'm crossing my fingers and hoping Young Justice doesn't get the axe, but I'm honestly worried now.

Guess we gotta go back to the good old days of pirating this stuff at this rate.
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Oh God Capitalist brain rot strikes again. This is a very scary precedent for artistic merrit, piracy may be the only way to watch (or in the cases of video games "play/emulate" ) things nowadays, it increasingly feels like we are going into one of the least "exciting" dystopias.
 
Xon said:
The CEO of Discovery/HBO actively hates non-reality tv content, and has been upfront about wanting to purge it.

arstechnica.com

WB Discovery merger strikes down “nearly finished” live-action Batgirl film

Reports blame tax write-off strategy; HBO Max also quietly delists six films.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
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He's also the dude behind the dude pushing CNN to can anyone too left and bring in right wing talking points.
 


Welp...


Also movies are not safe either


"The news comes following the merger of Warner Media and Discovery, now called Warner Bros Discovery, which saw several changes across the company. These changes include layoffs for 70 percent of HBO Max's scripted content developers, the cancellation of Batgirl and the removal of several HBO Max original movies."


Very salty, especially with them trying to scrub O.K KO out from existence among other shows like Infinity Train


Goodbye Warners artistic merrit I'm gonna miss the shit out of you
 
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This level of penny pinching does not speak of a company with any plan to deal with the 53 billion dollar debt beyond paring it down enough that they can pass it to someone else, like Comcast
 
Owen Dennis, creator of Infinity Train, did a substack about the situation.

I'm gonna note a couple key points.

-With this pay structure, creatives rely on residuals to fund their healthcare. So a lot of people just lost healthcare. Indirectly, but they've lost it.

-Cartoon Network specifically warned Discovery not to do this, because it would damage their relationships with creators and talent. They did it anyway.

-This wasn't supposed to happen until next week, so they'd be able to warn people in advance. Someone up top ordered them to do it now.
 
Great Greedy Guts said:
From what I've heard, the plan is apparently to write off a lot of those shows for tax purposes, which I am given to understand means that for some it'll be illegal piracy or nothing if there wasn't a physical release (or just becoming lost media entirely). So it'll be just like Megas XLR, except without as much in the way of physical media for some of them.
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AFAIK it's more that Zaslav and co doesn't want to even pay out royalties to creators of these shows.

Last month basically has made probably any creator wary as fuck working for WBD with Zaslav at the helm.
 
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