MeTV Toons

[Daikun]

[Daikun]

MeTV Toons is joining DirecTV, channel 295.

[Daikun]

MeTV Toons officially joins DirecTV on June 30.

[Dr. Insomniac]

More MeTV than Toons, but I guess someone at the FCC finally asked how Saved by the Bell was educational and the network's replaced it with animal shows to fulfill the E/I quota. Not gonna lie, it had a pretty good 35-year run of tricking the government into thinking it was a valuable teaching tool. Few other series could hope to scam the FCC like that.

Now which will come first, the FCC asking why they even still have E/I standards when no kid's watching local network TV in the first place, or them asking MeTV Toons why they're airing Captain Planet? Because I caught an episode a few months back, and the message wasn't even pro-environment, just "Isn't Ted Turner such a cool guy?"

[Daikun]

MeTV Toons gets FOUR new shows on September 15!

-Star Trek: The Animated Series
-Where's Huddles?
-Linus the Lionhearted
-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

[Daikun]

MeTV Toons uploaded a (now-deleted) promo reel on Vimeo with a ton of new shows coming.
https://twitter.com/bluecat12217/status/1966867912507224344

Fantastic Max
Goldie Gold and Action Jack
Wildfire
Dumb and Dumber: The Animated Series
The Mumbly Cartoon Show
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
The Legion of Super Heroes

[Dr. Insomniac]

So another case of them getting whatever was cheap? How much did Legion of Super Heroes cost to license compared to the DC cartoons people remember like BTAS or Teen Titans? A third of the price? A fourth?

What can you even do with Dumb and Dumber TAS, Wildfire, or Goldie Gold and Action Jack? Those shows are only 13 episodes each and have no nostalgia appeal. You can only rerun them for so long.

[Rynnec]

Wake me when they get BTAS/STAS, Beast Wars, and Gundam.

[Avaitor]

Dumb and Dumber is a little interesting as the last show HB made for a non-Turner channel, but I can't say that I'm particularly interested in watching some of it.

Fantastic Max, maybe, I have memories of watching that on CN during various sick days way back when. I liked it better than The Smurfs, anyway.

The most interesting recent acquisition to me, besides TMNT, is Star Trek TAS, their first Filmation series. I guess this means that Paramount is a viable player for the channel, which hopefully will result in Terrytoons showing up. I'd like to see a little more of classic Mighty Mouse. And if Filmation is on the table, I have a soft spot for their Archie shows, which don't look any less cheap than their usual work but are much closer to the comics than Riverdale... give or take Veronica's terrible southern belle accent.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, it's interesting, but I also saw they're airing Trek TAS at the same time the main channel airs TOS. Okay? I know ratings don't really matter anymore unless they're extremely bad, but it's a strange form of self-competition.

Don't know if this is flamebaity or not, but Nemalki recently wrote an article against the idea of MeTV Toons ever airing any of the CN catalog like Dexter's Lab and PPG. And it was a take so dumb I considered writing a rebuttal on the blog, because it's just the slippery slope fallacy combined with the refusal to admit most of the big CN cartoons are old now. Powerpuff Girls is a 27-year-old show. There are college freshmen right now who weren't alive when a new episode of the original show aired. It's retro. And acting like MeTV Toons is sacred ground that mustn't be besmirched by 90s cartoons (ignoring all the 90s and 00s toons already air on the network) just sounds melodramatic and reactionary. Is anyone really gonna shed a tear if Johnny Bravo or whatever replaced an airing of Marine Boy or Police Academy: TAS?

Besides, we know the real reason they won't get those shows is because they can't, if all their new acquisitions are obscure relics like Dumb and Dumber. Though it leaves me wondering what the prices are for some of these licenses. Because the Weigels who own MeTV have the money to get Gilmore Girls on Start TV, and is that show seriously cheaper than any of the big CN classics or any of the shows Rynnec mentioned?

[Avaitor]

I kind of get it, he doesn't want to se MeTV Toons turn into Cartoon Network 2.0, but I don't see any kind of reality where they're able to make their own cartoons like CN; although to be fair, apparently Ted Turner was reluctant to expand HB's production to allow the World Premiere Toons...

But at the same time, we're going to run out of big name shows to air, and they can't run on hype from Looney Tunes, Flintstones, and TMNT hype forever, right? Maybe airing some of the less-popular Nicktoons and CN shows wouldn't be such a terrible idea, but at the same time, it looks like Discovery Kids is becoming a new home for the latter. My Gym Partner's a Monkey is about to join Steven Universe and Summer Camp Island.

[Dr. Insomniac]

But at the same time, we're going to run out of big name shows to air, and they can't run on hype from Looney Tunes, Flintstones, and TMNT hype forever, right? Maybe airing some of the less-popular Nicktoons and CN shows wouldn't be such a terrible idea, but at the same time, it looks like Discovery Kids is becoming a new home for the latter. My Gym Partner's a Monkey is about to join Steven Universe and Summer Camp Island.

And the thing is, the time gap between when Flintstones premiered on TV and when CN first started and reran Flintstones episodes was 32 years. In only 3 years from now, Dexter's Lab will be that same age. The inherent problem with nostalgia TV is that time's always gonna move forward, there are just more generations to accommodate over time, and unless we find a miracle cure that lets people live to be 200 soon, the majority of the audience that gets the most out of Flintstones or Huckleberry Hound nostalgia will keep shrinking with each year. And yeah, the idea of Looney Tunes getting overshadowed and forgotten isn't a wanted scenario, but that's just one small piece of the pie for this channel, while I can't imagine a cultural need to keep airing Challenge of the Gobots or The Mask TAS in the present day. Or Superfriends, frankly. That show was such a pop culture punching bag when we were kids that even CN got in on it.

Because right now, the channel is definitely filled with a bunch of hand-me-down shows that nobody really cared for back then and haven't bothered to reappraise. And even the shows that people do care about, TMNT's not exactly high art. Nobody sane's gonna bitch if they replaced airings of Underdog with Ed, Edd, n Eddy or whatever. Acting as if airing some CN shows will compromise the channel's integrity and create another MTV/TLC/A&E/History Channel situation is just silly.

[Daxdiv]

The inherent problem with nostalgia TV is that time's always gonna move forward, there are just more generations to accommodate over time, and unless we find a miracle cure that lets people live to be 200 soon, the majority of the audience that gets the most out of Flintstones or Huckleberry Hound nostalgia will keep shrinking with each year.

Yeah, the youngest Millennials are pushing 30, with the youngest being 29 right now if my sources are right with the highest being in their early-mid 40s. Sooner or later, these retro channels are going to have to appeal to the nostalgia of Millennials over Gen X or Boomers. While I don't reject the idea of CN shows appearing on MeTV Toons, I still think that's gonna be a long way ahead and they're gonna try to milk it by slowly adding in Fox Kids/Kids WB era shows before we even get to CN's show.

[Daikun]

Classic Terrytoons shorts are joining the lineup starting November 2.

[Daikun]

MeTV Toons is being added to DISH Network.