Are kids turning away from animation?

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waysofkarma

New member
Got this little ditty from the Nicktoons thread:



Yep, a grand total of 5 cartoons in that list. With Disney's L-A shows reigning supreme, Nickelodeon ramping up promotion for their TeeNick shows, and Cartoon Network putting live-action on the network, do you think kids are drifting away from cartoons?

I hope that this is a cycle...I think Disney started the trend with HSM and them building just about around show around that G------ed movie. Despite HSM's huge numbers, it's eventually going to wane in popularity. Nickelodeon's really been airing the crap out of their live-action shows lately to catch up to Disney (though this could be just their way of getting remaining mileage and money from the cancelled Drake and Josh and Ned's Declassifed before shipping them off to The N next year) while Avatar's S3 premiere, while promoted decently, it didn't get the level of promotion the Back to School TeeNick Bash did.

I think that it will take another Spongebob Squarepants in order to turn the tide back in animation's favor.
 
Live action shows can be cheaper and faster to produce. That doesn't make them any better, though. But apparently, even with the death of the sitcom taking place on the major networks, every other channel is picking them up and making them for specific demographics (because cable channels are already targeted to certain groups instead of a broad-ranged 'we have to attract everyone' appeal), which I guess is paying off for most of them.

Kids don't hate animation, in fact there are more people openly liking it (at least where I'm from) then there have been in years. I remember being the only person who would watch cartoon network/adult swim at my school for a while and now the vast majority of my fellow students are tuning in. The ratings may not be reflecting it, but that's just because Disney's riding on the HSM train that will die off in a few years.

We're probably not going to see less animation (well, except in CN's case) because it's easier to market things with colorful good-looking designs, and you don't have to worry about things aging. What we WILL see, however, is a burst of better cartoons. Things that really pull the bar up a few steps. In fact, I'm almost sure of this.

This is a great discussion topic!
 
Also do remember though that certain types of production work for certain generations. I think you fail to remember that the whole animation thing was OUR generation...oh sure our parents DID watch it, but they were more focused on watching Roy Rogers and Howdy Doody every week. Our grandparents, while enjoying cartoons in movie theaters, were more taken in by the radio shows, and comic strips. Like I said- a lot of it is really a generational thing.
 
1. Children are in a hurry to grow up nowadays, and it doesn't help that the common mindset is animation being for children only. It's due more to peer pressure than personal preference. Much like smoking and drinking.

2. They want to watch shows that aren't phony. Let's look at the newer CN shows outside Toonami or any action show:

- Camp Lazlo
- My Gym Partner's A Monkey
- Squirrel Boy

Do any of them actually feel like cartoons? Visually yes, but they would actually work as sitcoms if you ditched the fictional aspects. Because I'd rather watch a genuine sitcom rather than a cartoon copying a sitcom.
 
This is something that scares me about THIS generation. When I was growing up in the early 90's, I watched Batman TAS, Animaniacs, Freakazoid, Beast Wars, Ren and Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, and Earthworm Jim. Most of them were shows that my parents and even my teachers were really into at the time. Keeping that in mind, these were shows that were not only fun to watch as a kid, but still fun to watch as an adult aside from the nostalgia factor.

I look at today's cartoons and wonder if kids will actually look back on these shows as enjoyable nuggets of youth or kid's stuff. It's chilling.
 
I used to be with it! Then they changed what "it" was! Now what I'm with isn't it! And what IS it seems very strange to me....

Why can't they be like we are, perfect in every way?
What's the matter with kids to-daaaay?
 
Today?s kids are more obsessed with technology. (Videogames, I-Pods, Myspace) I really fear that Cartoons could have the same fate of prints comics.
 
Flash says otherwise.

It's about what's easy to produce. America's animation industry is in shambles after years of exporting animation to Japan and Korea and building up their industries with American capital, while Hollywood has never been stronger. (at least if the potential 2009 strike doesn't happen)
 
I still say the main problem is using animation for shows that could pass as live action. The cartoons that Golgo13 mentions on the other hand:

- Batman TAS
- Animaniacs
- Freakazoid
- Beast Wars
- Ren and Stimpy
- Rocko's Modern Life
- Earthworm Jim

They actually feel like cartoons, and not sitcoms. The same also applies to two of Nick's shows like Spongebob and Avatar, and to a degree Fairly Oddparents.

So, imo, cuttingh back on the animated sitcoms would help the medium.
 
They're in a hurry to grow up and not watch things that are phony...but the top shows are Corey in the House, Hannah Montana, and the HSM franchise?

Like the poster above you mentioned, I think it's just a generational thing. These cartoon-ish live action shows on Disney (and Nick, to a degree) are the current flavor of the month/year. I don't think it has a thing to do with children wanting to grow up too fast or that they're trying to redefine their tastes for something less phony or even more mature.
 
Say it with me boys and girls! Can you say fad? I knew you could.

Unfortnately fads last longer and longer (Judge shows for example) and there' no way to stop it. Personally, I think there's going to be a huge Live action crash soon, since everyone thinks they can do the same thing.

Remember when they said 12 year old girls weren't getting any attention when it came to the media? now it's all them. Look at CBS's joke of a line up. it's all girl shows. not even. It's all OLD girl shows.

Kids aren't turning from animation. Guess what they're really watching. The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park...

It's just tweenage girls controlling this crap. I feel that if boys are shunning cartoons because it's not adult, they're off watching Steve-O telling kids how to kill themselves...errr... Jack**s. They're watching shows meant for 20 year olds. Not watching 2 stupid Macally Culkan twins make monkey faces and poorly act to a horribly written script.

I love this, though. it's the first step to conformity. You know what shows are popular with teenager girls? Shojo animes (especially ones with guys that look like girls). At least, that's what my 17 year old sister tells me.





Well, I'm going to meet half way here. They don't want to grow up fast. The cartoons coming out of this country (that aren't meant for adults) have been garbage lately. My Gym partner's a monkey is unwatchable by any aspect (and Brian Doyel Murray can't save it). It's trying too hard to be funny and looking like a fool. It's like a really bad comic that dresses up like a looney and makes squeaky noises, because they know they can't tell a structured joke.

the country's sense of humor has slid downhill to a weird fondness for awkward jokes and pauses. look at Andy Samberg. If we had a sophisticated sense of humor, would this guy be popular? No! He's be making dorky little films in his parents basement that no one would watch.
 
I don't think the problem is bad cartoons, but rather good cartoons. Stuff like Avatar, Ninja Turtles, Teen Titans, Code Lyoko, and some of the better anime stuff have really raised the bar in recent years. Not just in the quality of the animation, but the writing as well. Kids aren't necessarily growing up faster, but the cartoons are. I find it very difficult to believe that a kid can watch a season of Avatar, and afterward still find some garbage like "El Tigre" amusing.

When I was growing up in the 90s, I watched stuff like Doug and Rugrats a lot. Then, I started watching stuff like The Simpsons, The Critic, Duckman, and Beavis & Butt-Head. All of the sudden, I wasn't watching Doug and Rugrats anymore, and I was only about 10 at the time. What I DID still watch, however, was Batman: TAS, Gargoyles, and Ren & Stimpy.

So you have a select number of outstanding cartoons pushing the envelope and getting good ratings. Unfortunately, the live action garbage is also getting good ratings. So if you're a network executive, and you look at the costs and risks of producing something like Avatar, versus the costs and risks of producing something like Hannah Montana, is it any surprise which one your average business school grad is going to go with more often?
 
I'm with you 99% of the way, except I wouldn't cite Teen Titans as an example of a superior show. Justice League, sure, but not Titans. TT was just too dumbed down for me to take it seriously, and the 'anime-ness' of it just came off as gimmicky to me and it wasn't necessary, IMO.

Which brings me to my next point: yes, there were/are some above average anime type shows, but that's to me is part of the problem: lack of variety. Not everyone is ga-ga over anime and anime-esque shows; the fact that nearly everybody is trying to imitate anime right now could be part of the reason why kids' cartoons are watching their audiences gradually dwindle.

My question is: what happened to all of the decent animated comedies? Anime action/epic adventure is good when it's well-executed, but that's not all there should be on the tube. Shows like Animaniacs, Rocko's Modern Life, Beetlejuice, Eek! the Cat, DuckTales, Angry Beavers, Freakazoid!, Earthworm Jim, Tiny Toons, Tale Spin, Darkwing Duck, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Lab and so on were brilliantly executed and incredibly well-written, boasting jokes which worked on numerous levels, making them entertaining for both kids and adults alike; most of today's animated comedies just don't measure up. Either cartoon writers and producers are just getting lazier or America's youth is just getting dumber (present company excepted of course.) Possibly both.

P.S.: I'm not anti-anime, so please don't accuse me of being such, anime fans.
 
I'm not saying that the corporate individuals convey the message, though CN execs compared to the previous they've slipped back into the "Cartoons Is For Kids" mindset.

I'm talking about schoolyard peers. A good majority of Children/Teens/even Adults will watch programming, or partake in activities they don't like if only to avoid teasing and pressuring from those they aim to impress.

How can you tell if someone avoids cartoon viewing due to preference or pressure? You go up to a person an ask them if they watch cartoons. Here's two possible repsonse:

A. Nope. They just don't appeal to me.
B. Are you kidding? Cartoons are for children.

If the person responds with the latter, then odds are, they made the choice from public perseption rather than viewing some cartoons to make an informed opinion.




You could start by responding directly to some other posts I and some others made on the topic. Your prior response was to us in general, rather than responding directly to comments we made. If you're secure in that your opinion is a fact you will be able to disprove specific comments. If not, I will take that as admitting that we raised valid points.

Second if cartoons are no longer the thing, then wouldn't Cartoon Network's ratings been low enough to result in shutdown of the network? Keep in mind for the moment it is at least 60-70% cartoons still. Remember, most of the 80s children (now adults), who watched the network ditched it cold turkey. You can't say it's children tuning into Out Of Jimmy's Head or Goosbumps because they could leave their TVs on Nick or Disney for their live action fix. The audience watching CN have to be coming from somewhere.
 
Yes I'm very concerned for the animation industry (at least for youth entertainment).

Cartoon Network themselves believe that just airing cartoons isn't going to cut it due to the succees Nick and Disney have had with live action series. Though they seem to be more concerned with the fact that live action shows are wooping their cartoons when they should be at least equally concerned that Nick's cartoons are wooping their cartoons and do something to fix that first but I digress... CN is going to keep playing live action and they are more or less leading the charge to the downfall of the youth animation industry.

Is it because the shows aren't as good? In some cases that may be but there are still good cartoons out their being diamonds in the rough... can't say much of them air on CN though.

I just caught a new episode of Avatar the other day and I've got to say it's still very good and yet the ratings couldn't tackle Hanna Montana or a great deal of other live action shows.

Maybe it's a fad but live action shows are definently dominating the ratings and only the likes of Spongebob can still do pretty well in the ratings game. So unless kids change their tastes, the kid-vid animation biz is in big trouble.

How can we fix that? Well more great cartoons couldn't hurt but that's not going to change what kids want to watch. I hate to be this pessimistic but I don't think there is a simple solution to this problem. It's one that creeped up over time and took root and now even the biggest names in animation can't pluck this weed from the children's entertainment industry. And it's choking out any growth from the other plants in the garden just like any weed would.
 
I can't even say it's a generational thing. Reason 1- these kids who are now watching the live action tweencoms were the ones watching KND, Billy and Mandy, Spongebob not too long ago. Secondly, I find the whole "We have video games and DVD's" argument a little weak. We had VHS and we had nintendos or Genisi (how do you pluralize Genisis?) That didn't stop us. And then of course older kids? Most of them have always abandoned animation because they always thought they were for kids. Yet, these kids still watched South Park, Beavis and Butthead, and other adult animations. Something is wrong here, and it's not that.

I've said before "tween girl market." They were the last untapped resource for making money. 12 year old girls are an important demographic. 10 year old boys are also. If cartoons were truely done for, how would anyone explain the success of Naruto, The Batman, and Avatar? I do not feel kids are abandoning cartoons... it's the networks. They're a little behind in the ratings because of this faddishly popular Disney line up. How come the Lizzie MaGuire and Even Stevens shows didn't kill animation? They were both more popular than these other shows were. Hannah Montanna seems to be the only really popular show, and HSM is a telefilm.

You can't blame kids for turning away if networks refuse to compete. CBS and NBC rely on crap educational filler to appease the FCC. I bet if one of them had a break through TV show, it would save the network. CN's shows (besides Fosters) are hard to catch on, since they are just poor and weak. Like they aren't even trying. Poor cartoons do have a stake in it.
 
Actually, I find TT to have been an experiment. And while gimicky, I though it was more interresting than Legion has been. I think if they took some of the anime stuff out of TT and used the same style of characters it would have been a happier medium. I thought it was pretty well done for what it was. I love how everyone just blames anime on why TV hasn't been good lately. Why were there so many of them? Simple economics. It's just cheaper to get rights to something and dub it, then to get writes to something, write new scripts and dialogue, and animate it. Just a couple quick translations and rewrites, pay a cheaper cast to say the lines, cut stuff up, slap on a cheap soundtrack so they don't have to get music rights, viola. Instant TV show.

I hate how they want to copy it exactly, and we've had hit or miss with it. Avatar is an example of how to do it the right way.

There is a variety, I think. A variety of really bad shows, but there's a variety. We're going back to comedy, but as I previously stated, it's new comedy, and I can't find any thing that juxteposes anything weird for weirdness sake, unless it's supposed to be nonsequitor (Spongebob for example is weirdness that works, Gym Partner is a Money isn't).

I will say the theory of good cartoons rasing the bar for lousy ones is an interresting theory. Sure, by comparison TMNT would look superior to Cow and Chicken. But then again, I feel Cow and Chicken had an inspired stupidity to it that somehow these new cartoons just can't live up to. I tried watching Lazlo once knowing the guy created the show Rocko, and a second time trying hard not to have it live up to Rocko. Both times it felt like it was trying to be Spongebob. It was decent, but if they got the original Rocko writers, and Chuck Adler to do the voice of someone, they would have had a shot.

I feel cartoons go in waves, and always has since SatAm's birth. Action/Comedy/Action comedy/Action/Comedy/Comedic Action/Action Comedy/Comedy... and over and over. We're in transition, and it came too quickly. Kids aren't watching the animes they watched years ago, but that's because those shows were toy based or toyetic. now we're getting into stuff that's deeper, like Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. At the same time, we have people in their 50's that think it's all DBZ, and ignore comedic weirdness like Dr. Slump (seriously, Funimation could get the 1997 version to work). So we get Japanese-ified Americanized anime-style shows for an american market.... And let's not even get into the Japanese-ified French or Italian cartoons Americanized animestyled for European market Americanized.

Wow. my head hurts. but that's exactly the swing.
 
Well, I work as an art teacher, first in high school and currently in a middle school and I have tried to show an animated movie to my classes once every 3 weeks as a sort of reward for hard work and I can barely get them to shut up and pay attention to them long enough to make the effort worth it (Unless if it's Sponge Bob anyway, and yeah, that goes for the high school age kids too).

I'm starting to think the window of pure 'childhood' imagination that cartoons used to inspire is almost dead. We are raising a generation of mini-adults.
 
That's exactly right. Part, or much of this "blame" can be placed on the parents. When I was growing up, it seemed like kids like me had a lot more free time on our hands. In my case, after the Saturday cartoons were over, we would go out and play football or some other games outside unless it was raining or too cold. These days, there are far more demands on kids' time. Their parents are pushing them into youth, school or church sponsored recreational activities like soccer or softball. (I have a 14-year old niece, and she spends virtually every weekend in the winter playing youth basketball, and most of the summer vacation playing softball.) Not to mention extra-curricular activities like clubs or varsity sports like football or basketball. Schools are assigning more and more homework. Add to that, kids are often participating in volunteer work in the community. And kids have to began preparing for college as early as the sixth grade these days. College admissions officers look at kids' participation in extra-curricular and extra-scholastic activities just as much as they do grades on admission decisions. With all these pressures on kids' time, they may be far more selective on what television they DO watch, and they might tend to watch shows that feature characters in their age group going through much the same experiences they are. This is my take on this discussion.
 
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