It’s serious funny business at CARTOON NETWORK—the home
of The Powerpvff Girls and Dexter’s Laboratory—where crafting
quality animation isn’t just child’s play. BY SCOTT BROWN
Doodle Dandies
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Ed, Edd n Eddy fish for cash to support their jawbreaker habit
Titan a.e. aside, times are
good for ’toons—at least on
TV. Just ask Mike Lazzo,
Cartoon Network’s senior
vice president of programming and
production. He remembers the bad
times. Heck, he owns the bad times.
“We have them in our library,” he sighs,
referring to such cartoon treasures as
Jabberjaw, The Super Globetrotters,
and other detritus of the 70s and ’80s
as if they were an embarrassing clutch
of not-so-distant hillbilly relatives.
“Of course, all shows have their fans. I
was literally stalked by a gentleman
who wanted me to put The Hair Bear
Bunch on the air 24 hours a day.”
Thankfully, Lazzo didn’t listen.
Instead, he decided to fulfill boss Ted
Turner’s mandate for an all-animation
cable network by rejecting the cookie
cutter mentality that had bequeathed
The Gary Coleman Show to posterity.
At its nadir, Lazzo says, the animation
business “was just a bunch of suits
sitting around saying, ‘Scooby-Doo
worked! Let’s make Goober and the
Ghost Chasers! Let’s make The Funky
Phantoml’.... So we know how not to
do it. The worst thing we could do
right now is make another
Powerpuff Girls.”
Ah, The Powerpuff Girls.
Smart. Emmy nominated. A palpable
hit with critics and audiences. After
the foregoing litany of sub-Shazam!
stinkers, it’s nice to be reminded that
we’re living in the year 2000, The
Herculoids is but a distant, disturbing
memory, and Cartoon Network—
with its uncannily amicable union of
artists and execs—is one of cable’s
greatest success stories.
LAUNCHED IN 1992, CARTOON NET
work (owned, as is EWOC, by Time
Warner) has since become much more
than the Nickelodeon knockoff some
expected it to be. Besides posting July’s
best prime-time basic cable ratings in
the 2-to-ll age bracket, CN’s summer
prime-time programming trumped
Comedy Central and VH1 in the cov
eted 18-to-49 demographic through
late July. As for the secret to Cartoon
Network’s success, it lies in acknowl
edging one simple fact. “Children are
really, really smart,” says Lazzo, 43,
and his tone tells you this is an axiom
that’s been driven into his cerebrum af
ter years of working as TBS’ head of
kids’ programming. Perhaps that ex
plains his dismay when kiddie test au
diences initially rejected creator Craig
McCracken’s The Whoopass Girls,
ILLUSTRATIONS DESIGNED BY KEVIN FITZGERALD; CAPTIONS BY PAUL SIEFKEN: TM &. c 2000 CARTOON NETWORK
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