Cartoon Network and Teen Titans Go: A Rant on Overreliance
I figured it was time I did a little segment on how relying too much on a single product can be detrimental to a business in the long run. Now, I will admit that relying on a product can work, if the product is GOOD. However, I’m obviously not the first to scream that Teen Titans Go isn’t a good product. I’ll also admit that it actually wasn’t as bad as it currently is a few years ago when it was just starting. There were a few decent episodes and the crap wasn’t as blatant. However, sometime along Season 2 the writers decided it’d be “brilliant” to attack the critics. Thus, Let’s Get Serious was written, and eventually aired. That’s when things went downhill, and fast. Again, episodes like Some of their Parts and the Lady Legasus episodes were gems, but they were getting more and more rare amongst the utter crap the show was stewing in. Of course, it’s not just about the quality of episodes, or lack thereof, I’m ranting about here. It’s Cartoon Network’s absolute insistence of relying on this one show, to the detriment of other, objectively better shows such as Regular Show, Adventure Time, and Steven Universe, the first two actually getting cancelled because of TTG’s overexposure. It’s even gotten to the point that even SPONEGEBOB SQUAREPANTS HIMSELF is less overexposed than this dumbass reboot. I suppose I should start at the beginning. It wasn’t as bad as it was now, but even in early 2013 the budding Teen Titans Go was choking out some of the then-existing DC Nation shows, like Green Lantern and Beware the Batman. Eventually the block was axed, and the shows lost to the mists of time (thank whatever god exists that Toonami was able to re-air BtB before CN wrote it off completely). I believe the first real sign of overexposure was the gaining of a specific tagline: Your New Favorite Show. This one line skyrocketed the hatred to rival even the CN Real fiasco four years prior. Around this time, it and The Amazing World of Gumball (admittedly a decent show) dominated the lineup so much that nearly everything else choked out for a while. Luckily, after fan outcry, said choked out shows came back. Unluckily, TTG kept choking out other programs, such as Sonic Boom, which was relegated to a graveyard weekend slot. And even in its early days reruns were constant, with the same few episodes being shown over and over again. This was only the beginning of what would eventually become a frustratingly increasing overreliance on a show that wasn’t even all that great to begin with. Over time, Teen Titans Go has become Cartoon Network’s flagship show and more and more time has been devoted to it, with surprise marathons for the most frivolous reasons, including showing every single episode prior to the debut of the hundredth. Of course, this is a common tactic employed by most network favorites, but because this was during the whole “Your New Favorite Show” debacle all the non-fans were seething, myself included. Even now, despite the tagline being long abandoned, TTG remains to be overpromoted to the point that not even Gumball can hope to regain ground. Discounting Adult Swim, which has its own long-standing issue of showing Fox shows for its first four hours, TTG has been hogging at least HALF THE NETWORK’S AIRTIME on average. Even if this was a genuinely good show we were talking about, in my opinion, giving any one show that much attention is overconfident at best, downright suicidal at worst. Now, I am reluctant to admit that I actually gave this show a chance. However, it seems that reboots in general, at least on Cartoon Network, have been subpar at best. Even the PPG reboot started to suck after a while. Of course, I’m more forgiving of that because, despite the memes, that show wasn’t hyped to the moon and back. In all honesty, if I had to compare shows, Teen Titans Go is the next Johnny Test, except JT was simply bad; the writers never openly mocked the fans or haters. There’s even a fan petition to get TTG, along with the new Yu-Gi-Oh season, transferred to Disney XD. Though why Disney would want this, especially since this is a DC property and Marvel is the direct competitor, is beyond me. At the end of the day, I believe it’s more a replacement of the management that needs to be done. We need someone actually competent to end this everlasting chain of flops. I do greatly apologize for this rant, but we need more people being vocal for someone to actually notice that overreliance on such a show is NOT going to bring ratings. On the contrary, if this keeps up CN may just very well end up going the way of G4; a once glorious network reduced to a shambling zombie filled with crap nobody likes and eventually canned. I guess the one good thing we can take from this is that Samurai Jack has finally made a triumphant return, and that this seems to be the only good continuation, mostly because one of the greats is at the helm.
