Hikaru wrote:What I find odd is that young justice gets cancelled because lots of girls are watching it but my little pony keeps going even though lots of guys watch it.
The difference is in the demographics they ended up getting, and maybe some over-reliance on conventional wisdom.
MLP was originally targeted towards girls, probably around 4-10 years old, but through the magic of the Internet, ended up also getting a fanbase of nerdy, 20-something men. That second group tends to have jobs, and therefore more money at their disposal to buy the show's merchandise. And luckily, the people who ended up falling into that group also tend to be otaku types, who are perfectly fine spending that money on the merchandise usually intended for the first group because they've been doing it for years with their favorite anime. The show makes its company more money, they keep making more episodes, everyone's happy.
Meanwhile, Young Justice (and Tower Prep as well, I assume) was targeted towards 8-12 year old boys, but ended up getting a good fanbase of girls who were a little older than that. Conventional wisdom says that the first will buy the action figures they're putting out for the show, and that the girls aren't as interested in buying toys, and express their fandom through other means, like fanfic. The problem that Nate was getting at is that, according to the show's creators, Cartoon Network chose to believe the conventional wisdom and didn't stick around with the show long enough for that fanbase to prove them wrong.
radical edward wrote:Believe it or not, Davidizer, I am resolved over Firefly. I was only using it as an example.
My point still stands, though, ~90% of all networks on TV* are businesses in and of themselves, and they will do whatever will bring in the most money through ad revenue. The best way to do that is through quality programming, but if a show is bringing in eyeballs and ad dollars, it doesn't matter what you or I might think of it, they're going to keep showing it. And it doesn't matter how good a show might be, if it's not making money, it's not going to stay on the air. For example, anime used to be profitable in the '90s for CN and the like, then licensing got more expensive, and now it's not. Right now, dramatic cartoons aren't doing as well for whatever reason, so you're less likely to see them stick around unless there's some sort of brand backing it up and drawing people in, which was how The Clone Wars lasted so much longer than all the other dramas that have come and gone.
Even so, Cartoon Network's taken some really daring risks in terms of style and what they've been putting on their channel, probably more than any other time in its history. Nobody a few years ago would have thought that the Internet would have been a place where they would have gone for new shows, and based on his old shorts, I wouldn't have picked J. G. Quintel to be making kids' shows, but here we are now, with Adventure Time and Regular Show as the staples of Cartoon Network, still going strong in the ratings and critically. Regardless of how these experiments have turned out, I have to at least give them props for trying new things and taking big risks.
* -
There's a couple networks that aren't based on the traditional TV model of selling ad space for money - PBS is the most obvious, channels like the Disney Channel or NFL Network run off of their parent company's money and serve to build its brand; HBO and the like make their money through premium subscription fees. They still have to show things that people want to watch to survive, but things are just slightly different for them monetarily.