RIP, Kids WB

Photo from Fábio Gianesi


After 13 years on the air, today marks the last day of broadcast for Kids WB, the once-entertaining-but-now-deceased cartoon lineup of the WB (and now CW) network.

Debuting in 1995 (alongside the general launch of the WB network), Kids WB had in its early years some of the strongest cartoons on TV: "Animaniacs", "Batman: the Animated Series", "Pinky and the Brain", "That's Warner Bros."/"Bugs 'n Daffy" (the two main incarnations of Looney Tunes shorts Kids WB aired), etc. While there were a few flops ("Waynehead", etc.), the early years were good for Kids WB---there was even weekday afternoon and early-morning blocks of programming, a rarity in late 90s/early 2000s TV (thanks to infomercials, talk shows, reruns of live-action shows still on the air or very recently axed, and "Judge [fill-in-the-blank]" taking priority in TV programming nowadays).

I'd say its downfall began with it acquiring half-hour toy and video game ad "Pokemon", which Kids WB proceeded to hype into oblivion---at the expense of its actually-entertaining, homegrown programming (to the point where they merged the humor shows mentioned above, plus ill-fated spinoff "Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain" into "The Cat and Birdy Warneroonie Pinky Brainy Big Cartoonie Show"; more on this chopjob of a clip show is discussed on Misce-Looney-Ous). In the early 2000s, they got rid of most of their previous lineup altogether, having replaced it with a pile of other shows with a similar quality/premise to "Pokemon" ("Yu-Gi-Oh", "Cardcaptors", and other half-hour toy-ad anime shows). Kids WB's weekday lineups (morning and afternoon) were also soon axed, replaced by a two-hour afternoon block of WB-owned live-action reruns of "ER" and the like.

For such reasons, my viewing of Kids WB quickly dropped to just one or two shows at best (and the occasional import of Cartoon Network programming such as "Teen Titans" and "Krypto the Superdog"). In the past few seasons, the main two shows I've watched were "Shaggy and Scooby Doo Get a Clue!" (the most recent incarnation of Scooby-Doo, this one centering around Shag and Scoob fighting a supervillain), and "Legion of Super-Heroes" (a cartoon version of the long-running DC comic, which was OK, despite Superboy being called "Superman" for copyright-lawsuit-over-Superboy reasons).

However, the CW this season made the decision to sell their entire children's programming block off to 4KidsTV, the purveyors of various second- and third-rate programs that air as Fox's children's programming block (never mind most Fox affiliates parcel off said lineup to other stations in their areas...). Thus, as of next Saturday, Kids WB will become known as "CW4Kids", with the lineup this fall changing to reflect such... which presumably means a lineup completely dominated by 4KidsTV's "quality" programming.

Thus marks the end of not only Kids WB, but also the last vestige of traditional broadcast-TV children's animation. ABC, CBS and NBC still air children's programs on Saturday mornings, but only enough to satisfy the three-hours-a-week of educational programming required by the FCC (hence their shows are generally lackluster or uninspired at best, with ABC's lineup just reruns of Disney Channel shows claimed to be "educational", and CBS/NBC having parceled their lineups out to third-party producers). Local TV stations also have long since stopped airing any cartoons on weekday mornings (save for whatever is required for the FCC's educational, or "E/I", requirement). Hence, the WB/CW was the last holdout for quite some time, but now, I suppose there's no reason for kids to flip off of Nickelodeon, Disney Channel or Cartoon Network (or their digital-channel counterparts Boomerang, Toon Disney and NickToons, which probably have more entertaining lineups than their bigger counterparts these days, but that's another blog post...) anymore. Oh, well; it was fun while it lasted...