I have a theory about the changes. Okay, it's a couple of theories, and I put them on my site. I'm just going to focus on one of the major reasons why Cartoon Network made the decision to pull Adult Swim Action within a 48-hour timespan.
Have you guys been paying attention to the news, or read any newspapers lately? There is a major, major push by lawmakers to regulate and censor every aspect of broadcasting, mostly radio and television. This normally wouldn't phase cable television, but
one paranoid lawmaker from Texas named Joe Barton figures that there ought to be some hearings about cable television and satelite television. Broadcasters like Bud Paxson, founder of the PAX network, are on the Hill asking for further hearings on cable networks and satellite companies. Mr. Paxson said he saw over 600 hours of pornography on cable and satellite television (now we know how he spends his free time). Of course pornography in his definition refers to shows and programming that offends him.
Media companies are becoming so paranoid about what's broadcast on television (even way before the Superbra incident, they were planning an assault on "indecency"). Live programs are no longer live (they're now on tape delay) and shows are being edited to conform to rigid scrutiny. Now, here's the thing. Up until yesterday, cable television was nowhere in the conversations in Washington. Broadcast outlets are jealous of the freedoms allowed on cable television, and the excuse Congressional regulators gave for that is because "people pay for cable programming, broadcast is free for all to watch." Now, broadcast regulators have begun pushing the lawmakers to go after cable as well as broadcast television. And cable has always been a domain of freedom, to a point.
This witchhunt on indecency has begun to freak out cable network groups like Turner Broadcast Systems. Adult Swim is currently the biggest draw for Cartoon Network, a network generally seen as a "children's network." When the network announced plans for the Saturday expansion of the action shows of Adult Swim, there was no spector of indecency hearing hovering over the network as there is now. Now, to have an adult-themed block on a night that usually draws younger audiences wouldn't have caused a murmur before the congressional scare. That's why they scheduled it in the first place. Now that threats of lengthy hearings that would present evidence in front of Congress (how would you guys feel if they showed something like Cowboy Bebop or Trigun in front of Congress as evidence of airing indecent programming on the network), they had to scrap the Saturday night Adult Swim block.
However, for a group of guys that had been working on the block since before New Years, how would you tell them that they couldn't have the bloc of hours that they wanted? Simple. You tell them that the ad sales department needed an hour for commercial space. The block doesn't get completely scrapped. It's now airing in a time period that shouldn't get the ire of soccer moms and paranoid politicians, Thursday nights from 11 PM to 2 AM rather than Saturday nights in the same period.
Of course some people would accuse me of using this space to take the blame off of Toonami. That's not true. I'm an investigator who researchs before he gets irrate at the wrong sources (well, that and the fact that my other theory suggests that CN doesn't want to give Williams Street dominion over a good chunk of the network).
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