First off, Happy Valentine's Day... Or, for some of you, VERY Happy Valentine's Day!
So what's been happening since I've been away from the blog.... We finally inaugurated a Black president, busted Alex Rodriguez, Michael Phelps and various tax-dodging Presidential cabinet members, 24 finally came back while Circuit City's going away.....
And then there's this:
I'll get back to that last topic.... and start off with a less appallingly tragic one.
For the last few weeks, visitors to http://toonamijetstream.com have been greeted with a pseudo-redirect page bearing this image (click for more legible quality):
Explanation: Since the unceremonious cancellation of Cartoon Network's signature action-animation block Toonami in September, the streaming-video sister website Toonami Jetstream, running since Summer 2007, has been the last surviving trace of classic Toonami, still going. The end of Jetstream this month officially means the final nail in Toonami's coffin has been hit unremovably hard.
Now, I want to think that this is a pure business-priority/bandwidth-managing decision, what with the show dead and gone, and certain Massively-Multiplayer games (meaning FusionFall) and streaming video sites requiring a lot of bandwidth (don't forget, aside from CN Video, Adult Swim Fix is still operational... for now), cuts had to be made. Plus, the economic crisis we're still in just isn't getting fixed fast enough (I know, it's all Obama's fault!!! Psych, of course), which certainly isn't making the situation any better.
Here again, people still remember the history of this network defined in no small part by the Toonami brand. Not to sound like a cheesy broken record if I've said it before, but it was and always will be a bit of a crime to callously discard historic franchises still in their prime, or at least not so far off the deep end that they're beyond rescue. Don't forget, we still don't know exactly WHY Toonami was cancelled, but all we have to go on is Steven Blum (CGI-rendered host TOM's voice actor) ending the final broadcast by saying "until we meet again," which is just a cruel tease.
The Naruto fans may not be complaining as much, since all they have to do is change their bookmarks around a bit to accomodate the seat-change of moving over to CN Video. Come on. Everyone grew up once. Everyone remembers how amazingly awesome weekends used to be. You know, every time a legendary program block, or show, gets cancelled, an angel gets its wings.
--oh wait, that was that Jimmy Stewart.
Seriously, you can make the argument that when something like that happens, people actually view it as, in a sense, the death of an old friend who helped make growing up tolerable. Yeah, we know it's television. But when broadcasting old classics:
...gets completely replaced by newer, yet almost never better-quality stuff (no better case-in-point than this clip):
...it reinforces the belief that as time goes on, if crap is all kids growing up now have to be exposed to, that's all that they'll think is quality because the airwaves are oversaturated with what focus groups and the like think is the next big thing to get those target audience demographics sucked into crazy entertainment trends younger and younger. Naturally, the intelligence level has to fall lower and lower to follow suit, condescendingly.
Executives... Audiences at any age are smarter than you guys seem to give us credit for...
At this rate...
Suddenly, Mike Judge's Idiocracy movie isn't so much of a crazy work of fiction anymore. Especially when MY kids' generation looks back on the High School Musical trilogy as classic cinema the kids today don't appreciate.
Bottom Line: It's just sad to constantly read about network decision-makers proving Mel Brooks right:
"It's good to be the king."
Heaven help us all.
Later.
-D.
Oh, one final note: Tuesday is the big digital transition day, meaning this weekend is your last chance for seeing something other than static on a standard analog TV antenna. Enjoy it (and Presidents' Day) while it/they last(s).
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