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Thursday, August 13, 2015

The Lookback : Cartoon Cartoon Fridays

The Flashback 
 
    This time on Joshuaonline we take a lokback at  daytime sitcoms repeats because... (Wait! We got mail!)
   Hello authors of Joshuaonline , I was wondering if you could do a lookback of Cartoon Network's Cartoon Cartoon Fridays , that is something I grew up with but I hope maybe you could feature it.
   That was an email sent to us by a nice (we hope so) reader who thinks we should look back at Cartoon Cartoon Fridays. So thanks David for the idea.   (You can email us too mychiller@inbox.com)
      I too remember this program block well , so why not take a look back at it.  While most of the the network TV blocks we lookback at for Children's shows was  Saturday Morning. Cartoon Network had the freedom of a different time ,  Friday Night.   Nowadays, Friday TV is bleak nobody does anything anymore. (We mean it , besides Disney Channel)  The networks do put new programming on Fridays , but in many cases it's either shows they didn't have room for anywhere else or sometimes in Fox's case shows to kill.  But that wasn't always the case.
 Cartoon Cartoons were what they called their original series programming to difference it from  the repeats of shows they were airing.
    Cartoon Network carved 4 hours on a Friday  night starting at 7PM ET /PT and started on June 11th 1999.  Originally the interstitial segments were odd things like fake weather forecasts ,  It also  had live-action humans featured and it looked like a PBS station  during drives.
                                                     tar11
          Either that or Cartoon Network has lost it / watch some of the first day bumpers here 
       I  don't remember this style of presention as much I as remember the next (which we will get to in a second) .
       Cartoon Cartoon Fridays featured new episodes of CN's originals meaning we started with "Dexter's Laboratory" , "The Powerpuff Girls" , "Edd,Ed, n' Eddy", "Johnny Bravo" , and a few other shows that the network made themselves.
  By 2000 the block change to presentation I remember more where a character or 2  from a Cartoon Network show would "host" the block.
                  
                 Makes sense , plus you get some cool intro and apparently other cartoons in background.
  Not every show on the block was created by Cartoon Network ,well if there was a special occasion (like the month of December referenced above)   or  a new Cartoon Network show made by a corporate partner.   If you noticed unlike when I talked about "Disney's  One Saturday Morning" for example I talked about their schedule , well technically  CCF didn't have that it was 4 hours a mash up of Cartoon Cartoons  and it was more an event of TV for a Friday Night.
    Every summer from before the block launched to 2002, they had   big weekend called Cartoon Cartoon Weekend. For the 1997 and 1998 it ran around Thanksgiving , while 1999-2002 it ran in August.   They had a "Big Pick" where viewers could pick which pilot they saw on the air they think should be a new CN show.
  In 2000 viewers picked  "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" which then premiered in 2001.
In 2001 "Codename Kids Next Door " won.

                            
                          This is one of the shows that lost

    Though for as well as it did  changes were made (dun dun dun) with it renamed in 2003 to "Fridays" and hosted by humans.    In  May of 2003 , Cartoon Cartoon Fridays bowed out was replaced with Cartoon Cartoon Summer until October when the new format launched.  It did keep most of the spirit of the original and the whole point is the cartoons. (Yeah, I guess ....)
                             
                              That was one of the intros
  Fridays was hosted by  Tommy  Snider and Nzinga Blake, later on replaced by Tara Sands. They were featured between your cartoons with skits , guest stars and more. (Yay more!)  It ran 4 hours and then looped through out the evening. (As Adult Swim began take other nights) by it's end it was the only time of the week where Cartoon Network was broadcasting after 11PMET.  But as all things  in our lookbacks do .. it ended in February of 2007 ,after almost 10 years of Cartoon Cartoon and Fridays.   Fridays on Cartoon Network changed hands a few times before they gave up .

                               
                               We might not get into that...but don't say might.


But yes that's our lookback at what I think is great thing that  when networks on cable and broadcast still thought Friday was special. That hey  Friday Night could be the night to get new cartoons , not just Saturday Morning (which by 1999 was near death)  and that fun TV presentation could make a few hours of shows something special.
 
   Tune in next time when we try and make Wednesday the best night of the week for TV.   Thanks David.

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