The 1990s were a golden age of television animation. But cartoons are a business, and
even the most beloved shows were sometimes cancelled to make room for more profitable
programming. Here are the real reasons behind a few of those controversial cartoon cancellations.
After debuting on MTV in 1993, millions of kids and adults watched the two giggling,
moronic metalheads of Beavis and Butt-Head determine which bands were "cool" and which
"sucked." That is, when they weren't terrorizing their neighbors, teachers, and Burger World
customers. Not everybody liked Beavis and Butt-Head; Politicians called out the show
for encouraging antisocial behavior, and one family blamed Beavis's pyromania for leading
to a deadly house fire. Nothing stuck, though, and Beavis and Butt-Head remained the world's
favorite idiots.
However, after 200 episodes and the feature film Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, creator
Mike Judge decided it was time to end it. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Judge said,
"I actually wanted to stop a little sooner. After the second season, I thought, 'How are
we gonna do this anymore?' I was completely burned out."
Judge wound up sticking around for seven seasons, but in 1997, he moved on to other projects,
like his Fox animated series King of the Hill.
Starring three old-timey cartoon characters named Yakko, Wakko, and Dot Warner, who were
more or less imprisoned in the water tower on the Warner Bros. movie lot, Animaniacs
was a cartoon quickly embraced by both children and adult audiences alike. Debuting in 1993,
Animaniacs satirized cartoon tropes while being completely self-aware, offering up innuendo-laced
dialogue and biting social commentary among the kid-friendly laughs.
Animanaics ran for five seasons and spun off its most popular side characters, Pinky and
the Brain, before Kids WB ended the show in 1998. According to creator Tom Ruegger, the
end came due to a business decision regarding another, much cheaper kids show: a Japanese
anime series with massive commercial potential. Ruegger explained,
"Kids WB was handed Pokémon for free and it pulled down big numbers, so then they wanted
everything for free."
Animaniacs cost Warner Bros. too much money to make and promote, so off it went.
At first glance, Todd McFarlane's animated Spawn series looked like a show for kids.
But Spawn was based off of McFarlane's top-selling comic series, an extremely dark and violent
story about a former assassin who gets killed by his boss, sent to Hell, and ends up working
for Satan. Hardly family-friendly material.
"You made a deal with Malebolgia. You cut a deal for your soul."
Spawn ran for three seasons on HBO and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program.
The show's third season was a bust, however, and HBO's animation division was withering
on the vine. After enduring numerous production difficulties, the show earned a quiet cancellation
in 1999.
Batman: The Animated Series represented a breakthrough in television animation and comic
book adaptation. Moody, quiet, and literally dark, it demonstrated that there was a market
for dramatic superhero content that could appeal to children and adults. This Batman
was so highly regarded that Fox aired the show in prime time for a while, and in 1993,
the studio released Batman: Mask of the Phantasm in theaters. Voice actor Kevin Conroy even
tops many lists of the best Batman actors.
However, in 1995, after three years and 85 episodes, the series left the air. According
to Conroy, even though the audience was still invested and the actors were willing to continue,
the creators had run out of ideas, and wanted to end the show on a high note.
"They didn't want to compromise on the quality of what they had and start creating kind of
silly stories."
Fortunately for Batman fans, the story ideas didn't dry up for long. A sequel series to
the beloved show debuted a couple years after its cancellation, bringing back most of the
Animated Series' cast and crew, including Conroy. The New Batman Adventures debuted
on Kids' WB in September of 1997.
Originally created for ABC, The Critic was an animated sitcom about a snobby, hapless
New York City movie reviewer named Jay Sherman. He hates most movies he sees, tries to raise
his son as best he can, and fends off his wacky family. According to Jon Lovitz, who
provided the voice of Jay,
"We did it for ABC, and ABC goes, 'We love it!' And then they cancelled it after seven
shows."
Following its ABC cancellation, The Critic moved over to Fox and aired immediately after
The Simpsons, where creators Al Jean and Mike Reiss had previously worked as writers and
show runners.
According to Lovitz, The Critic brought in excellent ratings for Fox, retaining 90 percent
of the huge Simpsons audience. And yet, in 1994, Fox pulled the plug. Despite a solid
performance, an executive at the network thought the 8:30 p.m. Sunday timeslot could be better
used by a new show. Jean explained,
"The guy who ran the network then, John Matoian, just didn't like the show. He preferred a
show that no one remembers called House of Buggin' with John Leguizamo."
The sketch comedy show debuted in early 1995 in place of The Critic, and lasted a mere
10 episodes.
In the fall of 1994, the syndicated Disney Afternoon programming block mixed things up
by adding Gargoyles to its lineup of silly cartoons and wacky adventures. This contemplative
and sometimes violent show is stylistically different from its Disney Afternoon predecessors,
like Goof Troop, TaleSpin, and DuckTales. Similar in tone and approach to Batman: The
Animated Series, Gargoyles concerns the day-to-day activities of magical beings who protect New
York City at night. The characters were architectural gargoyles by day, imbued with the spirits
of 1,000-year-old Scottish folk creatures.
Gargoyles ran for three years and 78 episodes, but was ultimately cancelled because it wasn't
a mega-hit. According to creator Greg Weisman,
"It didn't perform up to expectations. Disney really wanted it to outdo Mighty Morphin'
Power Rangers, and it failed to succeed at that."
Angry Beavers tells the story of two beaver bachelors named Dag and Norb who live in an
Oregon forest. By 2001, four seasons had aired and cancellation seemed imminent. According
to co-creator Keith Kaczorek,
"We were significantly over budget, behind schedule, and had generally worn out our welcome."
Realizing that the end was near, Kaczorek and the rest of the Angry Beavers staff decided
to go out on a blaze of glory. Kaczrorek and show staff writer Roger Eschbacher wrote a
script for a series finale episode called "Bye Bye Beavers," an installment equal parts
dark and meta. Dag and Norb come to realize that they are not real, but cartoons, and
that their show is about to be canceled, which means they will cease to exist. At first,
Nickelodeon signed off on the script. But when executives noticed all the jokes making
fun of Nickelodeon, they reversed course. According to writer Micah Wright,
"They saw it all put together and said, 'Wait, this makes us look bad,' so they killed it."
The script was never animated, but a recording of the show's voice actors reading it was
made, which leaked online in 2006.
By 1995, Comedy Central was experimenting with original programming, and one of its
first new shows was a low-budget animated series with largely improvised dialogue called
Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist.
"Doc, does it bother you when I touch your face like this?"
"Little bit."
"Is that inappropriate? Is it inappropriate for me to hold my hand there for the rest
of therapy?"
"It's not appropriate at all."
Comedian Jonathan Katz voiced a therapist whose clients were all stand-up comedians,
who'd lay on his couch and relate neuroses that were really just bits from their stage
routines. He also had a lazy, adult son named Ben and attempted to have a social life.
Ironically, it's Dr. Katz's own success that led to its demise. The show helped put Comedy
Central on the TV map, showing that the channel had a unique sensibility and was a home for
animated TV. Two years after its debut, South Park premiered on Comedy Central and became
a monster hit, particularly with young, male viewers. Dr. Katz attracted an older audience,
and since it wasn't in the demographic that the now South Park-obsessed network was trying
to lure, it got canceled.
With the arrival of child-friendly cable networks like Nickelodeon and the popularity of syndicated
shows, the ratings for once-beloved Saturday morning cartoons started to slip. NBC president
Brandon Tartikoff analyzed the budgets and found that the average Saturday morning cartoon
cost $300,000 to produce. Tartikoff and his team realized that it would be much cheaper
to get rid of the cartoons in favor of news shows or sports.
In 1991, NBC signed a long-term contract with Notre Dame to air the college's games on Saturday
mornings. It cost the network about $1 million a game, which was still cheaper than programming
six hours of cartoons every week, plus it could charge higher advertising rates for
football than it could for kid stuff. In 1992, NBC switched to a lineup that included the
Today show, football games, and a block of low-budget sitcoms like Saved by the Bell,
eliminating the entire 1991-1992 Saturday morning cartoon schedule.
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