by Benjamin Haines » Tue Jan 06, 2015 1:43 pm
I think it's just a natural side effect of the proliferation of content through cable networks and digital media. Even when I was a kid in the '90s, Fox Kids and Kids WB had syndicated afternoon blocks during the week and I saw cartoons on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network every day. The reason I got up on Saturday morning was to see the latest episodes of new shows that I liked, because that's when Fox and WB premiered them.
Over the past decade and a half, I think both content providers and new generations of kid viewers just grew out of that consumption/distribution model as they found themselves in a world with different technological resources and options for viewing than in decades past. Studios don't need to stick the newest cartoons on Saturday morning broadcast schedules if kids will tune in to cable networks to watch the same thing on any given weeknight, or if they're going to stream it on a tablet or DVR on their own time anyway.
That's the one thing that's really missing from a world where everything is available on demand all the time: the uniqueness of specialized presentation. As content becomes ever more accessible and immediate, the content providers seem to get more homogenized and similar as they all try to broaden their scope to the widest possible audience. Back in the '90s, Cartoon Network was all cartoons, the Disney Channel was mostly live-action shows, and Nickelodeon was an even mix of the two. Nowadays, all three of them offer kids pretty much the same thing. Likewise, can anybody really see a difference between Discovery Channel, A&E, Travel Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, or History Channel anymore? They used to be specialized networks that stood out from each other. Now they're all built around reality programming.