Anyone who has been following animation news in the past week or so (and I imagine that's all of you reading this, let's be real) knows about the variety of unfortunate news that has hit the industry. From Blue Sky shutting its doors, leaving 450 employees out of work, a super promising film canned, and one less studio for the East Coast. To Cartoon Network deciding to go in a more preschool-friendly direction despite nobody demanding it, seemingly at the expense of popular, beloved shows with continued potential like "Infinity Train". Anyone who has looked at least a little into the inner operations of the industry, however, know these are merely symptoms of much larger problems. Most of them tie to the lack of creative power the artists have in the work they make and how much the big wigs and higher-ups meddle in their work. And I am to list to those unfamiliar exactly how problematic this can get, and why this is a ridiculous mindset for corporate executives can have.
I think it goes without saying that shows that have a certain creator-driven touch to them tend to be among some of animation's most notable landmarks. "Looney Tunes"' legacy lives on because of how the various directors evolved and practically redefined how slapstick cartoons would be approached going forward. "South Park"'s pure crudeness and no-holds-barred social commentary transformed all that adult animation would become (for better and for worse). "Avatar: The Last Airbender" helped popularize serialized, anime-like storytelling in western animation through its stylization, smart character writing and epic scale. "Bojack Horseman" strongly broke the mold of adult cartoons by going full-on with pop culture commentary, damaging personalities, and traumatizing experiences. While not all of the biggest cartoons out there made drastic changes to the medium, odds are most of the biggest influencers you can think of or just plain favorites are ones built off creativity above all else.
But for every show that was able to live up to its full potential, there's about five or so that unfortunately don't, for reasons often related to the executives or corporate heads interfering despite clear success in what else came from the crew. Obviously you have all-too-common vanilla cases where a series just gets cancelled before its prime, due to bad ratings. But half the time, there are more complicated matters at play. Both "Invader Zim" and "Sym-Bionic Titan" were shows that were made for older children and even teens, and saw success among those demographics, only for them to be cancelled after a season had been finished due to the network changing their mind and deciding they'd rather have younger-oriented content instead. "Infinity Train" is a much more recent example in that vein, with the new higher-ups in charge of Cartoon Network seemingly disapproving of content aimed at a teenage demographic despite the show's success and adoration.
Then you have properties that are successful and seem to have a good run, but are painfully held back in what they were able to actually accomplish in that time. To give a good compare and contrast situation, "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" is a show where, while Hasbro did have clear influence over some of the content and story beats, there was consistently a feeling that what was on the screen was what Faust, McCarthy, Vogel, and all the others wanted to see. The spin-off, "Equestria Girls", had a lot of the same charm in the writing and technicals. Looking past the polarizing concept, which was very obviously made with toys in mind, in my opinion there were a ton of fascinating and unique ideas that came from the crew making the best of what was asked of them. Despite this, it was littered with stories that felt manufactured and restrained. On top of that, after four TV movies; the writers were stuck writing mostly in 2-minute installments with a couple 44-minute specials tossed in, making substance close to impossible to pull off, try as they might sometimes. And it unceremoniously finished before it could even wrap up.
Even shows highly praised and beloved get hit with this a lot of the time. "Steven Universe" is a rather infamous example. While there were LGBT overtones from the start, Cartoon Network was very hesitant to let the crew become overt about it. So when Rebecca Sugar finally decided it was time to have the characters Ruby and Sapphire marry, the network knew some international markets would cut the ever-crucial funding for the show, so they essentially pulled the plug on the series with only a few episodes to wrap the core story. This is certainly more justified than the other examples, as there wasn't a real frame of reference yet as to how well LGBT rep would go over, and CN would go on to greenlight the movie and the sequel mini-series afterward. But there's still the fact they essentially caused a pointless rift out of worry that ended up not coming to be. It doesn't help either that many of the Beach City townie episodes, often deemed "filler" by the fans (which, for the record, I mostly disagree with), were forced by CN for rerun purposes.
And of course, there are the shows that absolutely reek of corporate cynicism on the face of it. Obviously it's subjective over what shows constitute as "corporate-driven", since most shows are made to make money to begin with. It all depends on what you perceive as chasing money without integrity. While every show or film produced by major studios exist to make money, and you can especially argue this with every reboot and revival out there (regardless of the quality), the integrity for each one seems to largely depend on if the idea to revive the brand came before actually having a good direction to take it. And sometimes, a show made with capitalistic intentions can end up being good, sometimes even highly entertaining. But there come certain points where it's unanimously considered really difficult to ignore.
Case in point, Powerpuff Girls 2016. It might've been able to pull off a good revival, but the problem is that everyone seemed to very much go through the motions, with ideas coming and going on a whim and just a massive lack of direction overall. It feels like it was just a paycheck for everyone involved, and you can tell CN didn't have any vision beyond giving them something to market for brownie points. In a similar vein is the SpongeBob spinoffs, starting with the upcoming "Kamp Koral". While controversy was largely made on the implications behind the timing of its announcement and the creator's passing, its way its conceptualized (like having all the main characters, backgrounds be damned) and even it being made in CG definitely show it being a sellout move. Sometimes even the corporate vision is blatantly misguided. The Thomas & Friends reboot, subtitled "All Engines Go", may not seem too bad to a casual observer, certainly well-animated at least. But the problem is that effort is being put in all the wrong places; Mattel's aim to make it a moral-driven, wacky toddler show is about as deliberately against the source material's vision as possible, and thus it makes the talent look beyond wasted.
Now, at their core these executives have fairly valid reasons for wanting to step into the work, even beyond the obvious financial gain. While it goes without saying how problematic John Kricfalusi is at this point, "Ren and Stimpy"'s production was more than a little troubled. Nick wanted to give as much creative freedom as possible, but the series' crudeness and off-the-wall nature was unprecedented for TV animation at the time, so they didn't want to go too far in case the risk didn't pay off, similar to the SU example above. That, and going over-budget and missing deadlines, something John frequently did, was simply going against the most basic of business models. I would argue that requesting certain aspects be added in or even certain minor tweaks here and there can be considered reasonable as well, so long as they're made upfront, don't mess with the intended tone or structure, and are broad enough for the creatives to make something great out of them, like Hexside's inclusion in "The Owl House" or the episodic nature of "Wander Over Yonder" season 1.
Part of why they take these approaches is because of the short-term profits certain formulas are expected to make, as their marketing analytics would say. And sure enough, they consistently get hundreds of millions at the box office, if not over a billion. This mindset pretty much drives Illumination's notorious business strategies. Make cutesy, attractive-looking visuals, center it around a concept that grabs in audience (comic-relief gibberish speakers, cute pets, a popular Dr. Seuss story), and put in just enough effort to grab parents in with their kids. In a similar vein, there's the Disney remakes - part nostalgia bait, part showing off advanced technical power at the expense of emotional investment, part catering to the anti-animation crowds, all selling out what the company made before. Even some of the most profitable animated films full of love and passion followed distinct corporate formulas, particularly the Frozen films. They aren't exactly disliked, but there are a lot of people who look at them with very cynical eyes regardless for being the prime example of a Disney princess film with some of the studio's most polarizing quirks.
Obviously not every creator-driven project is guaranteed to make returns, which again can justify certain corporate decisions. 2002's "Treasure Planet", which its directors wanted to make since 1985, and after $140 million spent, led to the film not even making its budget back. The first few years of "Thomas and Friends" under Mattel, spanning 2013-2017 and the most creator-driven the series got since the classic era, saw a significant, gradual decrease in profits and attention for the brand. And of course, you have Laika's movies. Beloved as those films may be, sometimes outright treasured by the animation community like "Kubo and the Two Strings", nearly all of their films unfortunately see small box office returns, coming to a head with 2019's "Missing Link" grossing $26 million. It legitimately becomes heartbreaking sometimes to see such passionate pieces, some even artistically significant, simply not be recognized as such by the masses. Whether it be due to weak marketing or it just not clicking with certain crowds, it just isn't meant to be sometimes.
I would argue what's much more important, however, is long-term revenue and retention, something corporations don't seem to account for particularly often when strategizing. "OK KO: Let's Be Heroes" was evidently cancelled 2 1/2 seasons in because it wasn't reaching the numbers CN wanted. However, not only are more people talking about it today, but it's consistently been trending higher than the aforementioned PPG 2016, which they marketed and merchandised way more, and also had more brand recognition going for it. And on a grander scale, while these live-action remakes and even some of the sequels like "Finding Dory" always pull in significantly bigger loads at the box office, it's generally the more creatively-crafted animated films that keep a higher level of retention over time. Granted, the animated films are still very much pushed from the getgo, but it goes to show you that passion generally pays off on an even enough playing field. And don't get me started on how incredibly beloved "Into the Spider-Verse" is all across the internet, animation and comic book fans alike.
Obviously, I don't expect executives to cater to every whim every creator has. Like most jobs, it's all but important to make sure those brought on board have both experience and trust going for them. Plus, sometimes there is just a simple clash between what the network wants and want the artist wants, and so long as it's within reason on both ends, there's nothing really wrong with that. It's their network, they can run it however they want to. Even something like CN wanting to transition to preschool programming is something that isn't unreasonable to expect their employees to follow on a certain level. There's even prerogative for new management to disagree with what the previous regime turned out. But ultimately, the goal as a business is to follow what you believe what turn in the most profit all across the board, and I would argue that sometimes going out of your comfort zone can sometimes be one of the most viable things in maximizing success.
This goes especially in terms of marketing. Apart from the biggest powerhouses like the mainline Disney films, FOX's primary animated sitcoms, and Illumination in general, you don't see most secondary animated products be pushed outside those who actively follow animation news. Shows like "Glitch Techs" and "Kid Cosmic" were barely pushed by Netflix (and in the former's case, not even by Nick), and thus you would only hear about them by animation fans' discussing them online, making word-of-mouth difficult to spread. Even some of the better marketed shows of late, like "Steven Universe: Future" and "Hilda" are mostly contained to the networks' or crew members' own social media, so you'd have to be interested enough in their content to want to follow them in order to even officially hear about them. This is a problem with shows like "Infinity Train" when the majority of the show's audience is atypical of what CN would traditionally aim for, with a couple exceptions like "Steven Universe". And if nothing gets marketed to the masses, nothing gets watched by the masses. Obviously there's budgeting to factor in, but as a marketing major myself, it's important to know how to reach your intended demo for each product.
I guess the main thing I want you guys to take away from this entire discussion is that, no matter what shows you choose to watch, enjoy, and support, at the very least we should encourage these artists to be allowed more of a voice in their jobs and for the industry to not hold itself back so drastically for the sake of popular trends. There's definitely a lot of business operations that we average joes know nothing about, and sometimes certain analytics just aren't reflective of a product's actual success. Sometimes it just isn't meant to be, and I think we've all had to accept that at least a few times. This is truthfully a very complicated matter that isn't as black and white as letting all artists do what they want when they want, that's ridiculous and goes against common business logic. But calling out sellout decisions and encouraging them to be flexible by supporting the true gems of the pile (and even the creatives' personal work across social media and other projects) is a good place to start in making the industry to become a more welcoming environment to those who aim to share their meaningful stories to the public.
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