"The Internet is the enemy."

"Spin off an online division and let them try to recapture some of the audience the Internet siphons away."

It is obvious that at CartoonNetwork.com there’s plenty to do. All images courtesy of and © CartoonNetwork.com.

That was what most television networks were thinking as they worked furiously to capture a piece of the online pie. At the same time, start-up online entertainment companies sprouted up all over the Internet, flush with funding, new content and confidence in their abilities to compete on the Web.

As the dust settles on the initial Internet rush, it seems that both philosophies fell short. Television hasn't died and developing an identity online from the ground up is still expensive enough to bankrupt even the most innovative Websites.

Cartoon Network chose a different path for its online presence. By working to exploit the strengths of both television and the Internet, CartoonNetwork.com has thrived, as much of the online animation and entertainment industry has gone back to the drawing board.

"What others have tried to do is put some animation online or try to have a game site... but they can't begin with the leverage of having a brand behind them. At the same time, they had to build the experience and build the brand. We had the brand built, so it was all about growing the experience and then letting people know about it through the network," explains Jim Samples, general manager of Cartoon Network Online.

"One of the things Cartoon Network has done better than anyone is to manage the site as a part of the overall brand. Some of our competitors expected to create a separate entertainment company and spin it off around their Website. We never expected to do that. CartoonNetwork.com is a part of Cartoon Network. Almost every week there's a new tie-in between on-air and online. That's typical of our philosophy overall."

Sam Register has been with CartoonNetwork.com since before the site launched.

Revitalizing the Classics
Even with a robust brand and ample on-air support, building a Website that makes full use of the network's colossal library of animation is no small task. As vice president of Cartoon Network Online and creative director of CartoonNetwork.com, Sam Register is responsible for making sure cultural icons like Scooby-Doo look at home on the Web.

"We have a different job than other entertainment Websites in that we launched with a library. We had to take content that was new, like The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter, very old, like Bugs and Tom and Jerry, and everything in the middle, like The Jetsons and The Flintstones, from four different libraries and use the Internet to pump life into these characters," Register says.

"Web Premiere Toons," CartoonNetwork.com's original animation component, is one way Register has tried to knock the dust off the network's classic cartoon characters. In the past, "Web Premiere Toons" have focused on Cartoon Network's newer, original characters. This year, 40 new shorts will be introduced with a focus on reinventing classic characters from the network's library.

"You put a Yogi Bear cartoon from the Sixties next to a Powerpuff Girls cartoon and it is night and day. Those Yogi cartoons are great, they're beautiful, but they fall flat on a lot of the audiences today," says Register.

A roster of studios including Wild Brain and Funny Garbage will animate this year's "Web Premiere Toons," along with John K, who has signed on to produce six shorts of his own featuring the Jetsons, Yogi Bear and Fred and Barney from The Flintstones. "We end up taking a character that we already have the rights to and finding a new place for it," Register says. "We went with a film festival metaphor for doing animation online. We try doing lots of different things that all look different from each other in nice, quick, short, little blasts. That's something we can do much cheaper online."

While one of the advantages of producing new animated content on the Web rather than television is the relatively low cost, Register insists that the quality of animation will remain high. "I think the quality of animation online on the whole needs to grow up. I just wish everything didn't look like it was done in Flash. I'm glad some of the entertainment-only sites went away because they weren't paying anything for it and it looked like it."