Doug, the flagship series of New York-based Jumbo Pictures, which was bought by Disney last year.

Merger Fever
Overhanging all this has been the specter of the recent wave of mergers and takeovers, along with the growth of new broadcast networks in the United States. The effect, especially in television, has been to effectively curtail market access. For instance, Disney's takeover of ABC effectively shut out most non-Disney companies from the network's Saturday morning line up. In addition, as a result of getting ABC, it took control of DIC Entertainment, a major producer of TV animation for both the domestic and international market; if this was not enough, in a separate deal, it bought out New York-based Jumbo Pictures and promptly put a new version of Doug on ABC.

Time-Warner's merger with Turner Broadcasting, saw Turner Feature Animation absorbed by Warner Bros. Feature Animation, while Hanna-Barbera has now become a division of Warner Television Animation. Time-Warner, which controls the budding WB Network and several cable channels (including HBO, which has just set up its own animation studio) added several animation-friendly cable outlets, including the Cartoon Network, as well as the rights to the MGM cartoon library and the pre-1948 backlog of Warner Bros. cartoons.

Twentieth Century Fox has combined its highly successful Fox Children's Network with Saban, a leading international supplier of animation programming; Saban, in turn, continues its deal to handle children's programming for the Paramount-controlled UPN network. Paramount, which was engulfed by Viacom a few years back, could always ask Saban to step aside and turn the job over to Nickelodeon, part of Viacom's MTV Networks. Nickelodeon, though, seems preoccupied for the time being with doing more animation for its cable service and expanding into theatrical animation.

With Fox, WB and UPN tying up increasingly larger blocks of time of once independent TV stations, the American market for syndicated shows (i.e., programs sold directly to stations rather than to networks) has shrunk drastically. Even Disney has had to scale back on the syndication deals for its Disney Afternoon package, and now allows stations to broadcast less than its full package. However, given Disney's situation, I suspect the company will somehow endure this hardship; the same, however, cannot be said for studios who do not have their own television networks (terrestrial, cable or satellite) to rely on. The situation effectively precludes most overseas producers from making further inroads into the US TV market for the immediate future; the situation must be especially frustrating to Japanese companies, who have seen their product gain popularity in home video.

Space Jam.

Theatrical Features
The most visible and seemingly most lucrative branch of the US animation industry lies in theatrical features. The field has been almost totally dominated by Disney since the alliance between Steven Spielberg and Don Bluth ended after The Land Before Time (1988). One after another, the films put up by various pretenders, ranging from Rich Animation (The Swan Princess) to MGM (All Dogs Go to Heaven) have fallen by the wayside. However, late last year, there were signs of erosion. The Ivan Reitman-Warner Bros. Space Jam generated enough money at the box office to demonstrate that someone else besides Disney can successfully market an animated event film. (The fact that the film's inflated budget may severely interfere with its profitability, is really of little concern in these matters.)

The second and most important breakthrough was Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-head Do America (MTV Animation) which has brought in more than half the money that Space Jam did, on a budget perhaps one-tenth its size. Besides laying the groundwork for theatrical versions of such shows as The Simpsons, it may very well rid the common misperception that animated features can only be successful if they appeal to kids. If it does open the doors to lower budgeted animated features aimed at older audiences, it will surely make Beavis and Butt-head Do America a landmark film.