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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.8 - NOVEMBER 2000

Boom and Doom (continued from page 2) Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera's original creation, Scooby-Doo, is still drawing new audiences on Cartoon Network. © Cartoon Network. All rights reserved. Experience is a bigger factor than the ability to be hip, cool, self-referential or cognizant of the latest trends and buzzwords. Mike Judge, quoted above, actually does have a successful primetime animated series. However, he also spent years as an independent before creating Beavis and Butthead, a learning experience that was not without travails and controversy. Only after gaining that experience did Judge give us King of the Hill. Consider the case of The Flintstones, TV's first animated primetime hit: Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera first broke into the business in the 1930s, paid innumerable dues before teaming up at MGM and winning seven Oscars before they ever pitched an idea to a network. By the time they did, their cumulative experience in the animation business totaled sixty years, and they already had one certifiable primetime success to their credit with Huckleberry Hound. Stop, Look and Listen The Primetime Crash of 2000 was due to many factors, but one of the most important may have been overweening eagerness on the part of the networks and big studios. While they cannot be blamed for wishing to ride a hot trend, it seems that in most cases they did so while seemingly lacking an insider's view of the animation industry. Therefore, questionable choices were made about which series to sink their dough into. One-shot wonders can and do happen, but most good series are carefully developed and have answers for the most important questions of all before they make the grade. Net execs should have asked: Is this a unique vision and a labor of love by the creator(s), or a hit-it-big hopeful? Did the creator(s) study animation and its history, work extensively in the field and understand what makes an animated show successful, or are they simply people who believe they can write funny stuff? Did the creator(s) believe that animation has a unique style and sense of timing that has evolved over decades, or do they believe that all they need to do is draw funny-looking characters and give them a live-action script? These are good questions for the networks to ponder come the next "boom." Television's first primetime animation success, Hanna-Barbera's The Flintstones. © Cartoon Network. All rights reserved. One of my favorite animation anecdotes concerns the legendary animator Shamus Culhane. After Culhane was hired by Paramount in 1965 to rejuvenate their failing cartoon studio, he met with the sales department and presented some of his newest ideas. The Paramount execs shoved them aside and ordered Culhane to create the next Bugs Bunny. Culhane, who had been in the business all his life, attempted to explain that such a phenomenon did not simply happen on demand. The executives scoffed, writing him off as lazy and unimaginative. If one fact is evident concerning the Crash of 2000, it's that the song remains the same since Culhane sat down with Paramount. The difference is, Culhane knew better due to his vast experience in the business. Today, dozens of power-lunch, media-wise hipsters would have besieged Paramount with some stand-up, postmodern version of Bugs who riffs like a sexually depraved Tarentino hood. Paramount would have bought the whole idea and then watched in horror as the show was switched off by one local station after another before choking after three episodes. In pace requiescat, say the jittery sponsors, and better luck to us next time. Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.

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