Has streaming been better for adult animation than kids' animation?

[The Overlord]

Has streaming been better for adult animation than kids' animation?

I have seen threads here about streaming kind of leaving behind kids' animation and that might not be wrong, I can't think of many new prominent kids' cartoon shows on Streaming, besides stuff like the new She-Ra show or Dragon Prince.

I can think of a lot of prominent adult animated series on Streaming: Arcane, Bojack Horseman, Castlevania, Invincible, Vox Machina, etc. Heck, people may hate Big Mouth here, but at least it gets talked about.

Though I may be biased, I don't watch as much kids animation as I used to, so maybe there are some popular gems I am missing.

I wonder if kids watch unboxing or lets play videos over animation nowadays and if adults who grew up with animation are more interested in it. That would be a shame though if that were the case.

 

[Antiyonder]

I think the best we can do is to support the kid or family friendly stuff whenever possible. Binge whenever you can and if money is a concern, TubiTV and plenty of YT Channels have material officially distributed. I think even Peacock has older animated titles free despite being a pay service.

Spend on DVDs/Blu-Rays or Comics/GN/related merch to such when and as soon as possible.

 

[The Overlord]

I think the best we can do is to support the kid or family friendly stuff whenever possible. Binge whenever you can and if money is a concern, TubiTV and plenty of YT Channels have material officially distributed. I think even Peacock has older animated titles free despite being a pay service.

Spend on DVDs/Blu-Rays or Comics/GN/related merch to such when and as soon as possible.

Hmmm, but I think if the kid audience is not there for a lot of streaming animation, you can't really expect adult fans to make up the difference. I like animation, but the only new kids animated series I have seen recently the whole way through is Bad Batch and Star Trek Prodigy and that is only because I liked the previous Star Wars animated series and I am a Star Trek super fan. Most of the animated stuff I watched recently is aimed at adults, that likely will remain the case.

 

[harry580]

here's a idea, make more action cartoons on streaming service, something like nickelodeon's avatar or those action cartoons cartoon network aired

 

[Dr.Pepper]

I wonder if the issue is that streaming typically releases an entire season at once instead of spreading a season out over the course of a couple of months (or whatever). Kids normally don’t have the attention span of adults so they might binge a season over a long weekend and then move on to the next thing.

 

[SuperSuck64]

Streaming has been bad for animation as a whole.

 

[The Overlord]

Streaming has been bad for animation as a whole.

I am not sure I agree with that. I don't think you would have shows like Bojack Horseman, Castlevania, Arcane, Invincible, Vox Machina, etc. without streaming. However, I do think saying streaming has not produced much in the way of memorable animation for kids is a fair statement.

 

[SweetShop209]

1. It does remind me of this 2019 article talking about Amazon cutting down on kids shows to focus more on older audiences. You can see this in effect with how, of their shows in the 2020s, only their adult shows (except Fairfax) are released weekly while their kids shows still follow the method of "dump a bunch of episodes in one go".

You are being redirected...

I wonder if the issue is that streaming typically releases an entire season at once instead of spreading a season out over the course of a couple of months (or whatever). Kids normally don’t have the attention span of adults so they might binge a season over a long weekend and then move on to the next thing.

2. I do wish streaming services would take more cues from Disney Plus given how most of their kids shows have weekly releases. Even with a show like Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures (which is both a Disney Junior original and a Disney Plus original), which releases episodes in batches, they still release weekly on television.

 

[The Overlord]

1. It does remind me of this 2019 article talking about Amazon cutting down on kids shows to focus more on older audiences. You can see this in effect with how, of their shows in the 2020s, only their adult shows (except Fairfax) are released weekly while their kids shows still follow the method of "dump a bunch of episodes in one go".

You are being redirected...

2. I do wish streaming services would take more cues from Disney Plus given how most of their kids shows have weekly releases. Even with a show like Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures (which is both a Disney Junior original and a Disney Plus original), which releases episodes in batches, they still release weekly on television.

Yeah, I didn't even know that Amazon Prime made animation for kids, I am only familiar with their animation for adults. That seems like a problem.

 

[harry580]

I know emily the strange movie was proposed for amazon and we heard nothing about since its announcement in 2016

 

[Moe]

Mostly part, yes and streaming services tend to cut or deprioritize the children shows if they have money issues but let adult animated shows run.

 

[Fone Bone]

Streaming has been bad for animation as a whole.

You are going to get a LOT of crap for that, but it's true. The quality of animation has never been better because of streaming. But creators and animators are treated worse than... I'm not gonna say EVER, but things have gone backwards leaps and bounds for their salaries, creative freedoms, and rights.

 

[Moe]

You are going to get a LOT of crap for that, but it's true. The quality of animation has never been better because of streaming. But creators and animators are treated worse than... I'm not gonna say EVER, but things have gone backwards leaps and bounds for their salaries, creative freedoms, and rights.

Yes, I noticed that some members treated him badly and downvoted his posts in temporary forum. It is very wrong to see members went after him over his opinions. I know that he is very frustrated with studios, streamers and networks treat animators bad, wrote cartoon shows off for tax purpose and give less money for decades. Hanna-Barbera and Filmation would be a prime example.

 

[The Overlord]

You are going to get a LOT of crap for that, but it's true. The quality of animation has never been better because of streaming. But creators and animators are treated worse than... I'm not gonna say EVER, but things have gone backwards leaps and bounds for their salaries, creative freedoms, and rights.

That's fair, but I think that's true of the entire entertainment industry, it's why we have two ongoing strikes in the entertainment industry.

 

[Pooky]

I wonder if kids watch unboxing or lets play videos over animation nowadays and if adults who grew up with animation are more interested in it. That would be a shame though if that were the case.

Anecdotally, based on my friends and acquaintances who have kids under 10, this is very true, they graduate from Peppa Pig, Bluey and Paw Patrol to Minecraft and Five Nights at Freddy's videos. Not only that, but a lot of teenagers rarely watch films or narrative TV. I'm 36 and if I live into my 70s or 80s I strongly expect narrative fiction, excluding video games, to have a fraction of the prominence it has in our lives now, which is arguably already significantly diminished from the 20th Century, or even 10 years ago. Maybe I'm wrong, but I do think the Entertainment industry currently has a rather "head in the sand" attitude to these developments.

That said, I don't know how much any of that has to do with what Streamers greenlight, because they don't tend to pay much attention to the normal rules of business. I'm also not sure if there's actually more shows for adults than kids, or if they just don't know how to promote them, or if more mainstream media just isn't interested. If you take Tiny Toons Loonaversity for example, this has been heavily discussed in animation circles for about 3 years, but now it's out it isn't getting much mainstream attention (just 3 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for example).

 

[Markus Nelis]

All of animation literally gets bad treatment because apparenly they think "adults like real life comedies and movies more thancartoons". Trust me, at least half of the adult audience watch animation. You can even see a lot of animation in Netflix's top 10. Honestly their strategy is pretty questionable. Like I said in the other thread, Disney Plus is the only one that gives animation a lot of respect.

 

[The Overlord]

All of animation literally gets bad treatment because apparenly they think "adults like real life comedies and movies more thancartoons". Trust me, at least half of the adult audience watch animation. You can even see a lot of animation in Netflix's top 10. Honestly their strategy is pretty questionable. Like I said in the other thread, Disney Plus is the only one that gives animation a lot of respect.

Except Invincible, Arcane, DOTA, Castlevania, Blood of Zeus, Skull Island, etc are not comedies.

 

[[classic swim]]

As much as I rag, they’ve moved mountains when it comes to less restrictions on adult-geared animation.

A bunch of shows all across multiple streaming catalogs would be this giant side eye toward networks who would’ve never given a greenlight, much less humor one pitch to begin with.

That’s about where the pros stop.

Can’t speak for how bad kid programming might be doing in comparison. Some forms of entertainment deal with mistreatment/negatives of streaming differently than others.

 

[Moe]

As much as I rag, they’ve moved mountains when it comes to less restrictions on adult-geared animation.

Comedy Central used to be most least restriction to no restriction with South Park until they changed the policy to ban on 201 and Super Best Friends.

I don't think that Adult Swim has restriction on shows that air at around or after midnight.

 

[[classic swim]]

Comedy Central used to be most least restriction to no restriction with South Park until they changed the policy to ban on 201 and Super Best Friends.

201 was banned by CC out of fear for their lives.

Super Best Friends was only banned years after the fact during the Danish protests when Trey & Matt had to remind CC that they already produced an episode featuring the Muslim prophet.

Both of which are very special cases that I wasn’t really trying to go for in this discussion.

I don't think that Adult Swim has restriction on shows that air at around or after midnight.

I mean, things have definitely laxxed down for televised broadcasts.

It wasn’t til about a decade ago when Adult Swim could start throwing around S bombs more.

But even leaving some words unbleeped doesn’t completely stop whatever else they have to deal with when going through Standards.

Even with something more vain like FOX. A large portion of modern Family Guy episodes, as tame as they could be, would be deemed downright unairable just in the early revival seasons.

I have yet to see any specific or unique protocol when it comes to what you can and can’t do on streaming. I saw some laughable stuff from S&P back in the day but rarely any current hiccups from Max or wherever else. Maybe creators just aren’t as vocal about that anymore.