Turner Broadcasting is reshuffling its animation cable destinations and ramping up its digital content offerings in a series of strategic moves that will see the grown-ups-only Adult Swim programming block gain an hour (its latest expansion since 2007), and Boomerang will become ad supported for the first time.
Cartoon Network has nudged the Adult Swim schedule from 9 p.m. down to 8 p.m. (effective March 31) as part of its strategy to maintain its core demographic of boys 6-14, who are increasingly seeking out entertainment content online rather than on the air, while Adult Swim’s edgier content is lapping up ratings success with adults 18-34. Launching the new AS start time will be back-to-back episodes of Fox’s King of the Hill, followed by The Cleveland Show. These milder comedies should nicely ease viewers into the more bizarre humor landscapes of AS original toons Robot Chicken, Rick and Morty and Aqua Teen.
On the digital side, CartoonNetwork.com will be piling on the original boys’ content in an effort to keep pace with the instant gratification generation of tech-savvy kids and tweens. The channel will heavily promote a slew of new content, games and apps–it will also produce on-air promos to warn parents about the new start time of the mature content block.
