Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The History of Cartoon Network: Annex 3: Summer Fridays, Cartoon Network Fridays, Fried Dynamite/Dynamite Action Squad and You Are Here

When last we left our CCF story, CCF was considered obsolete and Summer Fridays took it's place.
There's one thing I'd like to explain: why are the Teen Titans characters doing on the show's bumpers? Initially, the show was intended to premiere episodes on Friday nights, but they turned it down and instead wanted to show it on Saturday mornings.
But Summer Fridays was only a temporary block - in September, a new, completely different block took it's place.

That's not what you're expecting. That's footage from the Australian version of the block which somehow survived the end of the American version.
But anyway...
September 5th, 2003. Out went Summer Fridays (and the CCF dynasty) and a new block, going under the name of Fridays was launched. Though this is not the Fridays I'm going to talk about.
This "Fridays" was known as "Cartoon Network's Fridays" and was a Summer Fridays without the word Summer. Have you a murky past?
Not much of this block is known to exist, The Fridays I'm going to talk about right now premiered on the 3rd of October and it was initially hosted by Tommy Snider and Nzinga Blake. The show commenced with a minute-long title sequence featuring tons of H-B and CN characters, most of them never got to see their own fifteen minutes of fame on the block itself:
(Another TT reference: WHY are Starfire and Robin on the intro? TT rarely aired on Friday nights)
Anyway...
The video you've just seen comes from a later phase, which was new for 2005: Nzinga Blake left Fridays and was replaced with Tara Strong, owing to, uh, I don't know. The intro changed, looking more modern this time (in terms of characters).
This block was successful and was eventually exported to Australia in 2004, also introducing two local brands: the .com Pick from the CCF era and the Double Play. The Premiere Premiere brand was abolished.
Meanwhile in the USA, things were getting more and more nonsensical as the years progressed. It had tons of weird segments (like Whiskers, The Cast Who Can Name Fruit or Rev Chase). They made a contest in the show's dying month (January 2007) to see who could promote Re-Animated. No one knows who won.
And then Stuart Snyder came and decided to drop Fridays. The replacement only came around on August 31st. It was not the name of one block, but two blocks: one for Friday night comedy premieres and one for Saturday morning action shows. The names were Fried Dynamite (Fridays) and Dynamite Action Squad (Saturdays).
Fried Dynamite was unsuccessful.
It did, however, run for a little over a full year (ending on September 26th, 2008). Into the Noods, and You Are Here is born. And, after nine years, it was a complete change of tack: action shows on Friday nights.
And they eventually decided to call it "Action Fridays" with the start of the CHECK it. era,  but it wasn't a proper block. They later on proceeded to the launch of DC Nation, to which Teen Titans GO! has become the most successful DC Nation show so far, to the dismay of Young Justice gans.
But You Are Here also marked another change of tack: comedy premieres on Thursdays (first as CN Thursday Nights, then as HAR HAR THARSDAYS) and later on Mondays and now on Thursdays again (I'm talking about AT, RS and TAWOGB as examples).
Fifteen years later and CN's Friday nights have had so many changes, currently they're not part of a block right now.

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