Abstract
This article examines how media production is shaped under media conglomeration through a close analysis of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast (1994–2008), arguing that animation evinces the corporate strategy of archive reuse through its esthetics. It compares how the limited animation of Hanna-Barbera Productions transformed in the shift to cable and greater media conglomeration under Turner Broadcasting System. Using a thick description of the production process, the chapter illustrates how Cartoon Network programmers remixed the corporate archive to create Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. Through this remixed production process, channel programmers used limited animation esthetics to disclose on their own labor as programmers and producers within Turner’s media empire. It ends by examining how Space Ghost: Coast to Coast’s unique production techniques and esthetics shaped Cartoon Network’s adult programing block, [adult swim].
Space Ghost: Coast to Coast (1994–2008) was Cartoon Network’s first fully produced original program. With its surreal humor and eccentric style, the long running animated series laid the groundwork for the channel’s identity, particularly its incredibly successful branded programing block aimed at adults, [adult swim]. Ironically, Cartoon Network’s first fully original program wasn’t original at all. Stitching together old footage from the 1966 series Space Ghost & Dino Boy, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast reflects its televisual origins in limited animation, an animation production practice that emerged alongside and partly because of television (Barbera 1994; Hanna and Tom 1996; Sandler 2019; Sito 2006; Sullivan 2021). This article examines Space Ghost: Coast to Coast to demonstrate how limited animation production practices are remixed in the cable era. The series serves as a case study for how media conglomeration shapes media production by prioritizing its own archive. It also demonstrates how such production processes also produce industrial disclosures that reveal distinct conditions of media production under conglomeration. Too often overlooked, limited animation — a distinctively televisual production method— offers a unique perspective into media conglomeration and how it shapes creative output.
This article examines how Cartoon Network programmers remixed limited animation production practices to create an original cable program. To demonstrate this shift, this article takes a productions studies approach by giving a thick description of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast’s (hereafter abbreviated as SG:C2C) production process. I prioritize animation to critically examine corporate strategies under conglomeration because animation as a form materially contains the history of its own production contexts within it (Frank 2019). SG:C2C serves as the case study for this article because it marks two major shifts in television: first, a shift from the network era to the cable era; second, a concomitant shift in limited animation production practices from recombination to remix due to corporate conglomeration. To explain these shifts, this article focuses on the Turner Broadcasting System before the Turner-Time Warner merger in 1996, and how this media conglomerate shaped SG:C2C. Further, this article brings attention to the meshing of distribution and production in animated television, while also highlighting’s limited animation’s generative production processes. This demonstrates how the conditions of conglomeration shape esthetics, namely the esthetics of failure, which creatively reflect media workers’ uneasy positioning within a media conglomerate. This article ends by charting how SG:C2C’s production process was the fundamental template for [adult swim]’s programing and production.
The Origins of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast
In its initial conception, cable channel Cartoon Network was designed to host animation catalogs that Ted Turner owned: MGM, Fleischer Studios, Ruby-Spears, and Hanna-Barbera. The latter two were acquired in October 1991, a year before Cartoon Network launched on October 1st, 1992. Turner’s purchase of Hanna-Barbera followed his strategy for his other networks such as TCM and TNT, which capitalized on the redistribution of lucrative archives of content. With the advent of the multi-channel era, which featured a proliferation of cable channels available to consumers, many centered around niche interests (Lotz 2014, 8), demand from niche cable channels for older content “increased the value of studio libraries” (Kolbert 1993), a trend the Turner Broadcasting System epitomized. Whereas the previous network era of television (early 1950s to mid-1980s) was largely dominated by a few key networks, as the 1980s progressed, the dominance of the three major networks eroded, accelerating the gradual rise of niche cable channels.
Additionally, the rise of cable and the decline of the dominance of the three major networks began to displace the once-dominant Saturday morning cartoon programing blocks, leaving the kids demographic up for grabs. Cartoon Network was, in part, an attempt to capture that demographic (Carter 1992). Working from his earlier stations’ rating success with animation, Turner recognized the catalog’s strength for its strong reuse value (Turner and Burke 2008, 289). While the archive was used to supply Turner programing, it was reused again, quite literally, for the production of SG:C2C.
Mike Lazzo’s career at Turner was all about distribution. While he started in the Turner shipping department, he later became a programmer for TBS’s animation block before starting as the first programmer for Cartoon Network in 1993. That year, Lazzo and other programmers approached Ted Turner to ask for money to produce new programing, stating they were “tired of being labeled as a Hanna-Barbera rerun channel,” but Turner sent them away stating they already had all they’d need (Lazzo 2003). As Lazzo recounts, “Ted has said, ‘I bought you a library, now utilize it’” (Weinstein 1994). With no money to hire artists to generate new concept art, the small number of Cartoon Network programmers turned to the Turner archive to create SG:C2C (Ken 2003). The idea for SG:C2C emerged from a programing meeting. As Cartoon Network programmers Lazzo, Khaki Jones, and Andy Merrill were brainstorming a marathon of the 1968 animated series Wacky Races, they envisioned piecing episodes together to appear as if the characters were driving across the country, coast to coast (Kenyon 1998, 9). As they brainstormed, episodes of Space Ghost & Dino Boy played in the background, and the recent late night talk show wars gave the programmers an idea: what if the Hanna-Barbera character Space Ghost had a talk show?
SG:C2C was a satirical talk show starring Space Ghost and other assorted Hanna-Barbera characters from Space Ghost & Dino Boy and other properties. Debuting soon after the early 1990s late night talk show wars, the series skewered backstage drama and the idea of celebrities extending their fame by becoming talk show hosts. The series revolved around Space Ghost interviewing various celebrities, who would appear on a television set in Space Ghost’s studio. However, the series avoided typical celebrity promotion (Murray 2012), and instead prioritized non-sequiturs, surreal segments, and other antics to disrupt the talk show genre (Holm 2022, 364). Space Ghost was chosen in part because he was a forgotten, B-list character, making the IP freer for experimentation (Jensen 2014). Additionally, because the animated show had a minuscule budget, there was little risk involved and virtually no rules restricting its content (Ken 2003; Lazzo 2003). The series was self-effacing about its own budgetary limitations, and often derived humor from its limited animation. As Space Ghost’s band leader Zorak quips, “Every time I move my arm, it costs the Cartoon Network 42 bucks” (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 1996, episode no. 27). 1 The series attracted older audiences, particularly the coveted eighteen to thirty-four year old demographic, and served as the precursor for Cartoon Network’s [adult swim] programing block with its surreal humor and demographic reach (Meisler 1994).
The series’ production, particularly its early years in the 1990s, highlights the conglomerate’s resources, their logistics, and their limitations at play in the creation of the series. The series was written in a Turner conference room after workers left for the day. Interviews with celebrities were filmed in CNN studios right down the road, as Turner, CNN, and Cartoon Network headquarters were centrally located in Atlanta (Lazzo 2003). And with Turner’s ownership of the Hanna-Barbera catalog, Lazzo noted that they “were sitting on an enormous library [of animation] . . . [with] a lot of potential” (Ken 2003). But the resources of the Turner media empire also came limitations. The original Space Ghost & Dino Boy only lasted twenty episodes, giving SG:C2C a total of 90 minutes of animated footage to reuse, all held on a single tape (5 Eyewitness News 1996). The series was born out of careful use of limited resources, a reality underlined by examining the series’ production process, and how they remix previously established limited animation production techniques.
Limited Animation Production Techniques
Before discussing how SG:C2C remixed limited animation, we must first outline limited animation production techniques pioneered by Hanna-Barbera. Limited animation describes production practices where the number of unique drawings per second of footage is reduced. In contrast to full animation, where there is a unique drawing for every projected frame (or every second frame), limited animation creates unique drawings in intervals of every three (or more) frames. This production process emerged alongside the advent of television in the 1950s (Wells 2002, 2003). Full animation tends to be made for theatrical distribution, typically with more robust budgets and a more realistic style of fluid character animation. By contrast, American limited animation tends to be made for television, typically with comparably cheaper budgets and less realistic character movement. As a result of these structuring binaries (full/limited, expensive/cheap, realist/formalist), limited animation was generally less respected by industry professionals and critics (Hanna and Tom 1996, 87; Lamarre 2009, 159), with animation historian Leonard Maltin going so far as to say that “Television cartoon series are the Muzak of animation” (Maltin 1975, 76).
As the dominant American television animation studio in the twentieth century, Hanna-Barbera Productions serves as an excellent example of limited animation production techniques. As Paul Wells describes, Hanna-Barbera’s limited animation was “essentially the reduction of animation to its most essentialist form: little animation, no complex choreography, repeated cycles of movement, a small repertoire of expressions and gestures, stress on dialog, basic design, and simple graphic forms” (2003, 17). Such a production process relied on a number of shortcuts, including “stylized minimal motion, reused stock runs and walks, and emphasis on clever gag writing and voice talent” (Sito 2006, 244), as well as “‘holds,’ in which characters do not move” (Frank 2019, 75). Instead of the visual tendencies of full animation, such as fluid character movement and motion into depth, limited animation tends to embrace static key poses and flatter compositing. The reduction of animated movement prompted the increased importance of vocal performance and Hanna-Barbera’s library of sound effects to create a sense of momentum and liveliness in the animated image (Barbera 1994, 118; Sullivan 2021). In sum, limited animation, particularly Hanna-Barbera productions, emphasizes the careful reuse of materials, often reusing an archive of production assets instead of producing new ones.
While economic factors were certainly a key motivation in developing limited animation, so too was the format of television itself, particularly its appetite for repackaged content. Television repackages content and replicates it, as charted in Todd Gitlin’s Inside Prime Time (Gitlin 2005 [1983]), a landmark industry-level study of network television and how it shapes cultural production (Lotz 2009, 33). A similar televisual tendency recurs in limited animation. Applying Gitlin’s work to limited animation, Paul Wells uses the term recombinancy to describe the era of early television animation of the 1950s. Wells’ concept of recombinancy describes how limited animation on American television pioneered in this time can be reissued and repackaged (in short, recombined), through spinoffs, reboots, and sequels. Avoiding the common critique that such production methods lack originality, Wells instead highlights recombinancy as a productive method for animation to work both creatively and cost effectively (2003, 25).
While Wells traces animation’s recombinancy in terms of narrative re-interpretation and recirculation, I want to broaden the use of recombinancy to also encompass the reuse of materials in limited animation production practices. Building from Wells’ analysis, I argue that recombinancy can be productively expanded to include the recombination of animation as well. In other words, limited animation’s recombination occurs both on a material level, such as reusing walk cycles or backgrounds, and at a programing level, in terms of repackaging animation into a variety of television formats. Recombinancy, then, is a doubled form, involving both micro-segmentation (reuse of animation materials to produce new sequences) and macro-segmentation (reuse of animated sequences to produce “new” programs) for television. In short, television creators can reconfigure previous work materially through limited animation production processes, as well as narratively through creative reuse of plots, characters, and settings. Both levels of recombinancy are evident throughout Hanna-Barbera’s productions, illustrating limited animation’s generative capacities, its ability to produce value despite limitations. As Hanna-Barbera’s animation archive moved from television’s network era to the cable era, so too did limited animation’s production techniques, each transforming through a new era of media conglomeration and television distribution.
Remixing the Limited Animation Archive
Examining the material production of SG:C2C enables us to see how limited animation production methods transform during the multi-channel era of television. Furthermore, the series helps us expose the parallels between programing and production of limited animation. Much as Hanna-Barbera relied on the reuse of images in their animation (such as character poses and run cycles), likewise television channels such as Cartoon Network rely on the reuse and recombining of programs. SG:C2C remixed Hanna-Barbera in the multi-channel era of the 1990s, demonstrating how media conglomeration shapes production by providing a corporate archive of acquired assets. Turner’s edict to Cartoon Network programmers to utilize the conglomerate’s library of content shaped the production of SG:C2C, shifting limited animation from a strategy of recombinancy to one of remix. Whereas Hanna-Barbera managed a studio’s archive of assets, Cartoon Network programmers drew from a media conglomerate’s archive to produce SG:C2C. Examining the series’ production methods in detail―including rotoscope, editing, movement cycles, voice acting, and sound design―demonstrates how limited animation transformed under corporate conglomeration, shifting into a remixed form for cable.
To begin, the production team relied on rotoscope, isolating specific iconic character designs and poses of previous Hanna-Barbera productions to composite new images for the series. While rotoscoping in animation usually refers to the process of tracing over live-action footage, in this case, rotoscope refers to isolating specific elements from moving images, often for special effects processes. For SG:C2C, various Hanna-Barbera character poses—particularly close-ups with lip movement—were removed from the original backgrounds and placed into new settings (Meisler 1994, H45; Kenyon 1998, 10). All close-ups of characters speaking were taken from the original series, initially rotoscoped through Quantel’s effects compositing system/non-linear editor (Ecke 1994). Rotoscope was a key method of literally reusing material assets from the corporate archive to produce a “new” series, taking images from the Hanna-Barbera archive to enable playful composition in the SG:C2C production process.
While rotoscoping digitally separated elements for their reuse, digital editing composited the varied elements together to produce the illusion of movement and speech in the series’ characters. Rotoscoped assets, interview footage, and background art were digitally composted together to create the illusion of a talk show. To create the show’s distinctive recycled animation, editors block out a rough version of “Space Ghost” using still images and the soundtrack. Then they hand off the show to another set of animators who use Adobe After Effects to add motion, from facial expressions to explosions. From there, the QuickTime files are handed back to [editor/producers Jay Edwards and Ned Hastings], who import the files to create digital Beta tapes, ready for broadcast (Kuldell 2004).
Because the show’s production method involved constant re-use of various animation cycles, editing (a task usually less intensive in typical animation production) became the most time-consuming aspect of the series. Editor Tom Roche notes that each 11-minute episode contained over a 1,000 edits, many of which matched dialog to character lip flaps (Jensen 2014; Pescatore 1996). At the start, the series was edited on leased Avid non-linear editing machines, which made editing not only the most time-consuming aspect of production, but also the most expensive (Kuldell 2004). By 1996, production moved to an in-house Ampex edit console (5 Eyewitness News 1996), before finally switching to Final Cut Pro on Apple computers, “a move that saved the production 75 percent of its budget and two weeks of production time” (Kuldell 2004). Both Lazzo and producer Mike Crofford noted that this editing-intensive production method was only possible due to advancements in digital technology, particularly non-linear editing programs (Kenyon 1998, 10). Editors are also responsible for managing “a library of images from the show” (Kuldell 2004). Like earlier limited animation production processes, editors created another production archive of images and movement cycles to enable further reproduction. The key difference here, however, is that SG:C2C drew from the conglomerate IP archive first, rather than their own original production archive. Media conglomeration thus provided an archive of content for reuse.
One example of how the series reuses its animation archive is what I’ll term the “Space Ghost stretch,” a movement cycle where Space Ghost stands up and stretches his arms as if about to fly away. This movement cycle appears throughout the series to represent several actions. For example, in “Sleeper,” Space Ghost stretches his arms wide both to cry in pain over his lost sea monkey Banjo, and also to participate in a flexing competition with Hulk Hogan (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 1995, episode no. 17; Figure 1). Such consistent reuse of movement cycles and poses illustrates how the production process preferred to reuse animation rather than produce new materials. For example, a small amount of new animation was commissioned to fit the talk show premise, such as a shot of Space Ghost tapping his cue cards; once created, this cycle of movement was reused continuously throughout the series (Pescatore 1996). Most sequences in the series reuse character poses or close-ups, either completely still or with minimal movement such as blinking. Cycles of movement are frequently reused as well, with both still images and movement cycles rendered re-usable through various sound effects and re-contextualization. In short, an archive of movement cycles and poses curated by the editors became the central facet of the series’ animation to reduce production cost and workload (Kuldell 2004).
On the left, Space Ghost crying out in pain over his lost pet; on the right, Space Ghost is in a flexing competition with Hulk Hogan. Both use the same cycle of animated movement. From “Sleeper” (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 1995, episode no. 17).
While editing draws from an archive of images to assemble the animation, dialog produces narrative continuity over disparate images. As journalist Kuldell (2004) observed of the SG:C2C production process, “The editors made characters’ lips move when they spoke, but they ignored other continuity problems, like when characters’ coloring changed between shots.” Indeed, visual inconsistencies are common in the series, most apparent with the character Zorak, as his mantis body and clothing often switch color between shots (Figure 2). Such numerous visual discontinuities were easily spotted by viewers, with some fans even trying to track which pieces of animation were taken from which Hanna-Barbera property on IMDb and fan sites (Lambert 2000). As such, visual discontinuities were a feature of the series’ production, not a bug. To wit: the “goofs” section of IMDb for the SG:C2C is completely blank—why go through the trouble of logging visual inconsistencies for a surreal show predicated on stitching together an archive of assets? (“Goofs,” n.d.) Dialog sutures disparate images to create narratives, albeit narratives interspersed with absurdisms and non-sequiturs.
The colors of Zorak’s body and outfit frequently shift throughout each episode. Such inconsistency, rather than a detriment, is instead a part of the series’ surreal humor. From “Sleeper” (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 1995, episode no. 17).
While SG:C2C uses dialog to construct episodic narratives, SG:C2C often embraces aural discontinuities and silence in its sound design, highlighting SG:C2C’s failure to be animated for humorous effect, while also remixing—and demarcating itself from—Hanna-Barbera’s legacy. SG:C2C often refuses to create what Patrick Sullivan terms trajectory mimesis, which describes “Hanna-Barbera’s persistent use of sound effects to evoke movement in its limited animation” (2021, 29). Instead of sound and image being equally dynamic, typical of full animation and commonly termed mickey mousing, Sullivan (2021, 29) observes that Hanna-Barbera combined “kinetically anemic visuals to kinetically excessive sounds,” evoking movement in a manner specific to limited animation. While SG:C2C uses sound to produce narrative continuity, it often avoids producing trajectory mimesis, as it avoids kinetic sensation altogether for comedic effect.
SG:C2C’s lack of trajectory mimesis is both in line with its overall esthetics of failure, while also demarcating itself as a 90s cable era series. An example of avoiding trajectory mimesis is the use of sound effects in the episode “Switcheroo,” where Space Ghost unknowingly switches hosting duties with his evil twin brother, Chad Ghostal. Each time Space Ghost or Chad fly away from the host desk, instead of using the iconic Hanna-Barbera sound library, their movements are instead accompanied by the sound of a young child saying “whoosh” (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 1996, episode no. 27). The use of the spoken “whoosh” refuses to produce trajectory mimesis, instead calling attention to itself as (cheaply) produced and unrealistic. This avoidance of trajectory mimesis also works to demarcate the series from Hanna-Barbera’s network television legacy. Instead of the wacky sound effects common in limited animation during the network era, SG:C2C situates itself as postmodern pastiche rooted in the cable era. We see this differentiation again in “Rehearsal,” a flashback episode that envisions the show’s first rehearsal in 1994. During a sound test, Zorak notes that “this sound effect isn’t working for me, it’s too wacky” (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 1997, episode no. 35). Wacky, of course, describes much of Hanna-Barbera’s iconic sound library (Sullivan 2021, 30). The series avoids Hanna-Barbera’s wacky soundscapes to instead play with the absence of both sound and movement, calling attention to the seams of its own production for self-effacing comedy while outlining its niche cable sensibilities.
Through this detailed examination of the production history of SG:C2C, we can see how limited animation is remixed under a new era of television distribution (cable) and media conglomeration (Turner Broadcasting System). SG:C2C remixes not only Hanna-Barbera materials, but remixes and reframes the legacy of Hanna-Barbera itself. The SG:C2C production process also reveal how the desire to reuse archives is a twinned impulse of both limited animation production processes and the Turner conglomerate, and plays out on both a macro level (Cartoon Network re-airing old Hanna-Barbera series) and a micro level (the production of SG:C2C). Under media conglomeration, limited animation continues to generate value, transforming its production from recombinancy to a more diffuse remixed form. As this remixed limited animation form was shaped by media conglomeration, it also provided an esthetic means for programmers to comment on said media conglomerate.
Failure Esthetics and Critical Reflexivity
While shaped by media conglomeration, SG:C2C’s remixed limited animation production model also produced industrial disclosures on said conglomeration and the labor within it. This occurs through SG:C2C’s esthetics of failure. Failure in SG:C2C is a doubled form, both on a narrative level within the storytelling, and a material level within the animation. Why does the series embrace failure? As Halberstam (2011, 3) observes, failure provides a means of escape from dominant hierarchies. The esthetics of failure allow for a reprieve, a space of humor where corporate conglomeration can be cleverly subverted, creating space for corporate disclosures on both the labor of creating SG:C2C and programing itself.
SG:C2C’s core premise is one of televisual failure. It fails to be “original” content in recycling the Hanna-Barbera archive. It also embraces failure both narratively and materially. On a narrative level, the series subverts standard talk show tropes, embracing the esoteric and surreal (Holm 2022, 364). An exasperated Conan O’Brien, himself a talk show host, succinctly summarizes Space Ghost’s failure in the episode “Fire Ant”:
“Well, Space Ghost, at the end of an interview, it’s traditional for the talk show host to say ‘Thanks for being here, Conan. This was Conan O’Brien, check out his show on NBC at 12:35.’ You didn’t do that! You completely blew me off! For all these people know, my show is . . . a cop show on, uh, FOX or something, thanks to you.”
“Isn’t it?” (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 1999, episode no. 76).
O’Brien points out Space Ghost’s crucial failing as a talk show host, which is his failure to curate television properly. This moment is one among many where SG:C2C explores what television looks like when televisual curation is abandoned altogether. It also suggests that success for talk shows (and television in general) relies on adhering to rote formulas rather than innovation. Space Ghost’s failure to work as a talk show host in the narrative acts as a skewed reflection of the actual labor of televisual curation.
Alongside SG:C2C’s failure on a narrative level, failure manifests on a material level in the animation. To be clear, limited animation itself is not a failed form of animation, though it is often perceived to be when measured by the standards of full animation. If anything, I hope this article has demonstrated that limited animation has fundamentally generative capacities. Rather, SG:C2C playfully exaggerates limited animation’s formal techniques to amplify discontinuities and surrealism for humorous effect. Visually, SG:C2C embodies a failure to create fluid animation and visual consistency to impishly subvert expectations at every turn. Movement is assiduously avoided, producing what Tyler Williams suggests is “minimal animation” (Williams 2020, 54). While SG:C2C’s constant reuse of static images and movement cycles emerges from its remixed limited animation production process, said process is also shaped by the programmer’s esthetic intent to use failure for comedic effect. As Hastings noted, “There was always a wink, wink . . .We know it’s cheap, you know it’s cheap, but we’re going to entertain you, anyway” (Kuldell 2004). Cheapness―in this case, the failure to produce fluid animation―is playfully drawn to the fore.
Through an esthetics of failure, SG:C2C produces moments of rupture that enable programmers to suffuse their own reflections on their own programing labor within the series, and even disclose elements of the series’ own production. John Caldwell’s analysis of critical reflexivity is pertinent to examine these moments of self-reflexivity. Caldwell (2008) outlines how industrial paratexts reflect media worker’s own theorization of their labor and its surrounding industrial context. As Caldwell argues, “industrial reflexivity and practitioner self-commentary are symptoms of adaptive behaviors generated in response to structural uncertainties” (Caldwell 2008, 353). He observes that when film and television workers produce reflexive texts, they reflect their own thoughts and observations about their own labor conditions.
Industrial self-reflexivity emerges through SG:C2C’s premise of televisual failure, evinced by its constant juggling between Space Ghost’s talk show and its behind-the-scenes mayhem. Such self-reflexivity demonstrates both the creative labor of programmers in televisual curation (Ellis 2000), the enmeshing of television production and distribution, and programmers’ anxious positioning within a larger media conglomerate. To expand on the former, the series’ esthetic failure is self-reflexive because it shows the importance of televisual curation, the creative work of programmers in scheduling Cartoon Network’s content. Lazzo’s comments support this reading, as he explicitly connects programing (the work of distributing content) and production (the creation of content). Connecting his work as a programmer and as a producer for SG:C2C, Lazzo remarks: “How could you go in and recontextualize these cartoons and make them interesting to a modern audience? That exact same thing happened when it came to Space Ghost . . . The earliest episodes were, in essence, the Programing Department” (Lazzo 2003). Repackaging and curating content is the labor of the programing department; it is also the work that Space Ghost fails to do. It’s no wonder that the programing department that wrote and produced SG:C2C finds humor in Space Ghost’s failure: he is the carnivalesque refraction of their creative labor as programmers, creating ruptures for exploration outside the norms of typical television programing.
Another example of how the series demonstrates self-reflection on curatorial labor through its esthetics of failure is through the series’ intentionally faulty televisual flow. The opening title sequence, for example, consists of an abrasive and disruptive guitar solo from jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock. While the soundtrack is full of noise, so too are the visuals, as images of the Ghost Planet are distorted with glitches, flashes, and zig-zags. Rather than welcome in the viewer with big band music like other late night talk shows, SG:C2C’s opening title sequence startles and surprises. Similarly, the series uses test cards to disrupt televisual flow. Throughout the series, test cards serve as comedic punctuation, presenting the status of the series’ transmission and other faux-technical information, as well as intentional static or other televisual errors (Pescatore 1996; Figure 3). Test cards are usually invisible to television audiences but are made visible due to this program’s premise of televisual failure. The test cards disrupt the flow of television (Williams 2003]), producing a rupture with their aural static and break in the animated image. As Willis describes, Lazzo wanted the series to stop channel surfers (and their televisual flow) and make them say “What the hell is this?” (Murray 2012). In short, SG:C2C’s creation of poor televisual curation (stopping flow) gestures to good televisual curation (creating flow) created by programmers.
Test cards indicating the status of the transmission feed. From “Spanish Translation” (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 1994, episode no. 1).
While critical self-reflexivity reflects programmers’ own theorization of scheduling labor as vital creative work, it also reflects programmers’ anxious positionality within the larger Turner conglomerate. That the programmers were “tired of being labeled as a Hanna-Barbera rerun channel” is an anxiety that structures SG:C2C. Cartoon Network programmers felt their work was unoriginal, but were told by Turner to utilize the conglomerate archive. They did so, creating SG:C2C as a self-reflexive form of industry disclosure. If Cartoon Network needs to use the corporate archive, they do so reflexively, commenting on the series failure to be “original” material. By channeling the pressure to make something new and distinctive through the corporate archive, programmers’ desire to make something original was sublimated into a series remarkably unoriginal in origin, but wholly original in execution.
SG:C2C’s embrace of failure also reflects programmer anxieties around the structural uncertainties of working within a larger media conglomerate. Such self-reflection is demonstrated in the episode “Sleeper,” where pro-wrestler Hulk Hogan asks Space Ghost who is stronger, Ted Turner or Jane Fonda:
“But Ted Turner won’t let us have pets in the studio, ever since Banjo. . . Banjo!!!"
“Ted Turner, who’s that?”
“Ted owns us, Zorak. He can push us around. Even you, Hulk.”
“Well I don’t know. . .”
“What if Ted made you do xeroxing all day . . . in an apron? Would’ja pile drive him? You would wouldn’t ya, ‘cause you’re a tough guy. You’re mister tough.”
“He’s got pretty big arms the last time I saw him the last time I saw him because he’s been working out with his wife Jane Fonda.”
“I’m ‘fond a Fonda.”
“And she’s a fitness expert.”
“Yes, I’m ‘fond a Bridgette. . . Fonda.”
“Be quiet, brown nose!”
“Hey, I don’t have a nose.”
“Who is the most powerful man in the Turner organization?”
“Fonda.”
“Hulk Hogan or Ted Turner?”
“Uhh. . . I would say Ted, Ted, then Space Ghost, and then the Hulkster.”
“I would love to see if I could body slam that big dude.”
“Yep, I hear that.” (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 1995, episode no. 17)
In this interaction, Space Ghost notes his lack of power within the Turner conglomerate, that he can be pushed around, and expresses desire to push back. However, he also notes that he, Zorak, and even Hogan (who in 1994 signed a contract with Turner subsidiary World Championship Wrestling) are literally owned by said conglomerate, and ultimately pays proper deference (twice!) to his corporate benefactor in a segment that reifies Turner and his media empire. Such examination and ultimately reinstallation of conglomerate power dynamics is an expression of worker anxieties within said conglomerate power dynamics. The very programmers who once confronted Turner asking for money for original productions, only to be quickly dismissed, self-theorize their own positionally and labor through SG:C2C.
While self-reflexivity reveals anxieties around conglomerate power, it also reveals the production contexts under said media conglomerate as well. The episode “Rehearsal” situates the origins of the series in 1994, disclosing the corporate contexts of its initial production:
“You know, this is somethin’, Guys like us with our own talk show, it’s a testament to our continued popularity.”
“Yeah, well. . . I hear it’s a cost-saving method.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s the 90s, Space Ghost. Network brass is openly referring to us as the ‘B’ characters in their cartoon library. Something about ‘building equity.’” (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 1997, episode no. 35)
In this exchange, SG:C2C cleverly discloses the conditions of its own creation, highlighting both the affordances and constraints of production within Turner’s media conglomerate. The segment highlights the series as a form of limited animation, demarcates itself within the cable era, and obliquely refers to Turner’s corporate strategy of mining the animated archive. That Space Ghost and co. aren’t popular isn’t a hinderance, but rather, their failure to be popular becomes a launchpad for creativity. The esthetics of failure enables creatives to “poke holes” in the corporate establishment (Halberstam 2011, 3), opening spaces for industrial disclosures on labor under media conglomeration.
Legacy
While failure in SG:C2C served as a launchpad for creativity, the series itself served as a launchpad for one of the most prominent programing blocks and brands on television, [adult swim] (hereafter abbreviated as [as]). [as] has had incredible ratings success with the key advertising demographic of adults eighteen to thirty-four, particularly men (Elkins 2014, 598). It’s consistently ranked No. 1 amongst this demographic in basic-cable ratings (Jurgensen 2015), and in 2021, its popularity made it one of the top ten most watched media brands for adults eighteen to twenty-four, ranking above streaming platform Prime Video (Bridge 2020, 14). [as]’s brand appeal to these valued demographics is its “edgy” subcultural capital (Elkins 2014; Mertens and Wilks 2023), a unique programing flavor that originates from SG:C2C. SG:C2C was essential in launching the iconic programing block by providing the logistics, staff, and programing template for the entire endeavor.
SG:C2C’s production management was essential to the launch and production of [as] and its programing. The production studio initially set up for SG:C2C’s production, Ghost Planet Industries, was renamed Williams Street and is now [as]’s in-house production studio for both live-action and animated content. It was Williams Street that set up [as], with SG:C2C as one of its flagship programs for its launch in 2001 (Elkins 2014, 597). The organization of SG:C2C, where a small staff created the whole series, carried over into the management of [as] as well, which the Wall Street Journal described as a “bare-bones hierarchy” of executives (Jurgensen 2015). While SG:C2C’s production studio provided the essential organizational base to build [as], its staff was also crucial to managing and producing programing for it. Lazzo became the long running executive vice president of [as], while multiple SG:C2C writers and producers created their own series for [as] such as The Brak Show (2000–2003) and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (2000–2022).
While SG:C2C provided the logistical hub and staff to launch the programing block, its irreverent tone and remixed limited animation production esthetics also carried on into [as]’s programing. As Nicholas Holm argues, SG:C2C “provided the template . . . on which later Adult Swim productions would build” (2022, 364). Its surreal and esoteric tone pushed Cartoon Network beyond its initial intended children’s demographic to also capture adult audiences. Prominent [as] series such as Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (2000–2007; 2018) and The Venture Bros. (2003-2018) continued SG:C2C’s esthetic embrace of failure for comedy and pathos, respectively. Other series continued SG:C2C’s legacy of corporate self-reflexivity as well. Harvey Birdman was a workplace comedy set within a giant conglomerate with episodes often referencing Turner Broadcasting System and its assets, such as an episode featuring TCM host Robert Osborne, as well as an episode that parodies Turner Broadcasting System’s own employee orientation video (Barsanti 2018).
The success of SG:C2C also led to the creation of numerous spin-off properties, each following SG:C2C’s unique formulation of intellectual property management and production esthetics. Cartoon Planet (1995–1998; 2012–2014), Harvey Birdman, The Brak Show, Sealab 2021 (2000–2005), and Aqua Teen Hunger Force were all spinoffs of SG:C2C. Cartoon Planet, Sealab 2021 and The Brak Show modeled their production methods from SG:C2C, reusing animation assets from the Turner archive. While not every series relies on the literal reuse of animation, all rely on the generative approach of recycling established IP owned by the Turner conglomerate. Cartoon Planet, a variety show that repackaged older animation IP with segments featuring SG:C2C characters, aired across Turner networks TBS and Cartoon Network, further demonstrating how television thrives on recombining familiar characters into new programs (Gitlin 2005, 66). SG:C2C supplied [as] with its esoteric comedy and remixed limited animation production practices, fundamentally shaping it as a subcultural brand. It was foundational in making [as] as successful and influential as it is today, providing the logistical hub, key creatives, and program production template for [as]’s success.
Conclusion
Though an extensive analysis of SG:C2C’s production, this article demonstrates the value transformation of limited animation in the cable era. Television animation is re-used once again, this time in line with 1990s postmodern remix culture. Whereas limited animation in the network era relied on studio archives, limited animation in the multi-channel transition relied on the media conglomerate archive. Production and programing blend together as limited animation archives are mobilized by Turner Broadcasting System’s corporate strategy. As this form of limited animation is shaped by media conglomeration, driving programmers to recycle assets from a conglomerate archive rather than produce new materials, the resultant remixed animation esthetics also reveal the labor conditions and worker positionality within a larger conglomerate. In other words, remixed limited animation evinces its own conglomerated production by constantly producing playful ruptures, pulling back the curtain to show how television is (supposed to be) created. The very form of animation encouraged by the Turner media conglomerate, one that mines the animated archive for reuse, in turn provided programmers a form to disclose unique insights on said media conglomerate. This remixed limited animation approach also became the template for [as]’s success. The detailed and selective history presented here challenges traditional assumptions around limited animation, and examines its shifting production practices and corporate revaluation into television’s multi-channel era. Too often overlooked, limited animation provides a fascinating window into television and its operations, and is an essential site for future analysis in the fields of animation and television studies.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Fonds de Recherche du Quebec Societe et Culture [grant number 268633].
