[TV] Young Justice cancelled

[Mebhy]

I really did like both YJ and GLTAS. While both shows were in trouble, I made sure to watch them. There is a lot of focus on the shows not being renewed because of the toy lines. That is for the most part true, YJ didn't sell very well because the the toy lines focus wasn't on the main characters, but on Superman, Black Manta, Batman, and other recognizable but yet secondary to the show heroes. Artimus, a primary member of the team didn't get a toy till the second season had already debuted. GLTAS never even got a toy line since toy stores didn't want "More Green Lantern toys while the current ones aren't selling." Meaning the stores couldn't move the toys from the Green Lantern movie and didn't want to dedicate more shelve space to the similar property.

It's a bit narrow sighted though to just put this on merchandise. CN's current business focus is one where it doesn't make sense to buy shows like YJ and GLTAS. Networks don't want to take chances on long winding epics that take a full season or longer to tell a story anymore. The are more often a miss than hits, and they are more shacked to episodes counts than a show with 21 minute encapsulated episodes. One of the biggest disadvantages to a series was that some people wouldn't start watching because of the intimidation of a back story to catch up on. The solution networks saw to draw bigger numbers was to encapsulate everything into the 20 minutes given and keeping multi-part stories rare. It gave the impression of a show that was easy to get into and watch. It's not like this is new, this style has been done for as long as there have been animation, but the focus has shifted entirely away from long stories, multi-episode mysteries, and season long themes and character development. Now you can give examples of shows like Korra where the networks are taking a chance, but Legend of Korra is hardly a chance because it's almost a sure hit. Korra has also seen a reduction in staff since ATLA to make it more profitable.

You can see the shift now, being brought onto the superhero series. Gone are BTAS, STAS, Batman Beyond, Static Shock, JLU ect. Networks have shifted their focus to these easy to take in encapsulated shows and want the superhero series to follow suit. We have already seen Marvel shift there with the success of the New Ultimate Spider-Man and shortly expanding that to Ultimate Avengers. Both are shifts away from series with long narratives. Now with Teen Titans Go, old well liked narrative series encapsulated to a slapstick comedic focus. I expect Beware the Batman to be a more narrowly focused Batman, where there is no series story lines, and tries to tell just one off adventures similar to the current Spider-Man series. Both are shows that are low risk shows where batman will get viewers for being Batman and Teen Titans already has a long standing audience.

[JoNxJoN]

Comedy cartoons seem to be the trend at the moment unfortunately, the old "toonami cartoon action blocks" have died off a bit. Even the new Teen Titans Go replacing young justice is more comedy based now. Kids are getting their action cravings from pixar animation and comic book movies.