Girl Cartoons and the Role of Women as Television Executives in the 1990s ~ Katia Perea

Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media, Volume 29, 2017

Abstract: This article discusses the influence of the women purveyors who have been instrumental in the development of US television cartoons. It focuses on the US 1990s digital era upon which the massification of the medium of television through cable and global satellite distribution coincided with women’s entry into television executive positions. This era is commonly referred to in the US as the Cartoon Renaissance. The combination of women executives and cable television distribution brought about the proliferation of new cartoon programs and consequently television girl cartoons’ second wave (Perea 2015). While a small body of existing literature explores the role of Nickelodeon in children’s programming and women’s position as animation industry decision-makers (Hendershot 2004, Banet-Weiser 2007), there has yet to be an analysis that includes Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, PBS, FOX, Warner Bros. and the interchangeable women between them, as well as the new parameters of girl cartoon programming that came about under their leadership.

Introduction

This article focuses on the women executives and directors in the US cartoon industry concentrating on cable television’s Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. Women in both networks, and later in other channels, worked on changing the landscape of women as television executives as well as girl cartoon programming. This research discusses how girl cartoons gained status along with the increasing number of women working as television professionals. This article provides a socio-historic review of how gender is approached by cartoon creators and industry agents through a review of newspaper articles and secondary sources. Personal testimonies gathered through various media publications provided insight into how the issue of gender and non-conformity was raised by the creators and producers and subsequently recast girl cartoons into this popular cultural form of its time.

Much like the theatrical epoch of cartoons is referred to as the Golden Era, the digital epoch of cartoons is referred to as the Cartoon Renaissance. The term digital epoch refers to the technology that became available in the early 1990s to create cartoons, such as computer animation programs, and also the technology available to distribute the cartoons nationally through cable television and globally through satellite television. This massification of television medium coincided with women’s entry into US television executive positions, as well as changes in FCC policy regulations. The combination brought about what is considered as the cartoons renaissance and consequently the second wave of girl cartoons (Perea 2015).

A combination of early 1990s culture influences in the US made animation popular again. For Disney, their Cartoon Renaissance began with the success of the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis 1988) that renewed interests in the Golden Era’s cartoon stars. Disney films continued this financial success with The Little Mermaid (Clements and Musker 1989), Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale and Wise 1991), Aladdin (Clements and Musker 1992), The Lion King (Allers and Minkoff 1994) and Toy Story (Lasseter 1995) from newcomer partner Pixar. Also at this time, US television had its first successful primetime animation program since the Flintstones (1960-1966); a satirical sitcom[1] on FOX network called The Simpsons (1990-2017). However, perhaps the most important contributor to children’s cartoon programming in this era was the introduction of cable television channel Cartoon Network and the revamping of Nickelodeon. These two cable television channels were greatly responsible for cartoons’ renaissance and noted for their focus on girls as a viable audience and more importantly, a cartoon subject (Genasci 1995, Simensky 1996).

The Role of Policy on Girl Cartoon Programming

In the early 1980s the Reagan administration’s FCC[2] deregulated television policy standards.  Upon deregulation, opportunistic toy companies, in search of increasing product sales, commissioned toy-based cartoons and sold them cheaply to syndicated television stations (Kunkel 1988). The toy industry’s adherence to the gender binary translated into the definitive split of boy cartoons based on boy toys, such as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983-1985) and The Transformers (1984-1987) and girl cartoons based on girl toys, such as Rainbow Brite (1984-1986) and My Little Pony ‘n Friends (1986-1987); thus creating the first wave of television girl cartoons (Perea 2013).

In the same way that profit motivated the creation of girl cartoons, profit was again the motivation for cancelling them in 1990 when the FCC reinstated the regulatory standards of the Children’s Television Act. Enacted by Congress on October 18 of that year, the Children’s Television Act was considered monumental for the advancement of children’s educational programming yet inadvertently led to the cancelation of girl cartoons which were no longer considered profitable to produce since there was no direct link to toy sales.

In order for a network to renew its license with the FCC in 1990, it had to provide a set time minimum of educational or informational children’s television. This was defined by the FCC as “programming that furthers the positive development of children 16 years of age and under in any respect, including the child’s intellectual and cognitive or social and emotional needs.”[3]  While the FCC’s enforcement of allotted time for children’s programming now seemed to be in place, the FCC left the interpretation of defining ‘educational context’ at the discretion of the networks. The industry’s self-regulation practices of the 1980s remained unchanged in the early 1990s. At their discretion, some broadcasters claimed that Yogi Bear conveyed moral and ethical values, -don’t steal picnic baskets or something bad will happen to you-, and that The Flintstones, taught valuable history lessons about our pre-historic era.

In 1993, much to the networks mortification, under the direction of Reed Hundt, the Clinton administration’s FCC began to effectively enforce its policy on children’s television regulations by granting ownership waivers to those who complied and denying ownership waivers to those who did not.

With a $5.4 billion purchase of CBS and a series of ownership waivers pending, Westinghouse offered to boost educational programming at CBS. Disney, with an $18.5 billion acquisition of CapCities/ABC before the FCC, chose not to make any children’s programming offers. Hundt cited Disney’s position when he discussed his decision not to grant the company a permanent waiver to own radio and newspaper properties in Michigan and Texas. (McConnell 1997:21).

While praised as a champion for children’s television, FCC Commissioner Hundt was not beloved amongst the broadcasting industry. Jeff Chester, from the Center for Media Education, exclaimed, “Every industry took out a [hit] contract on Hundt.” (McConnell 1997:22). After months of surprise visits from Hundt’s FCC regulators, broadcasters passed a random audit that found only one out of forty broadcasters not in compliance with CTA rules (Albiniak 2001).

The toy-based girl cartoons of the 1980s had not been created to provide girls their own programming but rather as a direct selling vehicle for its toy tie in; profit was the motivator. With the change in policy enforcement, the toy-based cartoons of the 1980s quickly came off the air. Broadcasters, in need of replacement programming, did not consider girl cartoons to be a profitable investment. The industry invested exclusively in the programming of boy dominated cartoons under the standard belief for children’s television that girls would watch boys’ shows but boys would not watch girls’ shows, (Seiter and Mayor 2004). Media scholar Ien Ang argues against the use of the audience as a pre-constituted body that can be measured or defined, particularly because it does not take into account how the audience interprets programming. According to Ang, the audience is “an abstraction constructed from the vantage point of the institutions, in the interest of the institutions” (Ang 2:1991). Girl cartoons were no longer designated for children’s programming specifically because their airtime was no longer believed to be profitable for advertising children’s products. As Ang pointed out, the exclusivity of boy cartoon programming resulted in the creation of a market by and for the interests of the market itself. Advertisers concentrated their dollars onto boy-centered cartoon programming because that was what existed.

Women Gain Access to Decision Making Positions

In a 1991 New York Times interview, senior vice president for research at CBS David F. Poltrack said, “Children’s television has always been male dominated”; in that year, the chief children’s programmers at ABC, NBC and Fox Kids were women (Carter 1991). As the loss of girl’s cartoon programming on children’s television occurred, women were gaining access to decision making positions in the television workforce. However, as women advanced into executive positions they were marginalized into daytime and children’s television. (Seiter and Mayer 2004). Also, some of these new women executives tended to promote boy centered programing in order to play it safe with the ratings.

When ABC announced next fall’s schedule for Saturday morning children’s programming, Jennie Trias, the network’s vice president for children’s programs, had some bad news for girls: their favorite Saturday morning show, The New Kids on the Block (1990), the cartoon adventures of the rock band with an enormous preteen-age following, would be canceled. ‘Only girls were watching the show,’ Ms. Trias said. ‘And you have to have boys watching a show for it to succeed.’  ‘It is well known that boys will watch a male lead and not a female lead,’ Ms. Trias said. ‘But girls are willing to watch a male lead.’ (Carter 1991)

 

Though women had begun to enter television, it was still a male-dominated field. In 1991, 85 percent of children’s television writers were men (Carter 1991). To compensate for the abandonment of girl’s cartoon programming, the writers were encouraged to give boy characters female attributes such as hug one another or exclaim how beautiful the scenery is (Carter 1991). The industries skewed attempt to include the girl audience by creating girl characters on boys’ shows that would appeal to girls, were in fact creating girl characters that more readily fit into a normative feminine gender; not a character for the girls but rather a girl character for the boys. Cartoon creator Paul Dini mentioned this in an interview regarding the cancellation of the fan favorite superhero program Young Justice (2011)[4], Dini complained about a worrying trend he sees in television animation and superhero shows in particular: executives spurning female viewers because they believe girls and women don’t buy the shows’ toys. “The networks were like, ‘we need girls one step behind the boys’—this is the network talking—’one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, not as interesting as the boys.’ “ (Dini 2013)

The cartoon program Dark Water (1991) featured a gender inclusive cast of young women and men pirates. The young woman, 17 year old Tula, wielded a sword and was an ecomancer- she could communicate with animals and the elements. After the first five episodes, executives changed the titled to The Pirates of Dark Water (1991-1993) and decided to make character changes so as to appeal to the girl audience,

Tula [originally] ran around with a sword and her hair tied back. We have softened her to make her more appealing to girls. We have gotten rid of the swords and loosened her hair. This is probably not an image makeover the feminist movement would prefer for female role models, but I don’t think that girls are feminists at the ages of 6 to 11 (Carter 1991:4).

In the interest of obtaining advertising sponsors, the industry created the gendered biased belief of children’s viewing habits. Arguments that boys watched television programming more than girls were not taking into account that there were no programs for the girls to watch because boy characters were ensured the lead. Executive vice president at CBS, David Poltrack, echoed the sentiment,

Look at your Saturday morning programming. If it isn’t cartoons, it’s wrestling and kung fu movies. Girls are more likely to find something else to do on Saturday morning: go out, go shopping with their mothers to the mall (Carter 1991).

Girls watched boys’ cartoons because that was all that was available (Seiter 1993). As a population, girls were being ostracized as desired viewers. A newspaper article in response to the sudden lack of girls programming interviewed young girls claiming that they would not go shopping at the mall or watch the boy cartoons, instead the young girls reported that due to the lack of girl programming they just wouldn’t watch television and many claimed they would instead take up sports, hobbies, or read more books (Kreck 1991). Programmers play it safe by not offending what is believed to be the audience majority (Bourdieu 1998), a majority that is a creation of the industry itself (Ang 1991, Morley 1980, 1992). This lack of risk is presumed to ensure profit (Simensky 207), however, the gamble of risk, like challenging gender norms, can also pay off. A clear example of this is the financial success of cable television channel Nickelodeon after it was headed by women executives and given proper consideration to girls as a viable audience.

Women Take Over Nickelodeon – Kids Rule

Cy Schneider was at the helm of Nickelodeon from 1980-1984 as the station entered the landscape of cable television (Pecora 2004). Schneider was considered an authority on children’s television after his profitable success with his 1958 Mattel’s Barbie product-positioning commercials[5] (Schneider 1987). Schneider’s position on gender diversity and racial representation echoed the pervasive sentiment of the male dominated industry in that era. In his book on children’s television, he writes,

The temptation is always to show the latest in styles, music, and dancing. Inexperienced young creative people often forget that rapping and break dancing might go over well in Los Angeles and New York, but in Iowa the freckle-faced kids are still down at the soda fountain… and these activities will remain long after video rock and all its popularity has been forgotten (Schneider 1989:108).

In regards to gender representation, he assesses: “Don’t show an eight year-old boy playing with an eight year-old girl. For boys, that’s an unreal situation. Girls will emulate boys, but boys will not emulate girls. When in doubt, use boys” (Schneider 1989:107). His advertisement expertise did not fare so well on the children’s network. Under Schneider, Nickelodeon was amongst the lowest rated cable television station. In 1984, Cy Schneider left Nickelodeon and was replaced with Geraldine Layborne (1984-1995). When Layborne became President of Nickelodeon she launched a new, gender-neutral Nickelodeon with the slogan “Kids Rule.” Within six months of her launch, Nickelodeon moved from the lowest rated network on basic cable to the highest rated network on basic cable (Hendershot 1998). “American families are lucky to have [Laybourne] in charge, because she cares about choice and diversity, about role models for girls, about getting kids involved in helping the planet survive,” said Peggy Charren, founder of Action for Children’s Television. “Within the limits of a commercial system, she makes that channel as good as she can.” (Genasci 1995).

In 1980, Layborne had begun working in programming at Nickelodeon as one of a number of women that gained entrance in the professional levels of the television workforce (Jenkins 2004). When Layborne was promoted in 1985, she was the only woman in television with the position of executive producer; by 1997, almost all senior level positions in children’s television were women (Seiter and Mayer 2004). As executive producer, Layborne revamped Nickelodeon’s programming schedule and created a new image for the ‘New Nick’, one that talks to kids instead of talks down to them (Jenkins 2004). Most of the Schneider’s “green vegetable” educational programming (Hendershot 2004) was replaced with new programming, such as kid-centered game shows, along with acquired cartoon programming, such as Danger Mouse (1981-1992) and Curious George (1980).

Nick at Nite and Nicktoons

In an attempt to associate the new Nickelodeon image as a safe space for kids, Layborne’s team established ‘Nick at Night’ as Nickelodeon’s night time programming. Instead of children’s programming, Nick at Nite ran 1950s US television shows, such as Donna Reed (1958-1966), Dennis the Menace (1959-1963), and Mister Ed (1958-1966), nostalgically appealing to the generation of the parents whose children were currently watching Nickelodeon’s daytime programming. The 1950s’ television cultural values replayed by Nick at Night were paired with the nonviolent, multicultural, contemporary values presented during its daytime programming. While parents felt feelings of nostalgia watching Nick at Night, they would associate that approval to the new value system of racial and gender equality presented in the children’s daytime programming (Murray 2004). This 1950s programming, however, was exemplary of the white, heteronormative, middle-class sitcoms that had come to erroneously represent US family life during the late post-war era (Coontz 1992). The Nick at Night shows were laden in archaic stereotypes, not the gender-neutral equality of the New Nick. Yet while the shows themselves may not have been smart, Nick at Nite promo advertisement certainly was.

Nick at Nite was not only conscious of their programs’ gender stereotypes, they exploited it. In their promotional campaign for Donna Reed,  “Better Living Through Television”, Nick at Nite promo announcer stated, “You’ve gained ten pounds. There’s a hole in the ozone. Your dog has worms. Donna Reed can help!” (Murray 2004). Today considered standard programming practice, Nick at Nite was one of the earlier networks to air program marathons, a large block of time where a program series airs back to back episodes. Nick at Night promoted its Donna Reed week-long programming “The Donna-thon: Seven Days to Tidy the World” starting on Mother’s Day, with a publicity stunt of thirty women dressed up as Donna Reed, complete with apron and duster, running a marathon through the Chicago Loop (Lipton 1991). By “allowing hip and ironic readings of the values, aesthetics, and narratives generated by the representations of that period [in television]” (Murray 2004:70), the wholesome became quirky. Nickelodeon’s twenty-four hour viewing body now consisted of kids and adults.

Along with Nick at Nite, one of the main reasons for Nickelodeon’s continued meteoric rise in the ratings was due to a change that Layborne introduced in 1991; a Sunday morning programming block of original cartoons named Nicktoons. With the enforcement of the 1990 Children’s Television Act, the restrictions against toy-based cartoons prompted the NBC and CBS networks to cancel cartoon programming on Saturday mornings since they were no longer an inexpensive option. The ABC network was the only network left with Saturday morning cartoon programming (Erickson 2005), and those shows catered exclusively to boys. When Nicktoons came on the air in August of 1991, the children’s cartoon consumer market was starving and responded to the Nickelodeon cartoons with a voracious appetite.

Nickelodeon contracted individual animation studios to create kid-centered cartoons that appealed to both boys and girls (Sandler 2004); in essence, cartoons that were gender neutral rather than the binary gender coding of the 1980s toy-based cartoons. The decision was to develop and produce distinct, creator driven original animation by artist who “loved, enjoyed and cared about cartoons, rather than a team of jaded advertising executives who saw animation as merely a means to a selling end” (Erickson 2005:35). In 1989, Layborne created an animation department for Nickelodeon who previously had none. The Nicktoons team, comprised mostly of women, was led by animation producer Vanessa Coffey and newcomer Linda Simensky (Hendershot 2004). Coffey said of the process, “Nickelodeon’s goal was to find fresh ways to entertain six to eleven year-olds without patronizing or corrupting them. We wanted to change the face of animation” (Swartz 2004:114). On August 11, 1991, out of eight tested pilots, three cartoons were chosen and premiered on Nicktoons; Doug (1991-1994), Ren & Stimpy (1991-1998) and Rugrats (1991-2004). Doug, created by Jim Jinkins, was about a sweet eleven year-old boy who was a new kid in a suburban town. Nice and slightly awkward, Doug would get through social situations with support from his best friend Skeeter and dog Porkchop, all boys, except for the girl he had a crush on, Patti (Sandler 2004). Though it was a nice, simple cartoon that did not display any macho action of good versus evil, it was centered around a boy and his heteronormative preoccupations with the romantic interests of a girl. There were no strong girl characters in Doug.

The second cartoon, Ren & Stimpy, also had no lead girl characters, however, it did have some problems. As much as Doug embodied the kid-centered brand of the new Nickelodeon, Ren & Stimpy, created by John Kricfalusi’s Spumco Studio, was not fitting in. Described as bizzar and grotesque, the antics of Ren, a sarcastic chihuahua, and his excessively dim-witted cat friend, Stimpy, seemed to be too violent for Nickelodeon. As programmers and parents voiced their disgust and complained, kids and teenagers loved it. Survey of the program indicated that over thirty percent of its viewers were young adults (Sandler 2004); Ren & Stimpy had brought a new audience demographic to Nickelodeon, teenagers. This additional age group demographic was due to the “cross-airing on Nickelodeon’s sister Viacom network, MTV” (Booker 2006:126). Younger kids would watch Ren & Stimpy during the day on Nickelodeon and older kids would watch it in the evening when it aired again on MTV. The adult and children audience cross-over is part of cartoons’ tradition, having started out in theaters appealing to all ages. Looney Tunes’ Bugs Bunny’s humor is clearly intended for adults and like Bugs Bunny, Ren & Stimpy was irreverently funny and entertaining. However, Nickelodeon was building a corporate image of their new family channel and they were not amused. Ren & Stimpy was taken away from creator Kricfalusi and produced in-house through Nickelodeon, radically changing its’ feeling and consequently losing its fan base.

If Ren & Stimpy was too wild and Doug was a bit tame, then Rugrats was just right. Rugrats, the third cartoon in the Nickelodeon Nicktoons line-up was created by Klasky-Csupo productions and was a perfect fit. The cartoon centered on baby Tommy Pickles and his group of baby friends, girls and boys, along with their malevolent older cousin, three year-old Angelica, the bully of group. The show was from the point of view of the babies who, once the adults left the room, could cognate and talk to each other. Each episode included some sort of mean trick Angelica played on the babies. As the only one who could talk to adults, Angelica was consistently unrepented to the babies, “There’s nothing you babies can do about it, cause you can’t even talk. You dumb babies” (“The Trial” 1992). ‘You dumb babies’ became a popularized catch phrase for the show. Described as smart and funny without being inappropriate, Rugrats was exactly the star show Nickelodeon was hoping for. Both theatrically released Nickelodeon films The Rugrats Movie ( Kovalyov and Virgien 1998) and Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (Bergqvist and Demeyer 2000) surpassed sales of Disney films of the same year (Swartz 2004). Layborne was intent on building a brand of gender-neutral, kid-centered cartoons intended to appeal to both boys and girls; however, though Doug, Ren & Stimpy and Rugrats were neither action-adventure nor boy-centered, little girls were not the cartoons’ lead subject matter. Girl cartoons had not yet returned to television.

It was Layborne’s intention to develop Nickelodeon as a space where kid’s could tune in at any time on any day (Hendershot 2004). With this new audience expansion of teenagers brought in by Nicktoons, along with the adult audience base for Nick at Nite, Layborne implemented a policy where advertisers on Nickelodeon could not choose a specific timeslot of programming for their ad. The advertisers could not claim to ‘target’ the viewers of the hit shows like Rugrats, just the general Nickelodeon audience throughout the day (Hendershot 2004, Jones 2007). With advertisers competing for general airtime on the channel, Nickelodeon succeeded in branding itself as the profitable kids channel. Children’s television was gaining cultural capital and moving from a subordinate and marginalized media institution, to a dominant social positioning in the market; thus allowing it the power to reshape not only its own role, but the identity of its own cultural product- television cartoons. In 1992, a year after the premiere of Nicktoons, cable television’s first all-animation station, Cartoon Network, was launched by media mogul Ted Turner, offering 24-hour cartoon programming; Nicktoons now had a contender and girl cartoons had a new venue.

Cartoon Network: Artists Welcomed, Girls Encouraged

On October 1, 1992, Cartoon Network was launched as the first all-day, all-night, all-animation station. The new network’s executive producer was Betty Cohen who had been recruited from Layborne’s team at Nickelodeon to assemble a new team on Cartoon Network (Osterman 1992). Media mogul Ted Turner had acquired the vast cartoon libraries of Hanna-Barbera, containing 8,400 characters and 3,500 different cartoon titles (Kalagian 2007), MGM cartoons, as well as all the pre-1948 Warner Bros. cartoons (Carter 1992). When interviewed about the decision to acquire the vast cartoon libraries, Ted Turner simply said, “I like cartoons”, and when asked for the justification on the financial expenditure, he replied, “The channel can easily be sold to foreign broadcasters because cartoons cross cultural boundaries more easily than live-action programs and can work in any language” (Carter 1992).  Unlike the post-1948 Warner Bros. cartoons, the pre-1948 Warner Bros. cartoons carried no license fees, making them very popular for syndicated television throughout the years (Erickson 2005). With Turner’s acquisition, these cartoons, which had previously been scattered across syndicated television on random stations, now had a single home location on Cartoon Network. Cartoon Network’s acquisition of Hanna-Barbera, MGM and Warner Bros. cartoon libraries was creating a cartoon literate younger audience, familiarizing them with classics such as Tom & Jerry, Flintstones, and Looney Tunes, while simultaneously investing adults in new, fresh programming. As a popular culture medium, television cartoons had officially made a comeback.

In its early programming, Cartoon Network filled its airtime with systematic showings of its acquired cartoon classics. Whereas Layborne branded Nickelodeon as a kid’s network, Cohen wanted to brand Cartoon Network as an animation station, not a children’s channel (Furman 1999). Cohen’s team of producers shifted the focus onto cartoon content rather than audience demographic. Khaki Jones was one of Cartoon Network’s original employees under Cohen when it launched in 1992. Jones’ initial duties involved scheduling the company’s vast library of cartoons into a daily programming lineup and also produce promos for the channel that were edgy, irreverent, and funny with adult sensibilities (Kalagian 2007). The promos generally featured tongue-in-cheek scenes of the cartoon characters like Mr. T working out with Fred Flintstone and Manila Gorilla or George Jetson and Huckelberry Hound standing around a water cooler inside the corporate office talking with actual network employees. Another promo featured characters like Snagglepuss, Top Cat, Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, singing the 1981 Depeche Mode song “Just Can’t Get Enough” with the catch phrase ‘Everybody in No Pants’.[vi] In 1994, two years after its launch, that Cartoon Network had its first original artist-created show, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast (1994-2008), for which Jones did writing and producing (Zahed 2004).

Unlike Nickelodeon’s intention of providing an environment of smart cartoons that were safe for kids, Cartoon Network wasn’t focused on children, it was focused on animation. In the spirit of Cartoon Network’s edgy and irreverent humor, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast was on at night, it was not intended for the younger audience; it was not for kids. Space Ghost  was a quick success, pulling in sixty percent more viewers than the Bugs Bunny programs that previously occupied its time slot. With this success, Cartoon Network promoted Jones to director of new cartoon programming (Meisler 1994). Kara Vallow, who was on board in the early years of Cartoon Network, commented about working on Cohen’s team in that era:

That Atlanta team, [Betty Cohen, Khaki Jones, Mike Lazzo and Linda Simensky], was just an exceedingly intelligent, creative and focused one. They were respectful of the artists as master of their craft, rather than subjugating them to statuses below writers or producers or themselves as executives. They were invested in the medium of animation, they were not sitcom transplants begrudgingly producing shows in a medium they don’t understand and probably actually dislike. They really loved cartoons and knew how to develop them. I have never seen that since. It was kind of a second golden era of animation (Byrne 2010:1).

The evening time slot was soon occupied with cartoon programming that had an adult audience in mind. It was the predecessor to what is today Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Cartoon Network was seeing financial success, though it had yet to produce a girl cartoon program or a cartoon made by women animators. In 1993, a professional association called Women in Animation was formed. Linda Simensky, who had worked on the Nicktoons original team, had been recruited to help develop original animation on Cartoon Network and later on to PBS, said of the organization,

Men in the business joked, ‘Where’s the Men In Animation group?,’ to which the women replied, ‘That’s what we call ‘The Animation Industry.’ … What is unusual and noteworthy is that there is not an even breakdown of tasks between men and women. This is obvious to the naked eye of anyone visiting an animation studio or network animation department… [The women] comprised of a large number of network [administrators], studio management types ranging from producers to production assistants, color and background designers, and perhaps an occasional director. [The men] would include studio owners, directors, artists, show creators, designers, and a significant number of other animation artists… my opinion is that there are now more women than ever working in animation. (Simensky 1996:1).

In 1995, Khaki Jones and Linda Simensky developed Cartoon Network’s What A Cartoon! Show; an evening hours program showcasing single episodes from new animators (Lenburg 2009). With Betty Cohen as executive director, Linda Simensky as senior vice president of original animation and Khaki Jones as director of new cartoon programming (Zahed 2004), Cartoon Network was representing the shift that was occurring in cartoon television industry of women as decision makers. This shift of women in the industry had an important impact on programming choices. On February 20, 1995, one of the first artist-driven cartoons chosen by Simensky and Jones to air on Cartoon Network’s new “What A Cartoon! Show” was by twenty-four year-old animation student, Craig McCraken; the episode was ‘Meat Fuzzy Lumpkin’ and its’ program title was The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2004). The cartoon programming focus of these decision making women created a new era for girl cartoons; of the television cartoons with lead girl characters under the age of twelve from 1956-2008, only twenty-five percent preceded The Powerpuff Girls (Perea 2011). Cartoon Network’s hit show had proven that girl cartoons were indeed watched by boys and could most definitely create profit. Within two seasons, the Powerpuff Girls had generated over $350 million in retail sales. The financial success of these kindergarten-aged super-heroes opened the industry gates for girl cartoons and expanded the genre definitions; girl cartoons entered a new era, its second-wave.

Girl Cartoons 2000

Advances in cartoon programming were now everywhere. Cartoon Network, now with its own library of original cartoons, started the Boomerang channel to house its older Hanna-Babera cartoon programming. Its parent company Turner, had now been merged with Warner Bros. coinciding with a new focus on children’s programming, not just on Cartoon Network but across all of television, identifying cartoons as fare for the general public. This new focus on kids cartoon programming was also a new era for girl cartoons. Nickelodeon commissioned two more successful cartoons from Klasky-Csupo, The Wild Thornberrys (1998-2004) and As Told by Ginger (2000-2004). Nickelodeon also launched Noggin, its new channel aimed at preschoolers, and introduced the successful girl cartoon Dora the Explorer (2000-2014). The Disney Channel premiered Toon Disney and also had a hit girl cartoon Kim Possible (2002-2007) and Lilo and Stich the Series (2003-2006). The networks joined in the cartoon renaissance as well with names to emphasize their intended target, such as FOX-Kids. PBS-Kids featured the girl friendly educational cartoon Cyberchase (2000) and girl superhero Word Girl (2007-2015).  Warner Bros. Kids-WB featured the girl power cartoon character Jade on Jackie Chan Adventures (2000-2005) as well as Generation O! (2000-2001). Animator David Hale commented on how difficult it had been to sell his girl cartoon Generation O! to the networks prior to this time.

’We were banging our heads against a wall,’ Mr. Hale recalled of the meetings he and his partners had [with men executives] at the networks. “It was the old cliche: girls will watch boys, but boys don’t watch girls. We had many people tell us, ‘If you turn this [eight year-old] character into a boy, this is a hit show.’ The artists stuck by their idea, and five years after their initial brainstorm, Generation O! made its debut, on Aug. 26, 2000 on Kids-WB, with the lead girl character intact. ‘To us, it’s a girl empowerment show,’ Mr. Hale said. (Loos 2000:25)

Changes were also happening for the women executives. Much like the way animators of early theatrical Disney cartoons Silly Symphonies would move on to Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Warner Bros. Looney Tunes animators went on to establish television’s Hanna-Barbera Productions, and in turn a Hanna-Barbera animator created 1980s DIC Entertainment, (Perea 2011) the interchangeable women executives and producers of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network became key players on the new movement of girl cartoons. Layborne had left Nickelodeon in 1995 and had gone on to revamp the Disney Channel. It was a premium channel[vii] under president James Jimirro, with few subscribers; Layborne came and made it basic cable. She got them to air the Disney hits like Toy Story and Lion King and it was enough to bring kids and adults over, raising the rank of the Disney Channel (Kalagian 2007). Since Disney and ABC had merged in that time, Layborne also helped develop ABC’s children’s cartoon programming bloc, ‘One Saturday Morning’. Leaving Cartoon Network, Linda Simensky went on to join PBS in 2003 as senior director of children’s programming and worked on developing PBS’ original cartoon programming alongside Deborah Forte from Scholastic Books. Kara Vallow left Cartoon Network to join friend Seth McFarland and become an animation producer for Family Guy (1999), American Dad (2005), and The Cleveland Show (2009) at the FOX network (Armstrong 2014). Also leaving Cartoon Network was executive producer Betty Cohen, who went on to lead the new face of Lifetime Channel, a cable channel for women; though it did not have any cartoon programming. The women executives of this era shaped the cultural parameters that created girl cartoons’ second wave.

Conclusion

Recognizing how people choose to identify with the popular culture forms they consume must involve an investigation into the systems of cultural production and circulation as well as consumption (Alexander 2003). The discourse on gender roles in children’s cartoon media needs to include the role of cultural influences as well as the executives who make the programming decisions and the technology that makes it accessible. The introduction of cable television’s Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon Nicktoons not only reintroduced girl cartoons into US television programming but also recognized the importance of women as cartoon television executives. Women’s roles as purveyors of cartoon culture in both networks, and later in other channels, worked to change the landscape of women as television executives and girl cartoon television programming.

 

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Notes

[1] Sitcom is the television industry term for situation comedy genre of programming.

[2] Federal Communication Commission.

[3] FCC – http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Factsheets/kidstv.txt

[4] Young Justice original run was from 2011-2013. It has since been reissued for a third season. http://bit.ly/YoungJusticeS3

[5] Product-positioning is the marketing process that attempts to imprint the consumer with a constructed identity or a fantasy scenario for its product.

[6] Mister T (1983), The Flintstones (1960), The Manilla Gorilla Show (1963), The Jetsons (1962), Huckelberry Hound (1958), Snagglepuss (1959), Top Cat (1961), Yogi Bear (1958) (Erickson 2005, Lenburg 2009, Woolery 1983).

[7] Premium cable channels are offered at an additional cost to basic cable.

 

Bio: Katia Perea lives in Brooklyn and is a serious cartoon fan. She has a PhD in Sociology from the New School for Social Research specialized in television girl cartoons, popular culture theory and media studies. Dr. Perea is an Associate Professor of Sociology at CUNY (City University New York) and is currently working on her book “Girl Cartoons” due out soon!