Screwed By The Network / Cartoon Network

Cartoon Network has become notorious for cancelling or scrapping cartoons for whatever reason, either because executives disliked the shows or because of creator conflicts with the network. Since this is so prevalent in virtually every level of the network, it had to be given its own page.

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Adult Swim

Adult Swim

• For a time, anime in general on [adult swim] was considered as this, partly due to Cartoon Network's Network Decay. It was somewhat admitted in an [adult swim] bump that at times a kind of programming spring cleaning is done every few months by Cartoon Network to see which shows to keep airing, air later, or get rid of and never even bother showing again. The cleaning process is created by an evaluating combination of ratings and audience online based reaction. Even to [as]' chagrin many of the shows that they themselves would have liked to keep on the air are cast by the wayside. However, another reason for anime not getting much love is that one of those in charge of [adult swim]'s programming doesn't like it. On Toonami, with the exceptions of Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, Inuyasha, and whatever they held permanent rights to, many anime titles from 2008-2011 were given little chance, not helped by the fact that the Action block received almost no promotion from [as]. Bumps regularly criticized it, commercials showed their Narm moments and episode descriptions on their website tend to read like "Vampires, robots, big hats!". The absolute low point of this had to be in late-2008, when anime got a total of 2 hours of [as]'s (then) 7-hour airtime for Saturdays (and half of that was in the 5 a.m. hour.).
  • The Big O was a specific example of this. Despite that, it was a popular show and the ratings of [adult swim] airings were the sole reason the series even got a second season in the first place, the premiere of the second season was around the same time [adult swim] began its Network Decay, and they ended up screwing up the airing of a couple episodes (including accidentally airing a repeat over the finale) and ended up canceling the show before a reportedly expected third season, despite it having paid off financially.
    • Although the second season has been aired frequently since its premiere, the first season hasn't aired on the network in years aside from an one-off airing for Toonami's April Fools stunt in 2012. This can be chalked up to the show falling in limbo due to Bandai Entertainment closing and [adult swim] barely having a relationship with Sentai Filmworks when they got the rights.
  • Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion was pretty legendarily screwed over by the block. The closest thing the show got to proper promotion were bumpers that mocked the show, and its premiere schedule was constantly changed into a later and later slot to the point that people stopped caring and their rights to the show expired with only the first season reran in its entirety. The network would even lampshade their treatment of anime before the show premiered. At least for Moribito they had the excuse of licensing issues preventing them from finishing it, but Geass was just screwed for little reason.
  • Crayon Shin-chan was topping the [adult swim] ratings until the network removed it, put it in different time slots, and gave it inconsistent air dates. The third season ultimately premiered on Hulu as well as DVD, as [as] had lost the rights to the series prior.
  • Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit was constantly schedule-switched later and later until it aired at 5:30 AM EST, dropped after 10 episodes, started over in a better time slot, and then got dropped again after Geneon went bankrupt and it was removed from the air until the licensing issues were resolved. The problems were eventually solved, and [adult swim] re-aired and completed the series between June and December 2009. The series never received promotion, either.
  • It wasn't until the return of Toonami that anime programming slowly regained support. By 2020, anime has gotten a stronger presence on the network, with the network once again co-producing original series and even rerunning the likes of Dragon Ball Super and My Hero Academia on weeknights. AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner saw Crunchyroll briefly being under their ownership, which opened the door to many collaborations with Toonami.
• It has been revealed that many of the shows canceled or sidelined throughout 2018 to 2020 was due to the restructuring and budgetary issues caused by the US government holding up the WarnerMedia merger. [adult swim] shows that got the axe include 12 oz. Mouse and The Venture Bros. as well as Adult Swim Games and Adult Swim Streams.
  • In the case of The Venture Bros., it had been canceled in the middle of production of the eighth season despite it having been renewed previously. The show always had massive lengths of time between seasons due to [adult swim] giving them a shoestring budget despite being their longest-running and one of their most popular series, with this being the final nail in the coffin. That said, the series was revived very shortly after with the announcement that the show would be getting a movie for its finale, taking the place of the planned eighth season.
• In February 2019, [adult swim] started to run Adventure Time on weeknights and Sunday nights in the 8PM slot, replacing Samurai Jack. A great portion of the first and second seasons were skipped for unknown reasons, and the white-lettering credits that Cartoon Network has been using since 2017 were used during these broadcasts, even though [adult swim] usually airs credits in full. Two weeks later, in the middle of season three, the show was pulled from the lineup entirely, with the very show AT replaced taking its place.
• Despite Aqua Teen Hunger Force airing for a whopping 11 seasons (and nearly 15 years overall) and still getting very good ratings, [adult swim] pegged its cancellation. Fittingly, the series' final season was well-advertised and went out with a bang.
• Despite high ratings, The Brak Show was canceled after 28 11-minute episodes with very rare reruns afterward.
• Checkered Past has only aired the same four shows ever since launch.
• Final Space was canceled because of a merger by Discovery Inc. and WarnerMedia. Despite receiving good reviews and fair ratings, the show was not renewed for a fourth season, leaving the story to end on a massive cliffhanger, therefore, causing the show to suffer the same fate as Brickleberry. Olan Rogers stated he had planned on six seasons from the get-go, but later confirmed on his YouTube account that Season 3 would be the last one.
• Frisky Dingo. [adult swim] didn't simply kill the show but left fans wondering if it was a choice between more Frisky Dingo or a spinoff featuring the Xtacles. They got their answer when said Xtacles spinoff only lasted two episodes before 70/30 Productions went out of business.
• Home Movies, after being canceled by UPN, was rescued by [as] in 2001, and became the first series to air on the block, but as time went on, Home Movies was treated as an afterthought from the network. The fourth season ended up becoming the series' last, with [as] choosing to dump the season with no advertising. However, the show has been adored ever since.
• The Jack and Triumph Show had a 20-episode order from [as] with plenty of promotion before it was abruptly cut after seven episodes. It certainly doesn't help that [adult swim] didn't even produce the series at all; the show was produced by Universal.
• When Cartoon Network briefly took the 9PM hour back in November 2013, it happened at the expense of King of the Hill, which was kicked off of the Sunday schedule and had its weekday reruns moved to 1:30am ET until late December.
  • An example similar to the one directly above happened when Cartoon Network started running for an additional hour on weekdays in October 2015 to make room for the return of Adventure Time, Regular Show and an encore of Over the Garden Wall. However, it was at the expense of Bob's Burgers this time, which was banished to [adult swim]'s weekend schedule until late November.
• Loren Bouchard's Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil was planned for a second season, but [adult swim] got cold feet about the budget and decided to not allocate the funds for more episodes. [adult swim] later admitted that they regretted their decision since Bouchard would later make Bob's Burgers for FOX.
• Metalocalypse became another statistic when [adult swim] refused to greenlight the fifth and final season, owing to creative differences and a dispute over the funding with Brendon Small. Small had promised fans that he would deliver the intended finale in some other way, and eventually delivered with Brendon Small's Galaktikon II: Become the Storm. The "screwed" idea comes in from the fact that [adult swim] had initially given signs there was to be a season 5 and had gotten fans' hopes up for a release date before Small indicated that there were issues with the network, followed by the network backing out and not funding it. It would take eight years for a comeback to finally happen, with the announcement of the finale movie in May 2021.
• Moral Orel was screwed by giving the execs exactly what they wanted. After the shocking Cerebus Syndrome-inducing "Nature" was such a hit, they asked creator Dino Stamatopoulos for the darkest season he could give. And he gave them exactly that. One episode in particular — the infamous "Alone" — was so dark, the execs got cold feet, cut the third season's episode count in half, and canceled it.
• Soul Quest Overdrive was only aired once, at the 4:00 AM graveyard slot, with no promotion whatsoever, and failed to show all six episodes in its single night on the network (two were skipped).
• Despite the show's success being one of the reasons [adult swim] was greenlit in the first place, Space Ghost Coast to Coast disappeared from the network after a short stint of premiere episodes in 2001, leading into fan speculation about the show's comeback to Cartoon Network. Allegedly, Mike Lazzo, creator of Coast to Coast and (then) president of [adult swim], grew tired of it and desperately wanted to move on. New episodes would continue to appear sporadically until the show’s end in 2004.
• [adult swim] also pulled the plug on Stroker and Hoop, refusing to renew it for its second season and leaving the show off with No Ending.
• Superjail! had some warning signs in season 4, with [adult swim] inexplicably cutting the season order to six episodes shortly after greenlighting it, and then barely promoting said episodes during the short six-week run. Nearly a year later, it was revealed that the network declined to renew the show for a fifth season, having left both the creative team and fans hanging on an official announcement and answer.
• Tuca & Bertie was saved by [adult swim] after being canned by Netflix...only for [as] to cancel it a second time on November 2, 2022.
• Short-lived sketch comedy World Peace was a Cult Classic, but other [adult swim] content producers (such as Brett Gelman and Tim Heidecker) petitioned against the show, resulting in it being Overshadowed by Controversy and not renewed for a second season. However, in 2022 creator Sam Hyde announced that an independently-produced second season was in the works.
• YuYu Hakusho's run in America was screwed by a huge time slot move. Originally aired on [adult swim], it was moved to a fairly steady time slot on Toonami. Then it was removed from Toonami near the end of its run and moved to 4:30 in the morning on Saturday. Many people weren't even aware it was moved, and those who did had to be pretty dedicated to stay up for the remaining episodes.

Cartoon Network (USA)

General

• The network became known during the second half of the 2000s for attempting to move into live-action programming, in an effort to catch up with Disney Channel and Nickelodeon in the ratings. Around that time, the network began doting on the Ben 10 franchise, while giving shabby treatment to their other animated shows, suffering from sudden schedule shifts and episodes aired Out of Order (often not actually pointing out if any of these were "new"), to the point where no one knew if a specific show was still running.
  • A key reason for this was the 2007 managerial shake-up that saw the departures of Khaki Jones and Jay Bastian following the Boston Bomb scare (which involved boxes with Lite-Brite versions of the Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force hung all over Boston, and being mistaken for bombs), the new execs throwing away the "no advertising" clauses first instituted by the network's first CEO, Betty Cohen and production manager Larry Huber in the late '90s, which had become a key lure for those wanting more creative control. Most of the creators of the network's then-current shows were visibly discontented by the change, which resulted in extremely strained business relations.
• During the latter half of The New '10s, the network started making questionable programming choices, such as premiering acquired shows in weekend morning death slots and airing Teen Titans Go! reruns ad nauseam. Invisible Advertising has also become a very common issue. Many have accused CN executives of having a bias against action and story-driven cartoons since they are the ones that get screwed more often than not. Man of Action Studios themselves admitted that they had no choice but to make Ben 10 (2016) the way it is in order to follow the network's trends. Many have come to believe that the executives purposely screw over anything that doesn't take the same approach.
  • Thus, as you may deduce from reading this page, Teen Titans Go! is blamed for many of the network's faults during its run. Despite its polarizing perception, Teen Titans Go! became a ratings success, beating shows on rivals Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, so it made sense for them to give it the best treatment. However, just like Nickelodeon's pre-2016 treatment of SpongeBob SquarePants, the network went completely overboard in its promotion and shilling for the show at the expense of the rest of its programming, which (in both in reruns and premieres) would either be pushed back or preempted in favor of Teen Titans Go! reruns to the point where one-third of a typical broadcast day was nothing but. Also not helping TTG's case was that its ratings success is blamed by fans for inspiring a slew of Follow the Leader comedies ^note The Powerpuff Girls (2016), Ben 10 (2016), and ThunderCats Roar being the prime offenders., while the network's acclaimed Long-Runners — Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Steven Universe — were all but exiled from the daily schedule outside of premieres.
• By 2020, Cartoon Network became infamous for having one of the most backlogged program caches on cable. While Production Lead Time can lead to an animation channel having more of this than say live action oriented channels, but in this case it was still notable after a full year from the court ruling everything that was finished then hadn't been run on either Cartoon Network or Boomerang. This mind you with weekly premieres. One major reason for this was the aforementioned fixation on Teen Titans Go! and other similar comedies taking up most of the schedule. It also meant that the network almost never airs any reruns, let alone give overall better treatment, to anything but. It became telling why AT&T didn't care to talk much about Cartoon Network when they first got control of it compared to the other channels that were all running with no such backlog.
  • It's been speculated that the reason Cartoon Network doesn't give proper treatment to third-party shows is simply because they don't own the rights to them. The problem with this theory is that Total DramaRama, a Canadian co-production with Teletoon, quickly became another network favorite by contributing to the network's fixation on like-minded comedies. Bakugan: Battle Planet, on the other hand, was another Teletoon co-production that Cartoon Network had a more direct involvement in. The show was given the same poor treatment as the network's acquired slate (see below) despite the Executive Meddling used to add elements of comedy to an action-oriented show.
  • Up until now, Cartoon Network was using streaming apps in the same way Nickelodeon uses their spinoff channels to off-load shows that they've either lost or never had interest in, not unlike what happened with Boomerang and its streaming service. With the launch of HBO Max, which hosts most of Cartoon Network's original programming, the new service soon became home for upcoming shows, specials, and returning series that were originally planned to air on the network. Contrasting the systematic decline of cable television (which Boomerang's linear network suffers from because of its low distribution), and the fact that SVOD's in general are more accessible than cable networks (not to mention, less likely to screw over programming the way Cartoon Network has over the last decade), many consider HBO Max to be a Superior Successor to Cartoon Network as a whole. The problem is (on top of viewers now having to pay extra just to watch a show that was supposed to air on cable), HBO Max commands a high monthly subscription fee compared to Boomerang and even rival services^note Indeed, it was considered the most expensive subscription service yet, until Netflix passed it at the beginning of 2022
  • It has been revealed that many of the shows canceled or sidelined throughout 2018 to 2020 was due to the restructuring and budgetary issues caused by the U.S. government holding up the WarnerMedia merger. Cartoon Network shows known to be affected were OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes and Trick Moon, which were both canceled, and Infinity Train, Tig 'n Seek and the second season of Summer Camp Island, all of which were supposed to air on the network but had to be moved to HBO Max.
• Due to the Discovery merger, many CN and HBO Max original titles (and some third-party ones) were pulled from HBO Max in August 2022. These include:
  • Aquaman: King of Atlantis: Only available on DVD.
  • Care Bears: Unlock the Magic: Still on the CN app.
  • Close Enough: Still on YouTube TV, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and Vudu.
  • Elliott from Earth: Still on the CN app, YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime, and Vudu.
  • Esme & Roy: Still on YouTube and Apple TV.
  • The Fungies!: Still on YouTube, Google Play, and Vudu.
  • Infinity Train: The show's creator, Owen Dennis, encourages people to pirate the show to fight back. He points out though that it's still on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and Amazon Prime; and the first two books are on DVD as well.
  • Little Ellen: Still on iTunes.
  • Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: Still on YouTube, Apple, Amazon Prime, Sling, iTunes, and Vudu.
  • Messy Goes To Okido: Not available anywhere in America, but it's still airing in reruns in the UK.
  • Mias Magic Playground: Not available anywhere in the U.S., but it's still on the service in Latin America.
  • Mighty Magiswords: Still on the CN app, Hulu, YouTube, Sling, Google Play, Vudu, and Amazon. It is also still on the service in Latin America.
  • The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo: Still on iTunes.
  • Odo: Still on Apple. It is also still on the service in Latin America.
  • OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: Still on Hulu, YouTube, Sling, Amazon Prime, Google Play, and Vudu.
  • The Ollie & Moon Show: Not available anywhere.
  • Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures: Still on Peacock, Netflix, Philo, Sling, Amazon, YouTube, and Google Play.
  • Summer Camp Island: Still on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, and Vudu; and would later begin airing on Cartoon Network again in June 2023. It is also still on the service in Latin America.
  • Tig 'n Seek: Still on YouTube, Google Play, Apple, and Vudu.
  • Uncle Grandpa: Still on the CN app, Hulu, YouTube, Sling, Google Play, Apple, and Amazon; and would later return to Cartoon Network's schedule for reruns in October 2022. It is also still on the service in Latin America.
  • Victor and Valentino: Still on Hulu, YouTube, Sling, Vudu, Google Play, Apple, and Amazon.
  • Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs: Still on Google Play, YouTube, Apple, and Vudu.

A-B

• Cartoon Network's two flagship shows of the early half of The New '10s, Adventure Time and Regular Show began to get this in 2015. Once aired frequently along with The Amazing World of Gumball, the two were sentenced to the Monday-Friday 7:30 PM to 8:00 PM block in February 2015. CN gave the two one extra time slot for more reruns in March with the new episodes though, but the fact remains that Adventure Time and Regular Show aren't as common as they used to be.
  • In mid-2015, there were no reruns of either series (aside from the occasional "bomb" week, where a week's worth of episodes would air at a certain time from Monday to Friday), and whatever slots they previously had went to you know what. In 2016, it was officially announced that both series would end after nine^note officially referred to by the network as the tenth season due to Season 5.2 being considered Season 6 and eight seasons, respectively. While in the case of Regular Show, it was JG Quintel's decision, the Adventure Time crew actually wanted a tenth season.
  • Heading into the fall, Regular Show recaptured its 7:30 PM timeslot, and in September, reruns of Adventure Time finally returned to the schedule, along with Ninjago. Before that, on August 31, Baby Looney Tunes gained a one-hour slot in the morning, and even Courage the Cowardly Dog made a triumphant return in a one-hour slot at 6:00 AM, right after [adult swim]; while Teen Titans Go! began experiencing extreme rollbacks in the number of reruns it got.
  • In early 2016, both Regular Show and Adventure Time aired on Saturday evenings between 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM on a block called Regular Time Adventure Show, showing new episodes, reruns, and special shorts. When the block ended, the shows moved back to Thursdays. While Regular Show had reruns at 7:45 PM, Adventure Time had no reruns at all. There was a respectable amount of advertising for the Adventure Time episode "Five Short Tables", due to its focus on the popular gender-bent characters, but none of the other episodes that premiered in the block received that much promotion, if any.
• Bakugan: Battle Planet got hit with this pretty hard. First off, the network had imposed Executive Meddling on the show by changing it from 22-minute episodes to 11-minute ones to appeal more to the target audience and the show was to introduce comedy elements because "Kids want comedy, right?". They did all of that and gave it the same poor treatment as the network's acquired action slate. The show aired new episodes at 7am on Saturdays before moving to Sundays, a time when the target audience is still asleep.
  • Inverted when Season 2 premieres were broadcast at 6:30 am Eastern on Sundays, but Cartoon Network's YouTube channel would begin to stream new episodes at 7pm on Thursday nights to compensate.
• In its later years, the Ben 10 franchise got less love from Cartoon Network, with new episodes of Ultimate Alien and Omniverse being stuck early Saturday mornings. You know it's something when Boomerang ^note  a channel that was formerly dedicated to airing classic cartoons and reruns of shows that no longer air on the main channel , of all channels, is airing more reruns (and new episodes before Cartoon Network sometimes) than the main channel. This wasn't after Boomerang's rebrand or even their 2014 schedule revamp. From October 6, 2014, the remaining 30 episodes of Omniverse were burned off every weekday at 6:00 AM.
  • A reboot of the original series premiered to incredibly middling results. It used to be one of the most seen shows on the network, but following mid-2017 it averaged 10 showings per week. Poor toy sales may have had a hand in this.
  • By September 2017, the reboot had zero reruns outside of a Friday block called Ben 10: Alien of the Week, a block dedicated to one of the aliens on the show, featuring a new episode, a rerun, a short, a tutorial of how to draw the featured alien, and an encore of the new episode. However, starting on October 6, the block was cut down to 30 minutes in order to squeeze in two more TTG reruns before the now-scrapped NEW NEW NEW NEW block. Also, in October, reruns of the original Ben 10 returned to the schedule. It got to the point where there were more reruns of the original show than the reboot!
  • Starting on September 13, 2020, Cartoon Network began airing a well-advertised premiere bomb of new episodes from Sunday-Friday... at 7:00AM. Reruns of these episodes were non-existent as well.
• Name any Boomerang original that's aired on Cartoon Network ^note  barring Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, The Tom and Jerry Show, Bunnicula, Care Bears: Unlock the Magic and Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production. Now try finding any of them that actually aired at a time slot that kids wouldn't be at school. Not a single Boomerang original has aired at a good time slot where kids would actually see them, seriously limiting the exposure of the shows as Boomerang is a channel that not many people have ^note  Even Nicktoons is available in more households at 66 million, while Boomerang is at a paltry 43 million . Some of them are lucky to still be on the schedule by the following month.

C-G

• Many Cartoon Cartoons grew increasingly relegated to The Cartoon Cartoon Show and Cartoon Cartoons: The Top 5. Those that aired outside of these programming blocks wound up languishing in graveyard slots.
• Cartoon Planet was canceled in 1997 (despite high ratings), then its songs and sketches were stitched together into 22 episodes. Many sketches from the show's original hour-long version were left out in the process.
• Cartoon Network basically let Casper's Scare School rot with non-existent advertising, few, if any, reruns, and an 11 AM weekday slot to boot. Then, it was taken off that slot to make room for the return of Looney Tunes to the network.^note Casper would end up getting the last laugh, as not only was Looney Tunes removed in early 2010, Casper was given its 11AM slot. When the show returned for new episodes in 2012, it was given the same 11AM slot as the first season.
• Chowder was a hit for CN and was treated well when it first started airing, but it ended up getting cancelled in favor of CN Real, shifting to an older demographic. In a 2021 interview, creator CH Greenblatt mentioned that Cartoon Network slowly let the show fizzle, not informing the crew when it would be aired and airing it on dead slots. During Season 3, the airing of new episodes were frequently delayed, Cartoon Network would often hype up new episodes in block promos when they really weren't, and later new half-hour "episodes" would be just a new episode paired with a rerun.
• Since it didn’t gather enough attention or appeal as the rest of the network's slate to continue any longer, Clarence's third season was its last. However, because the network blatantly ignored the existence of the show, fans were left with no information on whether the new episodes would arrive after they had aired in other countries.
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2017): In 2017, it had constant reruns along with Teen Titans Go and Gumball; however, poor ratings led to the series being pulled sometime in April, where Ben 10 (2016) had took its place. The show eventually returned to their schedule in September, only to be removed a mere week later. The series wasn't aired on the network for the rest of the year, barring a half-hour Christmas special that was shoved into a Sunday afternoon slot with no advertising. What makes matters worse is that, in December 2017, most of the first season's recently released episodes were withdrawn from the Cartoon Network app and on-demand. By January 2018, the show was banished to the Boomerang app. The second season renewal from DHX Media might have been due to YTV giving the show far better treatment domestically, considering the show was also co-produced by the channel's parent company.
• Though it was mostly treated well by the network, the last seven episodes of Code Lyoko were hit hard by this trope. They weren't even aired on the channel, instead being dumped onto the Cartoon Network website.
• Many fans of Codename: Kids Next Door felt that the series was massively screwed over but in a different way. The creator of the show, Tom Warburton, made a teaser trailer for a sequel series known as Galactic Kids Next Door. Despite massive fan support and even the old cast promising to come back, Cartoon Network vetoed it. Mr. Warburton does hope that Cartoon Network can change their minds in the future, while fans hope Cartoon Network will sell the rights, but only time will tell.
• Craig of the Creek was adored for a while, but it eventually got screwed over in 2022. As a result of the merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery, the fifth season's episode order was cut in half and ended up being the final season of the show.
• While the international Cartoon Network channels treated The Cramp Twins fairly, the show's airing on the main US network was erratic, to say the least. The show was given Invisible Advertising and judging by most schedules from the time not listing the show, it's safe to say it didn't air often.
• Cyborg 009, already having experienced a Bowdlerised yet completely-dubbed English adaptation via Sony Pictures, didn't get too much love on Toonami through 2003. After airing the first 26 episodes, Cartoon Network put the show on hiatus. Through the summer of 2004, episodes 27-47 wound up stealthily aired in a 1am death slot on Friday nights/Saturday mornings, with the show being pulled just before the grand finale and the "God's War" OVA. By that point, it's speculated that Cartoon Network had opted to "financially write-off" the series due to its lack of ratings success, and broadcast whatever they could before their airing rights were up. Infamously, season 2 had begun airing earlier on CN Latin America, which wound up spoiling the developments for US viewers that were unable to wait it out.
• While both WB and the official accounts give DC Super Hero Girls plenty of promotion, Cartoon Network didn't do a good job with promoting it. While treated somewhat better than Justice League Action mentioned below, the first season suffered from continually shifting timeslots after episode 13 (at first airing at 7PM, then airing during the Saturday morning Teen Titans Go! marathons, and finally being sandwiched between the weekend marathon blocks of Teen Titans Go! and the afternoon marathon of The Amazing World of Gumball) and the show only aired when there was a new episode, with nary a rerun in sight. Episodes were also aired Out of Order and premiers were arbitrarily pushed back, with the entire second half of season two never being released on any platform. Boomerang, on the other hand, gives this show the opposite treatment.
  • Heavy advertisement was given for a week of new episodes on Cartoon Network from December 16-20th, 2019. However, they aired at 12:00PM, when the target demographic would be at school.
• Detentionaire got screwed over hard by the network. When they got the U.S distribution rights, Cartoon Network released only the first two seasons online with absolutely no advertising, and the episodes were shown Out of Order, censored, or outright removed, which, considering the tight continuity the series had, was a pretty big problem. Eventually, they just removed the show altogether, barely giving the series an opportunity to gain any audience. The low viewership in the U.S that resulted from this treatment actually got the show cancelled in its native Canada (due to Corus Entertainment, the owners of Detentionaire creators Nelvana and production funders Teletoon, being massively disappointed with the show bombing stateside), with its last episode ending in a cliffhanger.
• Ellen's Acres was a preschool-oriented series that premiered in January 2007. It was then shooed off the air after roughly a month, leaving its entire second season unaired in the United States; Cartoonito in the UK aired it in full.
• Elliott from Earth premiered new episodes at 9AM, while the target demographic is in school. While there was the excuse of the show premiering during most kids' spring breaks, it stayed in that time slot even after spring break was over. Thankfully, encore airings of the same episodes were scheduled at 5:30PM, but even that didn't last long, as it would later be replaced by reruns of Total DramaRama.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends got this treatment on Cartoon Planet. Only five segments from the show were chosen and were played over and over, with the most common one shown being "Phone Home".
• It seems that Cartoon Network has a tendency to screw over Fresh TV's animated shows that aren't Total Drama.
  • With 6teen, they aired the episodes massively out of order from one another ("Dude of the Living Dead" was the series premiere in October 2008 while the actual pilot episode didn't air until March of the following year) as well as removing some episodes due to the content involved in them (e.g. references of homosexuality as well as the occasional mentions of tampons). They aired the final season from April through June of 2010 (with one episode being removed due to a character being homosexual) and continued to air reruns of the past episodes up until early 2011 when the show was permanently taken off their schedule.
  • The first half of Grojband's only season aired over the summer of 2013, then mysteriously stopped for unexplained reasons despite still having several episodes to go. The show returned to Cartoon Network nearly a year later, but was limited to the channel's mobile app and got pulled off a couple months later. It returned to the mobile app again on June 30, 2014. The show would later air weekends on Boomerang in 2015. Then, after finally finishing its run, it got scrapped entirely.
  • Stōked premiered in mid-July 2009 and continued to air weekly (all but two episodes were in the correct order) up until early November when the show was put on a hiatus until late June 2010 to fill in the spot previously occupied by 6teen before its Grand Finale. Then, all of a sudden, the show was abruptly taken off after July 26 and replaced with reruns of the newest episodes of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, which had just aired several hours prior. As a result, this decision left the last four episodes of season 1 as well as the entirety of season 2 unaired in the United States.
• The "Friday Party" block essentially screwed over all of Cartoon Network's currently airing shows, even Teen Titans Go. The one promo it had made it seem like a Go! (later The Powerpuff Girls (2016))-centered block, when it was really just a Friday version of New Thursdays. Because the rest of the shows didn't get advertised and the block was announced at the last minute, many people skipped it. Unlike the network's previous success stories with Friday night programming, the ratings for "Friday Party" plummeted and it was given the ax by April 2017. A new block would overtake it that same year, with much better ratings.
• All season three episodes of The Garfield Show aired at 10:00 AM on weekdays, when the target audience was in school with poor advertising. ^note  While the first two seasons had also aired during school times, they had clear promotion, and as a result got surprisingly high ratings. The fourth season was dumped to Boomerang, where it briefly aired in 2015. The rest of the season was burned off throughout the following summer. The fifth season (the four-part "Rodent Rebellion") aired only once in October 2016, and the series was removed a month later.
• Generator Rex was pulled off the schedule seven episodes before the season finale, including a planned hour of new episodes towards the end of February. The series finished its run on iTunes before finally returning to the channel proper ten months later, yet still failed to air all seven episodes (two episodes were skipped).
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: According to Maxwell Atoms, Michael Ouweleen, who became an executive within Cartoon Network during the show's final season, publicly fired him during a meeting, dressing him down and accusing him of ruining the Cartoon Network brand with his "hateful fart cartoon," which is why Underfist was canceled after its pilot movie. Ironic in that Ouweleen created Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, which has its share of low-brow jokes.

H-L

• Cartoon Network showed .hack//Roots at 5:00 AM on Saturday mornings with no advance advertising—or really any mention at all. They also only showed 21 of the 26 episodes, supposedly to avoid airing .hack//G.U. game spoilers. The show vanished eight months later when [adult swim] went to an all-night format.
  • .hack//SIGN suffered the same fate, first airing on Saturday afternoons, then being bumped to midnight.
• Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi went from airing in a good timeslot, having reruns daily, and having a parade float based on the show (with the real Puffy duo appearing for a finishing touch) to being canceled in late 2006. Out of the 39 episodes made, only 34 aired on CN in the U.S, with the 5 missing episodes airing in different countries. One episode, "Surf's Up," was outright banned after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami (the plot involved the titular duo surfing on a tsunami).
  • It's thought that Sony may have a hand in this. In Japan, Puffy's music label is Sony Music. Sony, for some reason, did not want to export the duo anymore. This culminated in Ubisoft wanting to license a Puffy AmiYumi song for international release in the second Raving Rabbids game, but were only issued a Japanese license and were refused an international license. The duo's songs were caught in an international rights tangle since Sony Music had the Japanese rights, but Warner Music Group (Then, an independent company not affiliated with Time Warner) had the worldwide rights, and both had a record label as part of their conglomeration.
• On February 11, 2017, Cartoon Network decided to give the well-received Infinity Train pilot a televised airing... at 6:00 in the morning. Fortunately, the pilot ended up getting picked up as a full-fledged series, pulled in high ratings, and garnered massive critical acclaim. Unfortunately, it still fell victim to this. Creator Owen Dennis wanted the show to go on for eight seasons^note Given that this was a Quarter Hour Show with 10-episode seasons, this would mean being renewed for a second production season of 20 half-hours., but Cartoon Network canceled the series after its fourth season. According to Dennis himself, the reason was because the planned fifth season didn't have what Cartoon Network referred to as a "child entry point"; referring to the fact that Dennis wanted a widowed adult woman, to be the protagonist of season five, as opposed to the previous seasons which focused on child and teenage characters.
• While it was Adored by the Network for some time, Johnny Test eventually fell prey to this.
  • The show's sixth and (until it was Un-Canceled a second time in 2021, this time by Netflix) final season took a very long time to finish premiering on Cartoon Network, as it was completed in April 2012, but didn't start airing on the channel until an entire YEAR later. Much like the Ben 10: Omniverse example above, it got to the point where new episodes ended up airing on Boomerang (who began broadcasting the series on April 2, 2013) first, often months, or in some cases, over a YEAR, ahead of their initial telecasts on Cartoon Network.
  • Eventually, the series was banished to 6:30 AM on weekdays and 6:00 AM on weekends in May 2014. The fact that around this time David Straiton, who created the concept for the show with Scott Fellows in 1995, was suing him for not compensating him after he sold the series without Straiton's involvement probably had a hand in it.
  • The following month, it was on at 7:00 AM on weekdays, but not on weekends, its spot replaced with reruns of Legends of Chima and Tenkai Knights. In September, its spot was replaced with the network's new darling and it was pushed to 1:00 PM, when its target demographic was at school or just coming home. Two weeks later, it was paved over with reruns of The Amazing World of Gumball but still had several unaired episodes that were burned off with a marathon on Christmas Day, which was also the final day that the show was broadcast on Boomerang prior to that channel's rebrand.
  • The series returned to Boomerang's schedule on September 7, 2015, airing for an hour every weekday evening, before it was eventually reduced to just two hours a week (one hour on Saturday, and the other hour on Sunday). Not too long after this timeslot shift, the series left Boomerang again on June 26, 2016.
• Justice League Action was screwed over before it even premiered. The U.S. CN did little to advertise the show, outside of a single commercial (that also featured the network darling) that aired only shortly before its premiere date. The most prominent promotion the show got was in the form of toys at McDonalds, Sonic and Burger King. The multi-episode premiere aired Friday, December 16, 2016, at the reasonable time of 6 p.m, but soon after it was jettisoned to Saturday mornings at 7:30 am (and by August 2017 at 7:00 am), when some of the audience may still be asleep. The thing is, the press release for JLA said the show would air on Saturday mornings, but never specified the time slot.
  • Unlike some of CN's other DC shows, JLA was broadcast with very few breaks. However, as 2017 came to a close, JLA was left behind with six episodes that didn't air in the U.S until May, and even then they only aired at 6:15am within a week. All the episodes, including said unaired batch, were available on their app and On Demand as early as January of that year, but people would only know this if they searched for it themselves.
• League of Super Evil was booted to an early afternoon slot with inconsistent premieres, with promotion for the series being borderline nonexistent and airings being sporadic at best. Plus, only the first season was aired.
• Legends of Chima had a nice spot on Wednesdays during its first 20 episodes, only to be pushed to 9:30 AM EST on Saturdays with Invisible Advertising. After only 6 episodes, the second season was over and the show was replaced with an hour of Johnny Test (covered above). Its advertising did not improve during season 3, since Cartoon Network's Saturday morning programming was only advertised on Boomerang.
• Like a lot of their shows, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, which was decently well promoted during its first season, was shuffled around the schedule and barely given any mention of new episodes during Season 2. By the third season, CN didn't even see fit to advertise when new episodes were upcoming yet played them on Fridays anyway. The final insult came when the last two episodes were punted onto their video streaming service before the show was canceled. Some people weren't even aware that the show had more than one season.
• Looney Tunes:
  • The Looney Tunes shorts used to be loved by the network and considering how many anthology series featured their shorts, it was near impossible to not see them. (Bugs and Daffy, The Looney Tunes Show and The Acme Hour are just naming a few of them.) But that all went to an end in 2004. Most of the anthology series were removed entirely (though reruns were shown on Boomerang), though this is somewhat justified considering the network were trying to focus more on their Cartoon Network originals at the time and move most of the anthology series to Boomerang or [adult swim]. ^note Most of which had been created under Cohen's ideal of the network, to which had become seen less important under the Kellner and Samples leadership. See here for the explanation summary. By November 2003, the shorts were moved from their decent time at 10 AM on Saturdays to 7 AM where the target audience would still likely be asleep. The CN City era saw the shorts airing only on weekends at 6:30am, right after the Boomerang block (which, if you're wondering, also only aired on weekends at 6:00am), and October saw the shorts get removed entirely (along with the Boomerang block, though its removal was for different reasons) due to the box office failure of Looney Tunes: Back in Action. The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries and Duck Dodgers were removed in 2005 (the latter aired its final episodes on Boomerang) and Baby Looney Tunes took incredibly long hiatuses before finally finishing its 13-episode second season in late 2006 (the season started in mid-2004).
  • However, in January 2009, it seemed that hope had returned for the Tunes as they were given an all-day marathon on New Year's but they didn't actually return until November of that same year. They were removed in January 2010 after another marathon but returned in March 2011 as promotion for The Looney Tunes Show and had been on and off ever since. It didn't help that they began repeating 300 (out of 1,000) shorts on a near-infinite loop when they returned (most of them ranging from 1943-1964).
  • Baby Looney Tunes even came back in August 2015 as promotion for an Uncle Grandpa episode but Cartoon Network gave them a regular timeslot. Both series were removed entirely in 2016 but the Looney Tunes shorts returned in 2017 only to be removed after a week and they haven't been seen since. Despite that, they have been airing on Boomerang consistently since 2013.
  • One character who deserves a special mention is Speedy Gonzales who handed Cartoon Network one of their big controversies in the early 2000s. Fans on the Termite Terrace Trading Post board who kept records of each airing of the various anthology shows for years had noticed that Speedy had been out of circulation of the Looney Tunes blocks for quite a while and a petition was launched that ended up attracting some attention from Hispanic groups and media coverage. CN's head of public relations Laurie Goldberg tried to spin that Speedy had never aired despite the records saying otherwise. Several other statements made by her during these interviews were inaccurate and led to many nasty email exchanges, but in the end it worked. Speedy returned to CN's blocks and even had an episode of Toon Heads done on him.
  • By mid-2013, The Looney Tunes Show only aired weekend mornings at 6:30. The final episode premiered in the U.S. a year after the rest of Season 2, long after it had premiered in other countries.

M-R

• MAD, despite being moderately Adored by the Network for a good amount of its run, was abruptly and Quietly Cancelled in 2013, after its fourth season concluded. The series was all but replaced by Steven Universe (which premiered a month before MAD's final episode) as soon as it ended.
• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: Despite getting good ratings and being Adored by the Network initially, around the last quarter of the show it started to receive shabby treatment. After a long hiatus, time slots were cut down to only a few times a week. Eventually the show's final batch of episodes were unceremoniously thrown on various streaming apps all at once as a large batch with no advertising, and after a single airing Cartoon Network started to completely cut ties with the show. The show has not had any reruns on Cartoon Network in a year despite being a pretty new show, and Cartoon Networks social media accounts make almost no acknowledge of the shows existence despite how many posts they make that showcase multiple shows, with their Instagram page even actively deleting posts asking to bring Mao Mao back. A second season was announced in 2020 with no further news on the subject at all or what happened to it for two years. It was since removed from HBO Max after the Warner Bros. Discovery merger and Cartoon Network had scrubbed all mentions of the show from its website, Twitter, and YouTube. Series creator Parker Simmons posting this tweet ultimately confirms that the show was canceled.
• The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: While initially Adored by the Network, Flapjack’s reruns began to decline in favor of the networks’s more modern shows, leading Flapjack to get a shortened third season with only 6 half-hours. Said Grand Finale was pulled from the show's normal Monday night timeslot to Tuesday at 9:30 PM, with no promotion or warning. After the show ended, reruns became sporadic.
• Mega Man: Fully Charged was promoted largely on YouTube, had Invisible Advertising in general, and was announced to premiere on August 5, 2018, but with no timeslot indicated. Not until later was it revealed that CN had scheduled the show to air at 6:30 AM on Sundays. Reruns briefly aired on Boomerang before the show was removed from both networks on October 13, 2018. When the show returned to Cartoon Network in January 2019, it was moved to Saturdays... but still at 6:30 AM. Reportedly, a studio executive for the show even flew to Cartoon Network's headquarters to attempt to reason with the executives, but they didn’t listen. It was canceled after one season four months later.
• Megas XLR, which actually had some fairly decent ratings, was planned for a third season but quietly canceled when the network switched CEOs because the new boss didn't "get it." A DVD box set was later planned by the same guy to satiate all the people who got mad, demanding some kind of revival, but this was also stymied when yet another network-head, who felt it was a waste of company resources, took over. In addition, the show's production was claimed as a financial loss for tax purposes. Titmouse and Williams Street both tried to either convince CN to let them air episodes on [adult swim] or at least purchase the rights to the show. Their response? A letter informing them that all inquiries of the show would be ignored due to them having written the show off in an effort to save money.
• Mighty Magiswords was originally a series of online shorts in 2015 that proved popular enough to expand into a TV series the following year. Despite facing some criticism for its pacing, being compared by some to Teen Titans Go!, and some controversy regarding the behavior of its creator, Kyle Carrozza, it did manage to gain some fans and was highly promoted by Cartoon Network for a time. Around early 2017, Cartoon Network’s promotion of the show seemed to wane. In the midst of this, aside from the shorts, the series vanished from the schedule.
  • In July, the series returned with a "Collect-O-Thon", where magiswords based off of every Cartoon Network show could be collected during them. New episodes of Mighty Magiswords would also premiere on an average of one episode a day for 23 days, but even then they were barely advertised. Once the new wave of episodes stopped, concluding with a double-length special, the show was once again removed from the schedule. The final five episodes of season 1 premiered on the Cartoon Network website rather than the channel itself, and eventually aired on the network in April 2018.
    • Season 2 of the show began airing immediately after the first one... at 6:15am.
    • The remaining episodes of the series became available on the CN app in August 2018, but they did not air on TV until May 2019; when they did, they were burned off in two weeks at 11:30am.
• Mike, Lu & Og: The first eleven episodes premiered on Friday (later Monday) nights between November 1999 and January 2000. However, the last two episodes of season one never managed to air until April 2000. When the second season began airing in January 2001, the show was moved to Sunday nights. The show ended May 27 the same year with little fanfare (making it the then shortest-lived Cartoon Network original series) and quickly fell into obscurity.
• Mixels was treated horribly by the network after the first season ended. There were only four premieres:
  • The "Moon Madness" special aired in March 2015, whereas it only aired reruns a few times over before a hiatus all the way until September—then they reran that month's special a few times.
    • It got worse. They aired another new special in March 2016, but unlike other times, not once did they even rerun the special. Additionally, there was no promotion whatsoever, not even a commercial.
    • One last special aired in October 2016, but there was still zero advertising. After that, Cartoon Network announced that production on the series had ceased; this also caused Lego to discontinue the toyline in early 2017.
• Cartoon Network hardly advertised The Mr. Men Show and it kept being shuffled between weekday mornings and afternoons on their schedule. Along with The Land Before Time, it was also constantly pre-empted for morning movie airings. Reruns of the show were banished to Sunday mornings right after [adult swim] after its first season concluded. The series was canceled after its second season ended and got replaced with The Garfield Show, despite rumors of a third season and a spin-off series starring Little Miss Calamity on the show's production blog. The show did earn reruns on Boomerang for a while, however.
• My Knight and Me had pretty good advertisement, and a nice 4 PM slot for its first few weeks of 2017... only for it to get moved to 12 PM, causing ratings to plummet. After mid-February 2017, it was suddenly taken off the air for weeks and then moved to Boomerang.
• Ninjago might be the single worst example of this ever. For the first two seasons, it was awarded a great time slot, with many reruns. After Season 2, the reruns got less and less frequent, and things slowly got worse until, after Season 13 ended, Cartoon Network stopped airing the show altogether, with no explanation.
• Numb Chucks was originally announced to air on the main channel at their upfront for the 2014-2015 season. For some reason, CN instead decided to shaft the series to Boomerang in early 2015 (a fate shared by another Canadian animated series, Grojband), where the show was aired for only about half a year with zero advertising before vanishing from the network entirely, leaving the last half of Season 1 and all of Season 2 unaired in the United States.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes was once Adored by the Network when it premiered in 2017 but began to get this treatment by the end of the following year:
  • Ever since the episode "Monster Party", the show has aired new episodes on Sunday afternoons with no advertisement except on social media and the day of the premieres in question. There were also little to no reruns, and episodes were often released early on the CN app where they would sit for months before actually premiering on television.
  • The lack of advertisement also resulted in abysmal ratings during the second half of season two and the entirety of season three, ultimately leading Cartoon Network to cancel the show without consent from creator Ian Jones-Quartey. At the very least, Quartey was notified of this in advance so that the show could wrap up its major plot threads and end the way it was intended to.
  • The animation itself was subject to editing due to Executive Meddling, making several episodes eye-searingly saturated and leading to criticism. Word of God is the animation was tampered with after the animators submitted it and they were just as upset as the audience upon seeing the final product. This was alleviated after season 2 finished airing, presumably after complains from the crew.
  • "Thank You for Watching the Show", the show's final episode, was given some rather questionable marketing. CN's social media promoted it as a special episode but not as the series finale. This led to quite a bit of confusion from the target audience and the show consequently being pulled from the airwaves shortly after it ended.
    • In reality, the show was ultimately canceled after its third season finished production. Prior to the official announcement, the second season had only just finished airing two months ago after an over year-long hiatus, and the network was halfway through the third season's broadcast before the series' cancellation was announced; all in the span of four months.
• On September 17, 2017, Cartoon Network aired the time-compressed version of Over the Garden Wall... at 6:00 am. The series did not even air at all during Halloween as in years prior.
• Pokémon: The Series, despite once being a favorite for the network, got hit particularly hard by the time the Best Wishes! (Black & White) series premiered. With the popularity of the anime in decline, Cartoon Network quit promoting it. By the 2013-2014 season, Pokémon had been dumped to early Saturday mornings; Cartoon Network's run of the series concluded in 2017^note It's speculated that Warner Bros., a corporate sibling, was less than pleased when Legendary Pictures snapped up the live-action film rights to the Pokémon franchise and announced its plans for Pokémon Detective Pikachu. Inverted on Boomerang which reran the series very frequently during the last few years on the channel. Heck, it even got its own toy bumpers, a rarity for any show that hasn't been on Boomerang since 2000/2001. The show found a new home on Disney XD, with more favorable results.
• The Powerpuff Girls (2016) premiered to a critically-apathetic response. In early 2017, its episode premieres aired at 7:45 PM on Fridays, before being shoved into an improbable time slot at 5:30 PM on Sundays in April. On top of bad reviews, the show was a commercial failure as well. Until January 2018, reruns were only seen on Boomerang at the expense of displacing reruns of the original series.
  • The "Power of Four" special "movie event" was only given a week's worth of advertising, with a single promo spot running on-air for it. It only amassed 0.98 million views. Bear in mind that this was a five-episode long TV movie. Very likely because of the results of this, its sequel special ("Never Been Blissed"), despite being built up as a major special event in Cartoon Network's 2018 New Year's Day promo, was given zero advertising, resulting in the special only earning 0.577 million; a 59% drop from Bliss' original debut.
  • The 2018 special "Small World" was barely advertised, if even that.
  • After June 2019, the show disappeared from the network completely, with no indication of it being canceled.
    • At very least, the reboot did better in Europe than in the United States, but alas, in 2023, faith in it was given up there as well.
• Robotboy, despite being Adored by the Network at first, eventually became this later in its U.S. run, with the show getting little to no advertising or reruns and being moved around different time slots without warning. After its cancellation, CN removed it completely from its schedule.
• Robotomy: The show had very poor advertising, was given very little airtime, and only had ten 11-minute episodes, making it the shortest-lived Cartoon Network/[adult swim] show of all time. The official stated reason was "low foreign appeal", as Cartoon Network was unable to convince any overseas networks to acquire the show. Considering that the show is rife with violence along with the fact that Regular Show and Adventure Time had to face edits overseas, this is more than believable.

S-T

• One of the earliest, and most triumphant examples of this was Samurai Jack. It ran for four seasons and was slated to enjoy a big finish, with Genndy Tartakovsky having plans for a feature-length movie. Unfortunately, Cartoon Network had just produced an origin story movie for The Powerpuff Girls (1998) that did disastrously at the box office, ruining any chances of producing the movie. This led to the sudden cancellation of the series in 2004 after four seasons. A longstanding Development Hell led Tartakovsky to change his mind and break up his plans into a 10-episode conclusion that would air as the fifth and final season. After a mind-numbing thirteen-year silence, Jack came back with a vengeance and got the wrap-up it truly deserved.
• Between 2012 and 2013, Cartoon Network began to air various kids' anime at early weekend morning time slots. Several shows such as Tenkai Knights and later Beyblade incarnations were dumped at 7:00 am, with no advertising from the network.
  • Scan 2 Go aired at the very same time slot, and was abruptly pulled from the lineup halfway through its run for a repeat of Teen Titans Go!, and it hasn't been shown in America since. Meanwhile, India did get to see the final episodes.
• Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, being a Boomerang original, was essentially doomed by default. However, unlike most Boomerang originals, this one got to air TV premieres on Cartoon Network first. Episodes aired at 10:30AM on Mondays with no advertising. It had an encore slot at noon on Fridays before it was paved over by Teen Titans Go! and the lone 15-minute Ben 10 (2016) rerun on the day. After a mere six episodes, Cartoon Network pulled the series from their lineup and replaced it with more reruns of The Amazing World of Gumball.
  • This was averted in October 2022, where the series came back to the lineup for Scoobtober, and later full-time. The invisible advertising still continues however.
• Despite being Adored by the Network for the first few episodes, The Secret Saturdays did not get good treatment from executives. Its time slot was often shuffled while new episodes were rarely advertised with reruns being non-existent. Needless to say, it was canceled swiftly. At least it got a Grand Finale, and the characters managed to appear in a crossover episode of Ben 10: Omniverse (albeit with a different set of voice actors).
• After the success of the film adaptation of Shaun the Sheep, Cartoon Network started airing the series in September 2015... only to pull it after two weeks. It ended up being banished to Boomerang.
• Of all of Cartoon Network's shows, Sheep in the Big City received the absolute worst treatment. No other Cartoon Network series can compare to just how poorly Sheep was treated. Things didn't start out this way — the first seven episodes premiered with decent ratings between November 2000 and January 2001, though episodes 8 and 9 were held back into March. However, Sheep began to suffer the network's wrath when the last four episodes of the season never managed to air until June and July, on Sunday evenings. The series was initially canceled after the first season ended on July 29, before being Un-Canceled shortly afterwards thanks to popular demand; a second season was ordered in September of 2001, and started airing on December 2. The first four episodes aired that month with the same time slot as late season 1. However, the show went on yet another hiatus in January 2002, and the last nine episodes were burned out over the following months with a time slot of Sunday nights at 9 PM, when the target audience would not usually be watching TV. The series ended on April 7, 2002 with little fanfare, and quickly fell into obscurity.
• Sidekick was initially treated fairly well by Cartoon Network despite getting mixed reception from viewers of the channel when it debuted in June 2011, as it was given a decent amount of airtime and promotion for over a year. In October 2012, however, it was abruptly taken off Cartoon Network's schedule with no explanation. Some viewers believe this was due to CN making room on their line-up to air programs celebrating the channel's 20th anniversary that month, but the series did not return to the network after the celebration was over, despite still having one more season to go. Even when the Cartoon Planet block began to air reruns of fellow YTV cartoons Almost Naked Animals and Scaredy Squirrel in 2013 (the year Sidekick's third and final season began premiering in the show's native country of Canada), it didn't air this show. However, the series would eventually find new life on Qubo (partially owned by Sidekick's creators, Nelvana), where all the season 3 episodes of Sidekick finally made their U.S. debuts when the series began broadcasting there in March 2017, with the channel continuing to air reruns of the show until July 2020.
• Cartoon Network's treatment of Sitting Ducks may explain why the show wasn't as popular in the United States, where it originated from, as it was in Europe. The show had mediocre advertising and was unceremoniously pulled due to poor ratings, with many forgetting that it even aired on the network. It certainly doesn't help that Cartoon Network didn't even produce the series at all; the show was produced by Universal, and both Sitting Ducks and the TV series based off The Land Before Time are the only Universal-produced shows to have ever originally aired on the channel.
• Sonic Boom fell into this. The show aired Saturday mornings at 7:00 AM, sandwiched between more Teen Titans Go! reruns. Adding to the misery is that the show had a nonexistent advertising campaign, with the promo for the first episodes airing after they were aired. It is said that the poor reception toward the show's tie-in games may have made this example deliberate. At the very least, the show was better-received than the games and was given a second season renewal.
  • Later on, Cartoon Network began airing new episodes Monday to Friday with no promotion (only the Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter page promoted them). After going back to its old timeslot, the show was taken off the schedule entirely after the first season finale, "It Takes a Village to Defeat a Hedgehog", in November 2015.
  • The second season ended up premiering on Boomerang, which had lower coverage than Cartoon Network, with the latter only airing encores of the Boomerang premieres. One episode into season 2 (which aired in late October 2016 at 6:00 AM, not unlike Ben 10: Omniverse above), the series was put on hiatus and was replaced with Steven Universe reruns the following week.
  • The show was preempted with a weekend-long Teen Titans Go! marathon in November 2016. While new episodes continued to air on Boomerang, Cartoon Network stopped airing the show altogether after "The Biggest Fan" aired. The network remained silent about this, and the executives of the show don't seem to know anything either. At the very least, most of season 2 did eventually make it to CN's app and On Demand services and the whole season is available on Hulu. After the second season finished its run, the show was unceremoniously canceled (after the finale had Dr. Eggman imply that a third season was coming) and pulled from Boomerang a year later.
  • Boomerang UK got it worse. The first 13 episodes were shown in 2015 on an endless loop, and it wasn't until later when they started to show more new episodes. The show was eventually removed completely in October 2016 and hasn't aired since then.
• Spliced fell into this in a similar way that its fellow Nelvana creation Detentionaire did. Episodes were only released online in 2014 with no advertisement or warning, and were quickly pulled before the show could ever even gain an audience. Furthermore, the intro was shortened due to the usage of the word "crap" in its beginning. Luckily, the show had gotten fairly better treatment years before on Qubo (and no, Qubo did not cut down the intro for using "crap").
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars got minimal coverage despite once being a network favorite. During season 5, it aired during the Saturday morning timeslot. Shortly after Lucasfilm was acquired by Disney, the show was unceremoniously canceled at the end of the fifth season, leaving several completed episodes of season 6 unaired (but later released on Netflix), four episodes with incomplete animation (released on Star Wars.com for free), and many other scripts unproduced (a story arc revolving around Darth Maul has been adapted into a comic). Toonami was then given permission to continue broadcasting The Clone Wars on the network (though at the request of [adult swim], certain episodes were skipped), then it was eventually pulled by Cartoon Network just several days after the premiere of Star Wars Rebels on Disney XD.^note Though that was never the end for Turner's commitment to Star Wars; two years later sister networks TBS and TNT picked up the broadcast rights to all Star Wars films after Viacom-owned Spike declined to renew them.
• Despite being a ratings success, Steven Universe was constantly on and off the schedule and went on incredibly frequent hiatuses.
  • When "Alone Together" premiered, all reruns were yanked with zero explanation and replaced with The Amazing World of Gumball. The show would disappear for sometime between October 2015 to January 2016.
  • Cartoon Network decided to premiere the entire sixth Stevenbomb (the "Out of This World" arc) on their mobile app roughly a month before the bomb was supposed to air. It was only viewable for a limited time, but they didn't tell anyone about it at all. Most of the fanbase didn't know about this Stevenbomb until it had concluded. Instead of Cartoon Network, the episodes were pirated on sites such as YouTube and Dailymotion.
  • "Stevenbombs" were events that typically consisted of five new episodes premiering in a week (after being streamed to the app about a month earlier), but with no new episodes or reruns for months afterwards. This is especially bad for a show as plot-heavy as this one.
  • When the network advertised new episodes, they had a nasty habit of spoiling big concepts. In the wake of a podcast with Rebecca Sugar and Ian J.Q. that possibly contained huge spoilers speculated to be from the Season 5 finale, the Crewniverse had spent weeks on social media imploring fans not to spoil the episodes. Cut to news that overseas airings were delayed due to fear of leaks, fans were livid.
  • Surprisingly, the show would receive better treatment by the network towards the end of the fifth season. More reruns aired, and the show even received an "every Steven ever" marathon the weekend preceding the TV movie’s premiere.
  • The series also began reruns on Boomerang on June 2, 2018. It only aired there for a single hour each on Saturday and Sunday nights before being removed from the schedule on July 29 of the same year.
• Sunday Pants was a series composed of animated shorts similar to What a Cartoon!. Due to a lack of advertising, no presence on the CN website, and the shorts containing slightly inappropriate content, the show was pulled after one month. As such, hardly anyone is aware of the show's existence, and most of those that are do not recall ever seeing it on the channel.
• Marvel's The Super Hero Squad Show may have gotten a deliberate screwing over. While the first season was still in production, Disney had taken over Marvel Comics, and infuriated executives at Cartoon Network tried to cancel the series before it could air so that they wouldn't give any promotion for Disney. However, the network was under contractual obligations with Hasbro, who manufactured the show's toyline, and ended up continuing to air the series even after Disney's acquisition of Marvel was complete. Then when the second season began airing, they destroyed the show's ratings by placing it exclusively on Saturday mornings at 6:30 AM, when virtually no kids are awake, and gave it no advertising whatsoever. They later changed time slots for the series erratically until the second season ended its run, then effectively canceled the series and declared that they would not carry any more Marvel programming.
• Supernoobs got frequent advertising before its premiere and was briefly treated pretty fairly in its first month, but CN immediately pulled it after "The Noobie Bluebie Booby" aired on January 15, 2016. This led to some believing the show had been canceled.
  • The show ultimately returned with little fanfare several months later on August 4, with the show being part of the Thursday night lineup, airing 4 episodes at a time. Unfortunately, due to the network barely advertising the show on the lineup, any and all mention of the show was once again removed after two weeks and 8 episodes.
  • CN managed to squeeze in a Halloween episode on October 29, 2016, and 6 more episodes during December. The show was removed entirely for the third time after "The Noobs vs. Sour Permissions" aired, but this brought the show much closer to having all its first season episodes aired in the United States.
  • The rest of the first season finally aired in November 2017 in the U.S., but on Hulu. In January 2018, it was confirmed that the show was renewed for a second season, which premiered on Hulu instead (although CN still airs it across Europe).
• Sym-Bionic Titan was moved from the Friday night action block to Wednesdays at 7:00 pm, which is an incredibly awkward time slot. Then it was moved to Saturday mornings at 9:30 AM, with absolutely no advance warning. Turns out it was canceled because it wasn't selling toys, even though there were no toys even made for it. Rumor has it that no toy company would produce it due to a female lead in what would otherwise be a "boys'" property being considered unprofitable; gender profiling in the toy industry is nothing new, having happened with the original Transformers toy line and Avatar: The Last Airbender. But the one thing that sealed its fate altogether was that the animation team broke apart after losing heart with the show and decided to call it quits, and then creator Genndy Tartakovsky left Cartoon Network for Sony Pictures (creating the Hotel Transylvania franchise). Given that another CN property has had toys made for its female leads and villains (Young Justice), that excuse seems odd to say the least. Like Megas XLR, it was written off for tax purposes.
  • It's been said that the real reason the show was canceled was because of a dispute between Cartoon Network and Tartakovsky regarding the tone of the show.
• Teen Titans (2003) was originally intended to last four seasons with a total of 52 episodes (the standard episode count for a Warner Bros. Animation-produced series in the 21st century), but Cartoon Network decided to renew the series for one more season. Sadly, however, they did not tell the show's production staff that season 5 would be the final season of the show, which led to it infamously ending on a cliffhanger.
  • Its spin-off Teen Titans Go! was once adored, but eventually fell prey to this after the release of Teen Titans Go! To the Movies. Since then, the show's gotten less and less air time over the following years, unlike in the past.
• A second season of Thunder Cats 2011 was approved, but later rescinded despite good ratings since it ended up being so costly for the network. Once again, the true deathblow for the show came from toy sales; it and Young Justice were ratings successes in the 18-34 demographic (It was supposed to air on Toonami for said demographic), as opposed to the audience that would buy the toys. Cartoon Network then tried to hype the last 13 episodes as the second season. Toonami managed to bring the show back for reruns, but due to the loss of airing rights, its second run was cut short for Sword Art Online.
  • In spite of Young Justice getting a third season after a very long fan campaign, all hope for this show's return was dashed when ThunderCats Roar, another ThunderCats cartoon set in a completely different continuity, was announced in 2018. It got a Saturday morning premiere time slot upon its debut in 2020 but got virtually no reruns; if there actually was a rerun, it would most likely be on the weekend right before [adult swim]. The show was removed entirely once the Saturday morning block was pulled, and Cartoon Network began dedicating most of their weekend to Teen Titans Go! and The Amazing World of Gumball.
  • After a 6-month hiatus, the show returned for new episodes on November 2, at 8:00 AM EST, when the target audience would have left for or arrived at school. Two weeks later, one of the showrunners revealed that "Grune" was the last episode they produced, more or less confirming that the show stopped production after one season.
• Back in 2005, Cartoon Network had a short-lived preschool block called Tickle-U. A couple years later, CN canceled the block and all its shows went into limbo... until Peppa Pig got picked up by Nick Jr.. It remains to this day, to the point that Peppa's American dub has been completely lost. Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs was the only show exclusive to the block that still aired on CN after its cancellation.
• Time Squad has a mysterious history about what exactly went wrong. What little records of the show's ratings we have state that Time Squad did rather well for itself, gaining numbers like 5.0 on their premiere nights on the Cartoon Cartoon Fridays block. Buck Tuddrussel's voice actor, Rob Paulsen, has mentioned that Time Squad was a show that got canceled simply because it was in the line of fire during a corporate shuffle. Perhaps the AOL/Time-Warner merge has something to do with it? What's also known is that after getting renewed for its second season in early 2002, the unexpected news broke out that it was canceled. From then on, CN had made it their business to run the show into obscurity. CN eventually started misplacing new episodes and kept the show on a handful of hiatuses. By 2004, they had given the show a final blow by sending it to the death slot of the early morning hours where it ran for two years alongside Captain Planet.
• The Tom and Jerry Show: In May 2014, the show was removed from its Wednesday 5:30 PM slot to a weekday 1:00 PM strip, with little, if any, advertising noting this move. The show only saw occasional reruns after Cartoon Network burned off season 1, usually when the target audience was at school. Reruns were more frequent on Boomerang, but that channel doesn't have the widespread availability its parent network does. The second season was eventually aired in 2016 on Saturday mornings without very much advertising. Cartoon Network eventually gave up on the show entirely that same year, moving it to Boomerang and its streaming service.
• Totally Spies! is an interesting Zig-zagged case of this trope. CN originally rescued it in 2003 after ABC Family dropped it after the first two seasons, and aired them and the following 3 seasons with plenty of marketing, followed later on with The Movie. sibling show Team Galaxy and spin-off The Amazing Spiez! . It was a prominent enough show on the network in the 2000s, even airing on Toonami's afternoon replacement block Miguzi alongside fellow French/Canadian-produced cartoon Code Lyoko........and then when the sixth season came in 2014, CN never licensed it, nor did any other network in the USA with kid's programming during it's initial run ^note  The network's fixation on Teen Titans Go! may have been a factor, but it doesn't explain why no other American network wanted it. However, CN seems to have renewed interest in the show after it was Un-Canceled and has now picked up the upcoming revival season set to premiere sometime in 2024.
• Tower Prep appears to have fallen prey to this. According to Paul Dini, after Unnatural History's average ratings, Cartoon Network gave up Tower Prep before it had even started. They stopped promoting, gave up on recaps, and switched the timeslot to Tuesdays at 8PM.^note It should be noted that when Tower Prep moved to Tuesdays, its ratings plummeted. But when The Looney Tunes Show premiered in the same timeslot on the same night, it got spectacular ratings.
• Name any cartoon in the Transformers franchise that has aired on Cartoon Network in the USA. Now, try to find one series that has gone its entire run without a single instance where the choice was made to sling it into the earliest time slot that comes to mind. Some might be led to think there's an ongoing feud with Hasbro behind the scenes where the network is begrudgingly airing these shows just because the toy endorsement deals earn them money on the side.
  • Transformers: Animated is one of the notorious examples of being screwed by the network among Transformers fans. The network barely advertised the show aside from its premiere episodes, and the show was shoved into an early morning death slot rather quickly. Despite plans laid out for a fourth season, CN axed the show amidst a hot mess of a war waged by Walmart against Hasbro over demand for specific TF toy lines. Derrick Wyatt hinting that Stuart Snyder may have disliked the series doesn't help matters.
  • History repeated once more with Transformers: Robots in Disguise ^note which was originally intended to air on the Hub Network, until that network's retool into Discovery Family. Hasbro decided to put the show on CN, despite the fiasco with Transformers: Animated mentioned above, because Cartoon Network's boy-slanted demographic was more suitable than the female-skewing Discovery Family. When the show premiered, it was stuck at 6:30 AM Eastern on Saturdays, much to the trouble of viewers in that time zone. For viewers one time zone over, that's 5:30 AM—a time when pretty much nobody interested in watching the show would even be awake yet. Coupled with minuscule advertising, the show got lousy ratings. Of course, the network didn't air any reruns, instead taking the show off and putting something else in its place anytime new episodes dried up.
  • Right out the gate, Transformers: Cyberverse was hit with this with the announcement that new episodes would premiere at the same 6:30 am time slot as its predecessor. Didn't help that it debuted the same day as Total DramaRama, which quickly became another network favorite.
• Trick Moon, a pilot that gained an immense amount of popularity when it debuted online, sadly didn't get greenlit due to the network itself going through a major restructuring.

U-Z

• Uncle Grandpa did not seem to be well-liked by someone at the network over the course of its run, because it has had a very colorful history of getting screwed:
  • In January 2016, the show was slated to air a week of new episodes from the 25th-29th, only for it to get suddenly pulled for Steven Universe reruns and for those episodes to be pushed all the way back to July 1st.
  • In April, its premieres were pushed into a Saturday morning time slot, which was a huge gap between it and the premieres of Adventure Time and Regular Show later on in the day. The show's production crew was laid off and it was canceled (but not publicly); its remaining episodes would be aired as three 26-episode seasons.
  • The show returned on August 4th right after Steven Universe's 100th episode, then quickly disappeared again until October 27th. Fortunately after the latter date, it started getting reruns again.
  • Near the end of its run, the network stopped advertising it entirely. When Clarence returned in early June 2017, Uncle Grandpa's premieres were put in the slot right after it without a single mention in the commercials, then it was pulled after a week and replaced with reruns of Clarence before coming back the week after, airing its finale on June 30th and quietly fading away.
• While it was adored early during its run, this trope hit Unikitty! pretty hard later on. The show kept on getting removed from the schedule numerous times, many episodes that were supposed to premiere kept on getting delayed and pre-empted with other shows, and the show would eventually get banished to a Sunday afternoon slot. The show was confirmed to end after three seasons, but most of the third season's episodes didn't premiere until August 2020. The fact that around this time, The LEGO Movie sequel did poorly at the box office, ratings were getting lower, there was drama with a rival Nick show, Rainbow Butterfly Unicorn Kitty apparently being a rip-off, and that LEGO stripped Warner Bros. from the LEGO license and gave it to Universal instead all probably had a hand in CN wanting to get the show over and done with and to just forget about its existence.
• Victor and Valentino was treated the same way as Allen Gregory was treated by Fox. After being something of a network darling, the network seems to have turned on the show. The second season wasn't advertised much outside of promos for the New Saturdays block, and several of its rerun slots were filled with Craig of the Creek, Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart, and Teen Titans Go!, leaving the series with only a paltry 30 minutes of airtime a week by July 2020. The second season hasn't even been put On Demand and there were very little reruns afterwards. This did get rectified a bit when the third season aired in 2021 in a Saturday morning timeslot with repeats Tuesdays at Primetime.
  • In August 2022, not only was the series pulled from HBO Max, but was outright abruptly cancelled despite the crew’s frustrations and their intent of having a fourth season.
• Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? is an infamous example. In season 2, Cartoon Network thought 10:30 PM was an appropriate time to air new episodes, with the only reruns being Sundays at 4:00 PM. They also changed Robot Jones' voice to sound like a human kid. The long-standing rumor was that Apple was going to sue Cartoon Network for using a Mac text-to-speech program as the "voice" of Robot Jones, but the real story is a classic case of this trope and Executive Meddling. The producers thought the text-to-speech voice was off-putting and wanted show creator Greg Miller to hire a human voice actor and use studio effects to make his voice sound robotic, which was ultimately the major turn off for most people. Reruns of Season 1 episodes even re-dubbed most of Robot Jones' dialogue. The website no longer even mentions the show's existence. However, Robot Jones did get a reference in OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes's Crossover Nexus.
• The DC Nation shows, Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series, got hit by this. The first season of Young Justice took over a year to air due to multiple hiatuses, and the second season began airing with little fanfare the week following the season finale. Green Lantern ran its first 13-episode arc without interruption before a break. Young Justice then went seven episodes before getting slapped with another hiatus. After coming back from the summer hiatus, along with the premiere of the next Green Lantern arc, the entire block was pulled a mere two episodes in, scheduled to return in January 2013. The schedule change happened on the very day that new episodes were supposed to air, and not even the showrunners were told. Three weeks after they returned, Cartoon Network sprang on their viewers that both shows have been canceled, their final outings making the whole block's Humiliation Conga that much more bitter.
  • The worst thing of it all is that what ratings data is available for Cartoon Network indicates that Young Justice was consistently among the network's ten highest-rated telecasts on a weekly basis, both before and after the fall 2012 hiatus, with Green Lantern generally not too far behind.
    • Thanks in part to a long and very notable fan campaign, it was announced that Young Justice would return for third and fourth seasons. Green Lantern wasn't so lucky, but it did receive a passing nod in the form of the surprise appearance of one of its characters on Justice League Action, as well as a Fully Absorbed Finale in season four of YJ, reuniting several cast and crew.
  • Beware the Batman, which was supposed to be a replacement for Young Justice, was screwed even worse than the latter. It didn't even manage half a complete season before they pulled it from the schedule after airing 11 episodes. The first half of the season actually went to DVD before they finished airing it. Meanwhile, its counterpart, Teen Titans Go!, got its own primetime slot, on top of its own slot on DC Nation and stole Beware's slot when that show was pulled. The rest is history.
  • Toonami was given permission to show all 26 episodes of the series but announced on short-notice (after showing 19 episodes) that Cartoon Network was (yet again) financially writing-off the series, meaning the show would never air on the network again. Rather than let the series die there, Toonami was forced to do a quick last-minute marathon of the final seven episodes before it disappeared forever. Even more humiliating is that Beware the Batman finished its run entirely in England on Amazon's UK service, which had the rest of the season up for streaming before it even made it to Toonami.
    • According to Paul Dini, in an interview with Kevin Smith, the reasoning behind these cancellations isn't solely because of merchandise, but because of the industry-wide notion that only boys should watch action cartoons, an idea pushed strongly by toy companies. As such, since the majority of those watching action shows like Young Justice were girls, they canceled them and labeled them as failures due to preemptive worry that toy companies wouldn't license them. As mentioned above, gender profiling in the toy industry is nothing new.
• After getting screwed over by Toonzai (then called TheCW4Kids), Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds channel hopped to Cartoon Network. Episodes aired at 8AM on weekdays when the target audience would most likely be at school. They also aired on Saturday mornings but it followed the weekday airing order, confusing those who didn't already see the episodes on TheCW4Kids or the 4Kids website. Then, it was taken off the 8AM slot to make room for reruns of Pokémon: The Series. Needless to say, it didn't last on their lineup much longer and it soon found its way back on The CW.

Cartoon Network Other

Cartoonito

• Any preschool show that wasn't named Baby Looney Tunes that aired on the American Cartoon Network was treated this way prior to the announcement that Cartoonito would be coming to the United States in 2021.
  • Their first two-in-1 attempt launched in 1996 and featured Big Bag and Small World, which only aired on Sunday mornings, with the first show capping off the block at 9AM Eastern Standard Time. In 1998, both shows moved to weekdays at 11AM Eastern, then to early Sunday mornings that summer, starting at 7AM before later moving to earlier time slots. Differences in time zones caused the shows to be aired as early as midnight in some parts of the United States. Big Bag and Small World continued airing on early Sunday mornings (usually between 5AM and 7AM) until 2001 and 2002 respectively.
  • Later, in 2002, they experimented with a brandless block featuring Baby Looney Tunes, Hamtaro, Pecola, and Sitting Ducks. Of these four shows, only Baby Looney Tunes survived; the latter two would eventually move to qubo in 2007, while Hamtaro hasn't aired in the US since Cartoon Network removed the show.
  • Their third attempt, Tickle U, which launched in 2005, faced a smackdown by Moral Guardians for false advertising before it could be a success. Peppa Pig and Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs eventually moved to Nick Jr. and Qubo, respectively.
  • Then, in 2008, they experimented with another brandless block featuring The Land Before Time, Baby Looney Tunes, Krypto the Superdog and The Mr. Men Show. Like before, only Baby Looney Tunes survived before The Mr. Men Show was pushed into an early Sunday morning time slot, and The Land Before Time was replaced with reruns of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Chowder. To add insult to injury, the latter show had a ten-month hiatus in the middle of its only season, and Cartoon Network would often see this as a chance to pre-empt the entire block for a second morning movie airing.
  • Finally, in 2016, they experimented with one last brandless block, featuring reruns of Baby Looney Tunes alongside new episodes of Shaun the Sheep and the modern Peanuts television series. At this point, the lone series on the block that ended up airing on the channel for longer than a month should be pretty obvious. Shaun and Peanuts both ended up getting banished to Boomerang.
  • Even the Cartoonito block got this treatment. After four months of airing without any issues, the block was shortened without notice to air normal Cartoon Network shows and the weekend block was retired altogether. As time went on, the block became shorter in length until it was reduced to an hour in February 2024.
  • Heck, not even Baby Looney Tunes is completely safe from getting screwed over. Despite getting plenty of love from the block when it launched, the series was abruptly pulled from Cartoonito's line-up on January 27, 2022, with its time slots being taken over by Care Bears: Unlock the Magic (which moved premieres to Cartoonito over from Boomerang; see that channel's own section on this page for more info). The series returned to Cartoonito on March 22, 2022, airing in the place of Care Bears on Tuesdays and Thursdays...only to be removed from the block again only one week later. Thankfully, though, the series returned to Cartoonito once more on April 4, 2022, ironically replacing the very series that replaced it on the block's line-up, though it's currently unknown how long it will last this time around.
  • The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo got this treatment on the block. It was originally slated to premiere on January 23, 2022, but at the last minute, the weekend Cartoonito block was replaced by regular Cartoon Network programming, causing it to premiere the next Friday. Then, when Cocomelon premiered, the show went from airing two episodes a day to only one episode a day. After two months, it would be removed for an extra 15 minutes of Cocomelon.
• The UK feed of Cartoonito is just about as bad at this as the American feeds of Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon are. If a show airs on the channel that's not produced by HIT Entertainment, it will usually only run early in the morning or late at night, then only stay on the schedule for a timeframe lasting anywhere from six months to a year before vanishing. Some shows that were treated this way include Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Tiny Toon Adventures and Sesame Street. The only exceptions to this are Masha and the Bear, Curious George and Cocomelon.
• Despite being a Network Darling for about a decade, Cartoonito's UK feed eventually began only showing Baby Looney Tunes in their first 2 hours of broadcasting, with one slot at 4 in the morning and another at 5:20.
• Caillou was treated this way when it aired on Cartoonito in the UK. It only came on twice a day between 4:00 AM and 7:00 AM. Its 6:50 AM slot was inevitably replaced by Cartoonito Karaoke, before the show was removed around March 2012. The entire series was eventually released on Netflix in the UK on August 3rd, 2013, and was picked up by Tiny Pop in 2015. ^note  It didn't help that A) Cartoonito was the lowest-rated preschool channel, B) the show was redubbed by British actors (Netflix, Tiny Pop, etc, use the Canadian version), and C) only season 1 was aired.
• It didn't take long for the UK Cartoonito feed to give Sesame Street very poor treatment, with the show being shoved into late night or early morning time slots in favor of network darling Fireman Sam less than six months after its premiere.

International Cartoon Network Channels

• Cartoon Network's UK feed starting in July 2017. The channel's schedule used to be filled with variety, with random shows having marathons on weekends. Then shows like Nexo Knights, Justice League Action, Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015), Mighty Magiswords, Steven Universe and Clarence^note as well as daytime reruns of Uncle Grandpa, Adventure Time and Regular Show slowly faded away, leaving only eight shows, with only four of them airing during the daytime. It got worse:
  • When Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2017) premiered in late August, the primetime schedule consisted of the same four shows repeating for a half-hour each from 4PM to 9PM, with We Bare Bears dominating The Powerpuff Girls (2016)'s only time slot of 8:30PM.
  • In September 2017, daytime airings of Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Powerpuff Girls and Ninjago returned (with the latter airing for the first time since earlier in the year) as well as new episodes of Transformers: Robots in Disguise, but Season 4 of Nexo Knights was somehow re-run in a marathon which ran through midnight. That was its final presence on the channel.
  • It seemed to have been played straight again one week after the UK premiere of OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes. Daytime reruns of Adventure Time, Regular Show and The Powerpuff Girls disappeared again (with the latter completely vanishing) and were replaced with more reruns of Cloudy, We Bare Bears and Teen Titans Go!.
  • OK K.O. itself seemed to have gotten this treatment in early January 2018. Its prime time slot was replaced with reruns of new episodes of We Bare Bears, essentially making the primetime schedule become the same four shows repeating over and over yet again and its only actual reruns being weekdays at 7:15AM, for 15 minutes at a time. All of this is pretty unheard of for a foreign feed of CN.
  • However, the feed would have its own version of the NEW NEW NEW NEW Fridays block that included new episodes of Adventure Time, Regular Show: In Space, Gumball, Clarence, Steven Universe, Uncle Grandpa, The Powerpuff Girls (2016) and Mighty Magiswords. It was the only time that most of these shows would air in a week.
  • If there’s anything that can justify how badly the channel screwed over its shows, it would definitely have to be their treatment of Mighty Magiswords. A mere 4 months after its UK premiere it was wiped from the schedule completely with only 20 episodes aired. The show was completely ignored by the network (even Clarence and Steven Universe made comebacks in the form of “new” Christmas specials in December 2017, though the episodes had premiered over a year ago on the US feed) until April 2018 when it returned in the New Fridays block at 8:15pm... unadvertised.
  • It got to the point where local free-to-air children’s channel CITV bought the rights to the show in April 2018 and began airing reruns at 4pm every day. This brought a new trend to fruition: Cartoon Network would premiere the episodes in huge burn-offs without any reruns or promos, and CITV would air encores of the episodes at a more suitable time.
    • In early 2019, CITV seemed to have dropped the show as well. They eventually brought it back.
  • Cartoon Network UK treated Wishfart like this, only airing it on Friday afternoons for new episodes. It doesn't help that CITV, the network that hosted the show's world premiere, was airing reruns of the show all week and was available on terrestrial TV. It was eventually removed completely a few months later.
  • Starting from July 16, 2018, Cartoon Network UK premiered new episodes of OK K.O. (the final few episodes of the first season in production order) on weekdays with no promotion or network advertisements until the last minute.
  • Steven Universe and The Powerpuff Girls secured slots on the daily primetime slots alongside the other seven adored shows from August 6-September 2, 2018. The former even almost caught up with the US' run, going from a year behind ("I Am My Mom") to three months behind ("A Single Pale Rose") in just under four weeks.
  • Eventually, the feed gave up and decided to do burn-offs of their screwed shows in December of that year:
    • Adventure Time had its final 13 episodes (including the finale) premiere Saturdays at 11am from December 8-22.
    • The Steven Universe "Heart of the Crystal Gems" arc was burned off at 9pm from December 17-19.
    • The 4-part Small World special of The Powerpuff Girls premiered on December 24... at 10pm. Mighty Magiswords' final season 1 episodes had a burn-off from December 25-29, in the same time slot.
    • The finale of Regular Show finally premiered on December 29, seven months after the previous episode and two years after the US).
  • By January 2019, reruns of Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Powerpuff Girls, Ninjago, OK K.O! Let’s Be Heroes, Craig of the Creek, Steven Universe & Uncle Grandpa had returned to the schedule. Steven even managed to gain a consistent rerun slot, which is surprising given the UK feed’s treatment of the show.
  • Like with the OK K.O. situation above, Steven Universe: The Movie premiered on October 1, 2019 at 8 in the evening and without any promotion or network advertisements. This is in sharp contrast to the US feed who (along with WarnerMedia) promoted it.
• Cartoon Network Asia treated Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot and Strawberry Shortcake like this, having pried the rights of both franchise out of Disney's hands thanks to Hasbro's meddling. They proceeded to air the show on sister channel Boomerang instead, so they can have more airtime for their Cash-Cow Franchise, Ben 10 and its numerous spinoffs and sequels (Ben 10 and related shows were actually airing about 10 times a day on certain CN Asia feeds at that point). The kicker being that Boomerang has absolutely poor coverage in the region to the point where it is unavailable in certain countries even if said country has Cartoon Network. If the country does have Boomerang, chances are it's a premium channel that costs extra. When finally giving in to pressure from Asian fans of Strawberry Shortcake, they gave the show only one slot a day, at an ungodly hour of 6 in the morning on weekdays. Season 2 onwards did not air on Cartoon Network but on Boomerang. Boomerang has since been replaced by Toonami Asia, and neither Strawberry Shortcake or Care Bears are airing on either channel. And the side effect of all this? Hasbro's toy sales for Strawberry Shortcake plummet due to diminishing recognition. Hasbro SEA eventually stopped bringing in newer SSC toys because the first two waves just weren't moving off shelves.
  • It was conspired that Cartoon Network quietly launched Cartoonito Asia and aired Strawberry Shortcake and Adventures in Care-a-Lot. The catch? The channel was only available on exactly one pay TV provider in Thailand (CTH), the Philippines (SkyCable), and Indonesia (FirstMedia cable) each. Ironically, Malaysia and Singapore, which said three countries border, and the countries with the largest SSC fanbase of the ASEAN region, did not have any providers that carried the channel.
• DreamWorks' Dragons managed to subvert this in America by moving to Netflix after the second season, making it one of the few recent action shows that was on Cartoon Network to have more than two seasons. In Asia, it was airing only on weekdays in the late-night slots (around 10-11PM), but thankfully, DreamWorks Animation launched their own network in Asia and freed the franchise from CN's grasp so they can have it on their own network.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) was, from 2016 to 2022, non-existent to Cartoon Network in most of Europe, with the European dubs mostly being lost as a result. In 2023, Netflix added the first two seasons globally, killing this as a result.
• When the license of Naruto was acquired by Cartoon Network Latin America, many fans rejoiced. However, CN didn't consider airing it until 5 years later (In fact, they did not even start dubbing it before that). So, by the time the first episodes were airing, the rest of the world was already watching Shippuden. As of 2012, it seems improbable that we will reach the last season.
• Toonami suffered different fates in other countries. For example, while it did get its own channel in the UK (the renamed CNX) Cartoon Network eventually decided to remove all of the channel's identifiable features, baring the logo. The programming then slowly changed from anime and Western Animation, to some of the shows they didn't want to show on the main channel anymore, live-action shows, and even a block for young kids called Cartoonito. If you're familiar with the introduction of "special" program blocks on certain channels, you can probably guess that Toonami U.K eventually morphed into an entirely different network.
• Cartoon Network's handling of Transformers: Cybertron in Hungary, Romania, and Poland (from September 30, 2002, to September 30, 2009, these countries shared the same feed) was a mess. They left out the pilot from the get-go, repeating the following ~16 episodes for several months each weekday. After what seemed like an eternity, they continued with the rest of the series, randomly cutting off in the middle of the final story-arc. It went into reruns again (at least with the pilot), only to be taken off the air a couple of episodes before the series finale because the intended one-year timeframe of the series had ended. For a full year, they repeatedly kept fumbling up on airing all 51+1 episodes of the show, even though they screened it on every weekday. A couple of years later, they reran the preceding Transformers: Energon, but Cybertron didn't follow. At least in Hungary, a channel called Megamax picked up the show again in 2014, producing a new dub for it. There have been no scheduling difficulties.
• The Dutch feed of Cartoon Network would continue to air three Cartoon Cartoons, those being The Powerpuff Girls, Cow and Chicken and Dexter's Laboratory well into 2014, but they were shown once a night only, back-to-back, from 9:25 PM to 10:45 PM, when most kids would be asleep, although there could still have been some awake during Powerpuff Girls. They were later completely removed in May 2015, marking the end of an era. Nowadays, all timeslots between 8 PM and 6 AM are used for a ten-hour marathon of The Amazing World of Gumball.
  • For Powerpuff Girls, the Dutch dub went unre-released and almost completely lost for eight years after it was pulled off the channel as a result of the reboot, as Cartoon Network Europe, unlike the US, didn't give up faith in the reboot until 2023.
• The Dutch feed of Cartoon Network also treated Thomas & Friends quite poorly, with the show only airing at 7:45 am from the channel's launch on July 12, 1997 all the way to it's removal due to the Dutch feed being abolished. which was to be on July 31, 2001, but Thomas and other aqquired programs that CN had no Pan-European rights to stayed until August 3. Keep in mind this was before HIT Entertainment made Thomas into a preschool show, which would make this justified had it been after.
• The Luk Internacional English dub of Doraemon had this treatment in the UK on Boomerang. During its run, episodes aired on weekdays at 7:30 AM, a time in which most kids are getting ready for school. Eventually in October 2015, the series was removed from the network and replaced with What's New, Scooby-Doo? and Teen Titans Go! The network later put the series back on their schedule in December 2015, only for them to remove it again sometime in January 2016.
• Pip Ahoy! was pretty much given this treatment. It was signed up to be put on Cartoonito in Asia. Then 6 months later, when Cartoonito Asia folded, the show was not afforded the option to move to the relaunched Boomerang or the main CN Asia channel, and pretty much just vanished...

Toonami

• The original Toonami block was hit really bad by this. First it was moved from weekday afternoons to Saturdays only. Then, on March 17, 2007, the entire block had an abrupt visual makeover, dropping SARA and the Absolution without explanations (replacing them with two robot sidekicks and a jungle setting), and replacing the popular Tom 3.0◊ designs with the much less popular Tom 4.0◊. The ratings tanked, causing the block's cancellation on September 20, 2008. While fans assumed it was partly because of the redesigns, others believe it was because its flagship show, Naruto, was going through its infamous two seasons of filler and because of the block moving to Saturdays with nothing but reruns. The Toonami staff, through Toonami's Tumblr, state it was mainly because of budget cuts and the network retool and that Naruto had nothing to do with it. That doesn't stop fans from pinning the blame on Naruto's filler, much to Toonami head Jason DeMarco's constant displeasure.
• Assassination Classroom: Barely advertised and if it was, there didn't seem to be much enthusiasm for it, since it isn't as heavily action-oriented as its fellow series. While it stayed at a respectable time slot through its run, Toonami only aired it up to the Island Resort arc (the halfway point of the series) to make way for the third season of Food Wars. It took them almost a year later (January 2022) to start airing the second half of the series.
• In 2006, Code Lyoko became Cartoon Network's third most-watched show and eventually grew more popular as a series when its second and third seasons gained more views (its home country France had the show insanely popular there, too). However, when Miguzi ended, Code Lyoko was in its fourth season and was forced into summer and action Friday blocks before those two disappeared. Then the network decided to skip episode 78, making episode 79 look like an Ass Pull to those who watched it. Code Lyoko met its end when CN axed the show at episode 88, with only 6 episodes left unaired. Luckily, the remaining episodes were screened on their website, while the show aired reruns at 6am until it faded away. It was then revealed that an executive of Cartoon Network disliked the show.
  • The snub by CN was one of the reasons why Code Lyoko: Evolution was slated to only air on the Moonscoop-owned Kabillion.
• Hellsing Ultimate had some unintentional screwings for its Toonami airing. The show first premiered at the same 3:00 AM time slot as Tenchi Muyo! GXP, but despite that, it got some very good ratings for being on so late. Then the series was, without any warning, dumped for one week, so Toonami could play the rest of the episodes for Beware the Batman before it was to be written off by Cartoon Network. Despite being moved up a full hour to 2:00 AM the following week, it would appear that many viewers thought it was off for good; ratings numbers tanked and never recovered. But the really nasty surprise came when Toonami found out they did not have the rights to air the last two episodes, which had recently been dubbed and released by FUNimation. So the show was taken off two weeks early in exchange for InuYasha: The Final Act. The day was ultimately saved, however, as FUNi negotiated for Toonami to air the final two episodes during a month of movies in December 2014, and in a much better timeslot (starting off at Midnight, and lasting until 1:00/1:30 AM), and this was announced before the series aired its last episode at 2:00AM.
• Season 1 of IGPX aired on Toonami, and when executives weren't happy with the ratings, switched its time slot to right before [adult swim] in the middle of Season 2. What made things worse was that apart from a few commercials, they pretty much did not inform anybody of this move at all.
• Right out of the gate, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind was hit with the 2:30 AM death slot. It got some advertisements to tell fans when it was premiering, but they never bothered to advertise any new episodes. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that had delayed production of the dub, the show was temporarily removed in June 2020 with Ballmastrz: 9009 taking its place. When the show returned in early August, it was moved up to a much better timeslot of 12:30, but after just two episodes it was pulled off again for two weeks of animated Batman movies (not that the movies are a bad thing, considering how they rarely air movies or superhero stuff in general nowadays). The series returned in the same time slot on August 29th, and remained there before finally finishing its run in October.
• One might say that Toonami's decay began as early as 2000-2001 when Kids' WB! forced Cartoon Network to cut its 3-hour Toonami back down to 2 so they could air their own version of Toonami, canceling a few long-runners like Tenchi Muyo! and Sailor Moon. It picked up when 9/11 helped cause the cancellation of the original Mobile Suit Gundam (though some speculated that the actual reason for that show's cancellation was because it was showing its age when standing next to other more recent anime due to being created back in 1979) and had its entire run filled with Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z.
  • While [adult swim] brought back Toonami to fan approval, many lament that the block now only airs on late Saturday nights. The shows get good ratings considering their time slots and numerous people have expressed their support for Toonami, since it's still the only place on cable that airs adult-oriented anime and mature action cartoons. But then you realize that it's just a handful of people who are responsible for running and producing the block and its weekly showings. They have almost no budget and they have to do it in their free time; all for the fans who support them.
    • Beginning February 7, 2015, Toonami's schedule was cut in half, with all reruns of its shows (including Cowboy Bebop, which had just begun airing on the block for the first time in HD with fewer edits weeks before, Ghost in the Shell, and Samurai Jack) being unceremoniously pulled without some of them even getting a chance to finish.
• A lot of fans had hated the fact that Toonami's sister block Miguzi replaced Toonami during weekdays, but most of them started to enjoy the new block thanks to new shows like Code Lyoko and Totally Spies! as well as famous shows like Teen Titans and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003). Miguzi even managed to give us anime such as Yu-Gi-Oh! GX and Zatch Bell!, and became the new home for Pokémon: The Series after production for the English dub moved from 4Kids directly to The Pokémon Company International (back then Pokémon USA) and Kids' WB stopped airing it. ^note The move also had the pleasant side-effect of seeing two episodes from season 1 banned after 9/11 put back into rotation However, Miguzi's budget was cut. The block's new animation left out host Erin but kept the monsters, which fans disliked. Eventually, Miguzi was screwed over, leaving its shows to be scattered to the wind. One and a half years later, Toonami suffered the same fate.
• In America, Mobile Suit Gundam never even got to finish its first airing on Toonami as Cartoon Network used September 11th as an excuse to remove it, mostly due to low ratings. It's also thought that it was removed due to being created way back in 1979 and it was showing its age compared to the other anime shows on the block. The series later ran in full with decent advertising on [adult swim], albeit it's the same edited version that Toonami showed.
• Midway through its third season, My Hero Academia was moved from starting off the block at 10:30pm to ending the block at 3:30 in the morning and Toonami quit promoting it. It's worth noting that these dubbed episodes have been on Funimation's website and Hulu for months thanks to the former's SimulDub program and the show still brought in ratings better than several shows that aired before it. Fortunately, this trope would be inverted big time when the fourth season started airing.
• One Piece didn't have much luck on Cartoon Network's nor Adult Swim's version of Toonami.
  • In Cartoon Network's case, it began with the 4Kids dub moving from Fox. In 2007, it switched to the Funimation dub (beginning with episode 144), but the show only went to episode 167. Toonami was on the brink of cancellation around that time.
  • Years later on Adult Swim, the show's broadcast began with episode 207 and finished with episode 384. Jason DeMarco later stated this was due to legal and financial reasons; and it was against their wishes. Most can probably understand that the reasons for the show's scrapping were beyond the staff's control, but considering the show was consistently moved around the schedule ^note Later into One Piece's run, the block ratings actually went down when it started and went right back up after it ended; Toonami viewers were actually changing the channel to watch something else., on top of the simple fact that the show has been running for a VERY long time, it was very unlikely the rest of the series would finish its run either way.
• The Prince of Tennis and MÄR had an unusual version of this Trope happen to them. While they got a decent time slot, Cartoon Network decided to randomly skip episodes. Airing them out of order and sometimes jumping ahead 2-5 episodes for no real reason. Since these were serials, nobody could follow the plot. Eventually, they started over from Episode 1 and aired them in order, but it was too late. They were removed from the lineup and eventually removed from online. The most troubling part about this is that both shows were intended to be the replacements for the recently ended Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo.
• Rurouni Kenshin suffered on Cartoon Network after the network realized it probably should have gone to [adult swim]. The show moved from Toonami to the Saturday Video Entertainment System block without much warning, and the run ended at episode 62 (right before the anime-only third season) out of the 95 episodes total aired (despite CN acquiring the rights to the whole show).
• The original English dub of Saint Seiya, known as Knights of the Zodiac, got screwed over big time by CN and the poor treatment is thought by some to be the main reason it didn't catch on in the U.S. (despite its popularity everywhere else) until many years later. The show was originally aired at 7 PM on Saturdays as the flagship show for CN's extremely short-lived Saturday Video Entertainment System block, but for some inexplicable reason, after nine episodes CN abruptly kicked Knights to a death slot of 12:30 AM, causing its ratings to plummet big time, and to make matters worse, CN only aired 32 out of the 40 episodes that DiC had dubbed(the other eight only aired on YTV in Canada).
• Samurai Jack got this treatment when it was shown on the revival block. It was first put on the lineup in the 4:00 AM death slot without even any promotion, then to 4:30, and finally at the very end of the block at 5:30. Then the show got pulled along with the entire back half of the block (see above) before the final two episodes could air. Averted with Samurai Jack's fifth season, which was heavily promoted.
  • Although the production crew says otherwise, Western Animation in general seems to get this treatment as far as the revival block goes. The only time that a western show has aired at a time slot above 2:30 AM was back when Toonami expanded to six hours and Sym-Bionic Titan and Thunder Cats 2011 were airing at 2:00 AM and 2:30 AM, respectively. Nowadays, any western animation airing on Toonami (currently, Samurai Jack) gets shoved to the very back of the lineup, a place usually occupied by Cowboy Bebop and InuYasha, in favor of reruns of other anime (including the former). To be fair, though, much of the western shows airing on Toonami have been taken off due to circumstances out of the crew's control (Star Wars: The Clone Wars was taken off so that Disney XD can air Star Wars Rebels, and Beware the Batman and Sym-Bionic Titan were written off by Cartoon Network).
• After Tenchi Muyo! GXP didn't get quite the ratings hoped for on Toonami, it was moved from its 12:30 AM EST slot (right after Bleach, the highest-rated show) to 3 AM EST, the last premiering slot before reruns. The FUNimation.com page still listed the old time, and Adult Swim didn't let you view any of the episodes on their website without Adult Swim Gold (which wasn't available on many cable providers at the time), leaving fans of the show screwed unless they felt like pulling an almost all-nighter. Toonami eventually called out their poor handling of the show on Toonami Pre-Flight, listing it on their Top 6 Biggest Fails list.
• The Toonami crew told Cartoon Network that acquiring Wulin Warriors might not be such a great idea. They then proceeded to do it anyway, forcing Toonami to air the first two episodes before pulling the series due to backlash and low ratings.

Boomerang

• Much like NickRewind when it comes to their cash cow shows, Boomerang does this with every show that's not their main classic cartoons and (beginning in 2018) The Smurfs (1981). Boomerang typically airs other cartoons for about a month or two (usually in late night or early morning slots), then pulls them from its line-up. Some of those shows thankfully return to the schedule, but often from over 6 months to an entire year after being originally removed.
• While they were treated pretty well on their streaming service, the Boomerang channel itself was known to do this to its original programming. New episodes of these shows were usually aired during the middle of the night, when not very many kids are awake, with no advertising and few, if any, reruns. For a while, the only exceptions were Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz and Wacky Races (2017), as they had decent time slots and a great deal of reruns despite a lack of advertising. Fortunately, by 2020, this had become alleviated; Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?'s Boomerang debut received heavily advertising, burn offs of the aforementioned Dorothy and The Tom and Jerry Show were well advertised, and reruns of these shows became much more frequent.
• In October 2015, Boomerang debuted a weeknight schedule which consisted of a different show per night (Wabbit and Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! on Mondays, The Garfield Show on Tuesdays, Shaun the Sheep on Wednesdays, Sonic Boom on Thursdays, and DreamWorks Dragons on Fridays). However, low ratings and unfortunate timeslots caused Boomerang to end the block in December, with Dragons being removed from the schedule. Wabbit, Garfield and Be Cool stayed, and Shaun returned the following summer, with Garfield leaving the network by the end of 2016, while Shaun left in July 2017 and Sonic Boom left in March 2018.
• The UK version of Boomerang is very bad at this trope as well, screwing over their acquired faire and favouring Scooby-Doo and Tom and Jerry.
  • During My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic run on the channel during 2011-2012, it was treated very badly. The show frequently changed time slots many times throughout its run, and only the first thirteen episodes of Series 1 aired on a loop, even though the entire series had finished its run on The Hub at the time. It wasn't until January 2012 when adverts talking about a new series aired on the channel, which ended up being the second half of Series 1. As with the first half, Boomerang aired them in an endless loop. By March 2012, the show was silently ditched from Boomerang's schedule, and it wasn't until October 2012 when it was officially confirmed by an employee at CN UK that they no longer had the UK broadcast rights to the show in response to a fan's email. It would take a full year and six months for the series to air again in the United Kingdom when it premiered on Tiny Pop, who gave it far better treatment - airing all the series as well as airing the Equestria Girls movies.
  • Sonic Boom suffered from this treatment as well. The series gained high ratings when it premiered on the channel in June 2015, but as with Ponies, only the first thirteen episodes aired on an endless loop until more episodes aired in August 2015, but once again only 13-26 aired on a loop. The show was removed completely by the end of 2016, and wouldn't return to UK television until Pop acquired it in 2021 and aired the rest of the episodes, as well as Series 2.
• Care Bears: Unlock the Magic premiered on Boomerang in March 2019 at 7:00 AM, when the target audience was preparing for school. The first (and only) season has 52 episodes, but Boomerang released them at a snail's pace. By November 2020, most of the season had already aired in the UK, France, and Canada, among many others. Even then, Boomerang's release was wildly out of order, with the season finale being placed in the middle of the series.
  • To put this into perspective, the show premiered on the Boomerang app in February 2019. The show finished its run first in the UK in November 2019 (where it had premiered in April).
  • Knowing that it had little chance of succeeding if it continued to air exclusively on such a low-rated cable channel, Cartoon Network decided to move new episodes of Care Bears: Unlock the Magic over to their own channel in September 2021 as part of the U.S. version of Cartoonito's launch schedule, only for that series to ironically get screwed over by the very network who tried saving it (see the Cartoonito section above for more details).
• Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, Wacky Races (2017) and Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs were abruptly canceled for unknown reasons. In the case of the latter, it was canceled before it even got the chance to air on Boomerang in the United States, with the series instead making its American debut as an "original" series for HBO Max on September 30, 2021.
• When Ed, Edd n Eddy and Johnny Bravo returned to Boomerang's schedule for a brief time in the summer of 2018, Boomerang not only re-ran those shows for just 11 days (May 29-June 9), but the network also skipped a large portion of episodes, as opposed to it airing the two shows' episodes in their original airdate order. The former eventually returned in September 2020... only to be removed once again a few weeks later.
• When the remastered Garfield and Friends premiered in September 2019, it only aired at 12:00 PM on weekdays, when the target audience is in school. It was taken off shortly after, but when it came back in December, it was moved to the late-night hours (not unlike Toon Disney), where no one would be awake. The show was removed in August 2021, due to its broadcast rights switching over to Nickelodeon after that network's acquisition of the entire Garfield franchise. In addition, only a select number of episodes were re-run and not the entire series.
• Reruns of the Looney Tunes shorts weren't handled very well until 2013. Instead of airing them packaged altogether like Cartoon Network, Boomerang instead aired shorts featuring a specific character in its own package meaning if one of your favorite shorts was a one-off, you were mostly out of luck. To make matters worse, they were dropped from television altogether in 2007; Cartoon Network had dropped them in October 2004 and no other channel was airing the shorts at the time, though they would eventually bring them back in November 2009. It took them six years for Boomerang to bring the shorts back to their regular schedule. Nowadays, the shorts get the opposite treatment.

Indirectly screwed

• Cave Kids^note which was produced for syndication but does air on Cartoon Network in International markets was cancelled after just 8 episodes, ostensibly because Cartoon Network ordered Hanna Barbara to drop all other projects and focus on What A Cartoon! Show.

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