Misplaced Pages

Adult Swim

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 69.119.248.137 (talk) at 00:00, 4 May 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 00:00, 4 May 2006 by 69.119.248.137 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
File:Adultswim-logo1.png
The Adult Swim logo.

Adult Swim, usually rendered on bumps, is the name for the adult-oriented television programming block on Cartoon Network. It premiered on September 2, 2001. On March 28, 2005, Nielsen Media Research began treating the block as a separate channel from Cartoon Network for ratings purposes. While unusual, this is not new. Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. and Nick at Nite blocks are also considered as separate channels by Nielsen.

Originally a Sunday-only block (that also re-ran on Thursdays), Adult Swim now airs Monday-Thursdays at 10:30 PM, Sundays at 10:00 PM, and Saturdays at 11:00 PM (all times Eastern/Pacific), with an encore airing at 2 AM and then ending with older shows (depending if there is any time left, as on Sundays the programing encore ends at 6:00 AM, leaving no time for old shows). Adult Swim programming may also be viewed online via Adult Swim Fix on adultswim.com. The block, programmed by Williams Street Studios, the same group that created Toonami and Miguzi, plays American animated series and shorts geared towards adults, and a wide variety of Japanese anime series and OVAs. Promotions for Adult Swim have been targeted towards the college age group (18-24), which constitutes the majority of their viewers. According to a September 1, 2004 article in Promo magazine, this form of advertising is used for many of their shows. Representatives are sent to 30 universities across the U.S. to promote the Adult Swim lineup, including handing out posters for students' dorm rooms.

The block is named after the hours designated at public swimming pools for adults-only swimming.

Originally, all of the bumps shown in between shows featured footage of senior citizens swimming in public pools with a lifeguard shouting through a megaphone. The current bumps feature black "cards" with white text on them, which discuss everything from news about the programming, to personal staff opinions on unrelated subjects. On Thursdays, Adult Swim airs cards which they pull from the Adult Swim message board and respond with their characteristic banter.

Coming Soon

On March 30th, 2006, Adult Swim announced brand new acquisitions and returning series. They have officially announced that the anime series BLEACH and Eureka Seven will premiere on Adult Swim. Bleach will premiere in the fall and Eureka Seven premiered on April 15th.

Adult Swim announced the return of many series including:

Adult Swim also announced many new Comedy shows.

Classic TV

  • Saved by the Bell - It has been promoted as airing the "eight best episodes of all time." While many thought it may have been a hoax, the episode "The Gift" actually aired on Tuesday, April 18th at midnight. While it aired, the TV logo in the bottom right corner read instead of . This was in response to a regular user of their forums stating that if they showed Saved By the Bell they would have to change their name to such to become more accurate; the network complied as a joke.

Two pilots were announced:

Movie

  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force: According to Adult Swim programming manager Kim Manning, a motion picture based on the series will come to select art house theaters in the fall of 2006 .

Current Schedule

All times are US Eastern (UTC -5). The programming block's encore begins at 2:00 AM. Premiere episodes in bold.

Sunday

New episodes of some shows premiere on Sunday.

As of April 23, 2006

Monday-Wednesday

As of May 1, 2006

Thursday

As of May 4, 2006

Adult Swim Fix

Main article: Adult Swim Fix
File:Asf2.jpg
The Adult Swim Fix logo


AdultSwim.com launched Friday Night Fix on Friday, September 16, 2005, as a way for Adult Swim fans to view programming on the one day of the week that the programming block does not currently air (the airtime currently being occupied by a rebroadcast of Cartoon Network's Fridays programming block), and was originally available only on Fridays during the hours that Adult Swim normally aired on weeknights. On March 27, 2006, Adult Swim changed Friday Night Fix into the Adult Swim Fix. Adult Swim Fix runs every hour of every day and shows premiere episodes on Fridays from 6PM to 6AM Eastern Time. Adult Swim Fix plays streaming episodes which means that they play right in your browser and cannot be downloaded. The lineup includes one episode each of seven or more shows (depending on episode length) and it refreshes with new programming on a weekly basis. The offerings include a first-look at premieres before they make their on-air debuts two nights later, as well as current favorites, plus archival episodes of certain shows. Adult Swim Fix requires a fast internet connection and uses Windows Media Player to stream the video and audio. This feature is only available for the continental United States.

Most recently, Samurai Champloo, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig, and Eureka Seven began airing on Adult Swim Fix, making them ASF's first three anime titles.

Saturday

Launched on February 23, 2002 the Saturday Action Block originally ran 3 hours from 11PM - 2AM. This schedule varies week-to-week, but is dominated by anime programs, and on rare occasions Saturday's usual schedule will be partially or fully pre-empted to allow Adult Swim to air movies or OVAs (the first being Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack). In recent months, the Saturday schedule was changed to include comedy shows in an attempt to boost ratings; however, it is still made up of mostly anime.

As of April 14th, 2006

Shows: Past, present, and future

Main article: List of programs broadcast by Adult Swim

Video on Demand

In mid-2004, Adult Swim launched a video on demand channel on various cable TV providers. The comedy section features several episodes from various Adult Swim original series, while the action section only features programs and movies licensed by Bandai Entertainment, some of which have never been broadcast on Adult Swim or CN. The anime series s-CRY-ed initially premiered on demand before debuting on the regular block in May 2005.

Podcast

Adult Swim announced on Tuesday, March 21st 2006 of a video podcast that they are offering on Apple's iTunes. The podcasts will start off by featuring Behind the Scenes segments of shows, and they are working their way to new and exclusive content, like a look at Brendon Small and Tommy Blacha's new show "Dethklok" with footage of their performance at SXSW. You need to have iTunes on your computer, which is a free download.

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it.

Forum

Adult Swim has an active message board at its official Web site. Some quotes from the forum are used on the channel in weekly bumps aired Thursdays, including the now infamous "cus anime is teh s uck." Williams Street Studios staff also frequents the board to answer viewer questions and address comments about Adult Swim programming. There are ten boards on the forum. The ten boards are:

  • Williams Street Culture - This folder pertains to all things Williams Street--the b&w bumps, music used in the b&w bumps, show talent, staff members, Adult Swim merchandise, owls, etc.
  • AdultSwim.com - Talk about clips, games, message boards and anything current on the site.
  • Action Discussion - Topics concerning the shows in the Action block.
  • Action Show Suggestions - Topics concerning Action shows you would like to see on Adult Swim in the future.
  • Other Anime - This is the place for threads concerning any anime outside of Adult Swim.
  • Comedy Discussion - Topics concerning the shows in the Comedy block.
  • Comedy Show Suggestions - Topics concerning Comedy shows you would like to see on Adult Swim in the future.
  • Babbling - General discussion about life, music and video games.
  • Incoherent Babbling - A folder for complete nonsense. It is described as "Babbling minus intelligence". This folder is by far AdultSwim.com's most popular folder because it is a haven for popular members like the legendary KIBA_669.
  • Rants - Tirades from angry people.

Trivia

This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Adult Swim" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (Learn how and when to remove this message)
  • Despite lukewarm success in Japan, the series The Big O was given a second season due entirely to popularity in the U.S.A. and CN funding (although its creation and direction were still left to the Japanese creators). There are accusations that the show was cancelled (or more properly not renewed for a third season) because Mike Lazzo threatened to quit if it was continued. There is debate over whether or not this is true.
  • As mentioned above, the third episode of Lupin III, "To Be or Nazi Be" was unaired by Geneon's request. This call may have been made to prevent bad taste in the United States. However, the episode is previewed at the end of the second episode. This episode did see release on DVD in the US, but that too was delayed until a later release; however, the previews were switched to reflect this change.
  • In Latin America (Chile, specifically) Adult Swim’s debut sparked minor controversy, as CNT (National TV Council) deemed the contents of the block were not appropriate for a children’s channel, despite the fact that Adult Swim airs from 1 am forward. This policy was embraced by local cable companies, which moved the block to another channel frequency (a supposed "agreement" with Cartoon Network), while satellite TV companies kept the original broadcasts, as they offer parental control features. This situation was supposed to affect only the premiere of the block (7/10/2005), but has been subsequently enforced by cable companies so far. However Adult Swim continues to air as scheduled in Latin America on its English and Spanish broadcast feeds. Fridays to Sundays from 1am to 5am.
  • After Fox cancelled Family Guy, Adult Swim began airing reruns of the show beginning in the Spring of 2003. Unlike its days on Fox, Family Guy has had consistent time slots since, at either 11 PM or 11:30 PM Eastern time, with Futurama at the other slot (Fox moved Family Guy around to as many as 28 different time slots before officially canceling the show in 2002). That, plus with the show being released on DVD at the same time, brought unexpected popularity to the series and eventually ended up convincing Fox to bring back the show, which began re-airing in May 2005. Under a special agreement with Fox, Adult Swim airs the new episodes at least two weeks after they debut on Fox, but Fox must have advertising for Adult Swim during the show's airing on its network. Included in the same deal was Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane's new series, American Dad!
  • Futurama has also found new life in syndication on Adult Swim, enjoying high ratings as a benefit of also receiving a steady time slot. When it aired on Fox, Futurama was put in the virtually dead-air time of 7:00 PM. The primary drawbacks of this were that not many people were watching TV that early at night; and Futurama contains more "adult" humor (as in "not suitable for younger children") than its parent show, The Simpsons, so Futurama would have benefited more from a late evening timeslot after 8 o'clock, like it has on Adult Swim now. However, the biggest drawback was that many televised sports (especially football) run overtime into this programming block, so Futurama was constantly being pre-empted by sports. It was thus hard for it to develop a large viewership, because it was often difficult to determine whether or not it was even being shown. A testament to just how much Futurama got mistreated is that only four seasons of Futurama were actually produced, but so many episodes were pre-empted so often that even when the show was canceled, there was still an entire season's worth of backlogged episodes that were subsequently aired, resulting in five "airing seasons." The high ratings has also helped the show to get four direct-to-DVD movies greenlit and possibly new episodes.
  • The start of each hour of Adult Swim programming is easily identified by the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" logo (which resembles the warning seen on explicit CDs) followed by a warning that the shows may not be appropriate for children under the age of 14. Originally, there was no warning, but as the programming became more popular, a message was put up to alert parents. It stated that the appropriate age for viewers was 18 and older. It then went on to say that the viewer could expect intense violence, sexual situations, coarse language, and suggestive dialogue. When Adult Swim changed to its current format, the description was dropped to shorten the message. Soon after, the warning logo was added and the age was changed to 14. Many saw this as more appropriate since nothing had been shown on the network higher than a TV-14 rating. Ironically, Adult Swim has since started to show TV-MA rated programming but has yet to change the age on its warning. In addition, on Adult Swim's first night on September 2, 2001, the "TV-14" bug was left on the screen for the entire duration of the block, excluding commercials and promos.
  • As of March 19, 2006, Adult Swim has deemed two single episodes of two shows to contain levels of violence and graphic content necessitating their own disclaimer, above and beyond the disclaimer used for the block. The episodes were episode 10 of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Jungle Cruise and episode 51 of Fullmetal Alchemist, Laws and Promises.
  • In keeping with the pool theme, Adult Swim's original introduction showed several older men and women in a public swimming pool eating, exercising, and doing other pool-related activities. When the Saturday night block started in 2002, it originally featured clips from the various anime programs displayed on the block, and featured a computer-generated voice heard when the current show would break for a commercial.
  • The original theme music for Adult Swim was D-Code by Dust Devil. The music appeared in the dance video game In The Groove 2.
  • Adult Swim is notorious for their April Fools pranks. In 2004, they ran the first episode of Witch Hunter Robin with crudely drawn graffiti (moustaches, goatees, and glasses) on the characters' faces (they later re-ran the episode the following night unaltered). This was also done during the second run of Futurama and Family Guy, since those episodes still aired on March 31st during the first run. In 2005, the ranks of the Message Board users were switched, switching the names & colors for the highest ranks (at the time, SwimLegend, which is white), with the lowest rank (SwimNewbie, which is forest green), and so on. The rank SwimFan, which was the absolute middle rank at the time, changed shades of orange and became "SnapIntoASwimJim". The moderators on the boards also changed their mod names for the day. In 2006, Adult Swim ran their Saturday schedule out of order. This included Chuck Norris' Karate Kommandos being run at 11PM in place of Inuyasha, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GiG at 11:30, which was edited with fart sound effects in unexpected moments, and Fullmetal Alchemist at its normal time of midnight which also was intercut with fart sounds. The 12:30 encore presentation of 2nd GiG ran unaltered. At 1:00AM, in place of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Adult Swim ran Boo Boo Runs Wild, a special that was run every Sunday throughout January and February. Cowboy Bebop's run at 1:30 was replaced with the Ruby-Spears cartoon Mr. T. All the intro bumps ran normally as if the schedule was unchanged.
  • On April 16, 2006, Adult Swim aired an angry fan letter about the showing of Saved By The Bell. The fan letter stated that they should change their name to "Crappy 1980's Live Action Television Show Network." Adult Swim complied and changed their logo to match the name with the formatting. All shows from that point on during the night aired with a logo instead of the regular one. Many complaints from fans use similar messages.

External links

AT&T
Board of
directors
Current
Former
Communications
Latin America
Buildings and
facilities
Current
Former
Other
Categories: