ATLANTA (AP) - Hoping to do with Yogi Bear and Popeye
what he did with the news, Ted Turner on Tuesday announced
plans to launch a 24-hour all-cartoon network.
The Cartoon Network, a basic cable television channel, will
debut Oct. 1, Turner said. The network will feature cartoons
from Turner Broadcasting System Inc.'s vast stock of animated
features, which was bolstered last year by the $320 million
purchase of the Hanna-Barbera library.
"We think we'll be competing with everyone programming
for young people," Turner said. "Like with CNN, we're
competing with anyone running news or information."
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The cartoons-only channel will be Turner's fifth major cable
TV network, joining the TBS Superstation, TNT, Cable News
Network CNN Headline News and SportSouth.
Turner acknowledged these are shaky economic times to be
launching a new network, but said the fact that TBS owns
most of the Cartoon Network's programming will keep the
start-up costs down.
Hanna-Barbera includes such popular titles as "The Flintstones"
and "The Jetsons." With that, plus Turner's earlier acquisition
of the MGM film library, which includes "Tom & Jerry,"
TBS now owns 3,800 half-hour blocks of cartoons.
The new network will lose one competitor in August, when
NBC cancels its Saturday morning cartoon show because of
declining ratings. But another competitor, the children-oriented
network Nickelodeon, already has captured a sizeable chunk
of the cartoon audience on cable.
