When I was ten, Friday nights officially became Cartoon-Cartoon Friday's in my mind. I'd spend all night watching Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Cow & Chicken, Ed Edd & Eddie, Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Kids Next Door, yeah alright you get the idea. I nearly popped a blood vessel when I heard about Cartoon Network Reality. Isn't the name itself a complete oxymoron? Granted, it's not the first live action show to hit the channel. I remember a show called Big Bag that used live action and puppets, but it still had animated segments. To see CN of all things being reduced to showing awful reality shows (aka the genre that pretty much killed good TV) completely baffles me.
Same goes for Nickelodeon. Only they were already showing signs of turning crappy around the time I started outgrowing it. I remember when they announced they were bringing back All That with a brand new cast. Awesome, I loved All That! Clever jokes and recurring sketches and characters made it a hit. So what did we get with the new cast? Well, I remember I watched a few episodes and realized it was nothing but unfunny toilet humor. Another show called As Told By Ginger was pretty much an animated sitcom/drama aimed at tween girls. It seemed harmless at the time, but now it's obvious that was where the station was headed. Those two shows are what signaled the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.
(Oh, and you can't forget the Rugrats growing up into troubled teenagers)
