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Adult Swim

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File:Adultswim-logo.png
The Adult Swim logo

Adult Swim, usually rendered [adult swim] on bumps, is the name for the adult-oriented television programming block on Cartoon Network. It premiered on September 2, 2001. It has since become its own channel for ratings purposes, and shares its station number with Cartoon Network in a night/day switchoff.

Originally a Sunday-only block (that also re-ran on Thursdays), Adult Swim now airs Saturday through Thursday nights at 11 PM Eastern/Pacific (10 PM on Sundays) with an encore airing at 2 AM and then ending with an hour of older shows. Adult Swim programming may also be viewed on Friday nights via Friday Night 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) and young adults 18-34, 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. For example, recently a man calling himself Charles J. McCarthy III has been actively campaigning to be hired by the network with marginal success. He posted a message on the Adult Swim message board that read, "Tell Adult Swim to hire me." Adult Swim responded with the message, "Sorry, we don't need anymore janitors."

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.


Current Schedule

All times are Eastern. The programming block's encore begins at 2:00 AM. Premiere episodes in bold.

Sunday

Sunday usually acts as a night to encore the new episodes of Family Guy and American Dad from the previous Thursday. Also, new episodes of some shows premiere on Sunday.

[As of January 22, 2006]

Monday-Wednesday

[As of January 2, 2006]

Thursday

Friday Night Fix

AdultSwim.com launched Friday Night Fix on Friday, September 16, 2005. It offers full-length, streaming video over the internet of Adult Swim's original comedies every Friday night. The lineup includes one episode of seven or more shows and it refreshs periodically. 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. Friday Night Fix requires a fast internet connection and Windows Media Player. It uses the Windows Media Player to stream the video and audio right in a users browser. Friday Night Fix runs every Friday from 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM eastern.

Saturday

Launched on February 23, 2002 the Saturday Action Block originally ran 3 hours from 11pm (est)- 2am (est). 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 January 2006, the Saturday schedule was changed to include comedy shows, however, it is still made up of mostly anime.

The following is the schedule in January 2006.

Shows: Past, present, and future

Main article: List of programs broadcast by Adult Swim

Single Episode Pilots and Specials

Movies Played on 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.

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 frequent 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".
  • Rants - Tirades from angry people.

Trivia

  • 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 not. There is debate over whether this is true or not.
  • 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.
  • 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 Broadcasting 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 cancelling 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 it's 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 and entire season's worth of backlogged episodes that were subsequently aired, resulting in five "airing seasons".
  • One of the most conteversial segments Adult Swim aired was The Star Syndicate shorts, which included low budget flash animations that aired between some shows in the Fall of 2005. Some of the more popular shorts made included "If the cast of Seinfeld had AIDS" and "The lost episode of Double Dare" The shorts occasionally made references to Family Guy, claiming that the show was unoriginal and should be cancelled. The references angered some viewers, mainly because Family Guy was Adult Swim's highest rated show. The shorts were pulled from Adult Swim due to viewers complaining about the graphic content included in the shorts. However, the creators of the shorts argued with executives that Adult Swim was solely made for the adult demographic. It is being rumored that The Star Syndicate may produce a show with Saturday Night Live writer Robert Smigel for Adult Swim in 2006.
  • The start of each hour of Adult Swim programming is easily identified by the "Parental Advisory: Explict Content" logo (which resembles the warning seen on explict 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 dialoge. 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 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, 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.
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