Thoughtnami™

Starting today, I'm putting up a few of my older articles I wrote for my Post account.  For those who wonder what Post was, think Twitter, but for journalists and writers who talked a lot about anything. Considering I liked to do that, this was a draw for me. Sadly, Post didn't last and ended earlier in 2024. I'm not going to repost everything I made there (a few were a little too personal), just a small selection of Post articles that still resonate and seem like a good read. Enjoy - jh.  I was thinking about how cable television was once used as a tool against public television by Congress only to become irrelevant in educational programming by the turn of the century.  It all began where a lot of weird modern media trends began - the 1990s.  Back in the 1990s, politicians threatened to cut public broadcasting funding and pushed broadcast networks to provide three hours of weekly E/I programming because they said that cable provided similar programming without taxpayers f

Okay, that was a bit of an overreaction.  I'm tired.  I don't think I can do this anymore. I'm tired. I'm done. I feel broken. I can't do this anymore.  The internet isn't the place I first stepped into back when I first got online in 1996. This isn't the same internet I used to log on a dial-up modem when I got my first home computer in 1997. This isn't the same internet I started my first really successful webpage on GeoCities back in 1998. This isn't the same internet I found a great community of friends back in 1999.  This isn't the same internet I found the love of my life over a decade ago. This isn't the same internet I found many friends through Twitter back in 2008. That internet is gone.  GeoCities died a long time ago. My old webpage is history. That old community has devolved into a group of whiners.  The love of my life died almost three years ago.  The site formerly known as Twitter is now just a white supremacist playground. wh

Over a month ago, I wrote this article about how Disney should fully embrace the growing FAST market and launch channels that are untethered to apps or streaming services as well as providing several I'd like to see them create. A lot has changed in a month, and Disney shut down all of their free TV Everywhere-connected apps with the exception of ABC News Now. The ABC, Disney Now, Nat Geo, ESPN, FX, and Freeform apps are dead, and everything that those apps offered to cable consumers who wanted their shows on the go are now locked behind a paywall on Disney+ and Hulu.  The ABC app was interesting because they had several FAST channels, or as they called them, Unlocked Channels, connected to it. Among them: 20/20 ABC News Live General Hospital Spotlight Press Your Luck To Tell The Truth To Catch A Smuggler Wicked Tuna Car Chases True Life Stories The Incredible Dr. Po ABC News Live ESPN 8: The Ocho Cesar Milan Better Human, Better Dog Life Below Zero Lost Treasures Supernanny Days

Before I begin, I have to preface this with message: THIS IS NOT REAL NOR IS IT GOING TO HAPPEN.  This is a speculative concept that imagines a scenario where something is possible using what a company has access to. I am not an employee of The Walt Disney Company nor are privy to anything the unit is doing behind closed doors. What I'm presenting here is a work of fiction. The content presented here are the machinations of a guy who thinks entirely too much about stupid crap like this on a regular basis. I just needed to get it out of my system the only way I could - through graphical and written analytical presentations Now, the article. Enjoy: Disney HATES the word "free." I think that's been a part of the company's DNA since it was created because the Disney brothers were betrayed by the husband of their original distributor and didn't want to just give away things anymore. The company has always been resistant of putting their wares on freely-available ou

 If you've followed Thoughtnami over the past 20 years, thank you for your patronage and your support . It's so great to be back writing posts like this after all of these years. It feels more natural and less constrictive than tweets and occasional posts across social media. You also know that when it comes to one particularly Hollywood media company, I have a love-hate relationship with them. And that studio has had many names during the course of those two decades. AOL Time Warner.  Time Warner. WarnerMedia. Warner Bros Discovery. And they've all been called "the most poorly run media company" by me throughout those two decades. Now, granted, I may be a little hyperbolic with that statement. They're really not the most poorly run media company (looking at you both, Paramount Global and Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment), but considering the two years the current management team of David Zaslav (President and CEO), Gunnar Wiedenfels (Chief Financial O

I've always wondered what my villain origin story was.  I have to think it began when I got my first "Where can you find the CNX channel on the cable dial in London?" all those years ago. When I began CNX: Toonami Revolution back in 1998, CNX was always a dream to create a Toonami network. From that dream, I created a webpage, started a community, built an inner circle with like-minded friends, joined a great group of fans who became my online family. I got noticed by Cartoon Network, befriended the creators of the block that inspired me, and ended up brainstorming with others at the channel, especially international locales, about what a Toonami channel could look like. Didn't know they'd actually do it.  Didn't know they'd take my name, something I built for years, either.  I rebuilt myself, created new names, but the damage was done. It was the beginning of a long trip that made me forever have trust issues with everybody. It scarred me for life. It'

I guess the vineyards heard the news that the Boomerang streaming platform is shutting down on September 30 with many of the shows on the site migrating over to MAX, and everybody is being completely rational and acting mature and cordial about this latest news from Warner Bros Discovery. I'm lying, of course. They're panicking, freaking out, and being pessimistic about the fate of everything around them. In other words, it's another day that ends in "Y" to my English-speaking friends.  Look, I completely empathize with those worried about the future of the shows on the Boomerang app. Warner Bros Discovery hasn't exactly been the best steward of animation in recent years.  Granted, they're still putting animated titles on physical home media including high-quality restorations of shows, shorts, and movies, putting more of the library on many streaming platforms including Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, and Freevee (which exclusively houses WB TV's Cartoon Rewind

A long time ago, I first watched an MGM short directed by Chuck Jones, The Bear That Wasn't. The 1967 short, based on a 1946 children's book by director and animator Frank Tashlin, was about a bear who, after awakening from hibernation, finds himself in the middle of a busy city and a building site. The bear is mistaken for a worker by a foreman on the site and protests that he's not a human. The foreman tells him he's just a silly man in a fur coat who needs a shave and demands him to go to work right on the spot, which the bear reluctantly does much to his protests. The bear tries to plead his case only to be repeated the same line over and over again that he's just a silly man in a fur coat who needs a shave. The bear is also told he's not really a bear because he's not in a cage in a zoo with other bears. This causes the bear to just surrender to what people have told him and decides to just accept it.  Months pass, and he finds himself uncomfortable in

I don't do posts like this often, so forgive the brief promotional break. Think of this as a pledge break segment like they do on public television in the States.  (You totally should support your local public media outlets if you can) I'm currently a freelance creator on a very, very fixed income. Haven't really gotten many professional gigs lately (still waiting for payment for a job I did a couple of weeks ago before my keyboard broke on me) and considering I'm also a caregiver, I can't really leave home for lengthy periods of time.   If you like what I do around these parts, various social outlets (I'm mostly on BlueSky and the site formerly branded as Twitter ), and on Quora  (where I answer a lot of questions), you could always support me.  If you want to send me a financial tip, you could send me one via PayPal . Every little bit helps out with groceries and medicine and other expenses that come up. If you want to send me a gift, you could send me one fr

Continuing where we left off , I have to acknowledges that Adult Swim seems to be the home of originals on Cartoon Network, and they’re investing in a lot of original programming. Toonami is a home for a lot of those action-packed originals. Granted the first batch of originals, most of which were co-produced with other partners including Crunchyroll, came and went barely moving the needle. Blade Runner: Black Lotus ,  Fena: Pirate Princess, and Shenmue the Animation will likely never see the light of day again. Housing Complex C lasted as long as a sneeze and just as memorable as one. Toonami had more luck with the four FLCL “sequels” and Ninja Kamui, the latter of which had very good numbers during its run in Spring 2024. As Kamui was winding down, Toonami began pushing another high-profile project. No, it wasn’t Uzumaki , which had been delayed numerous times since it was initially announced in 2019 mostly because of the COVID-19 epidemic that’s still going on and various other

Previously, I talked about how the anime marketplace has changed dramatically and limits what Toonami can and can't pick up. That's not to say they don't air newer shows.  It's just a little harder to get, and sometimes, you have to pick up more reliable fare that fans already love. As much as people don't want to admit or accept it, nostalgia works for Toonami. The only thing about nostalgia is that you can't fully embrace it if you want to survive. Toonami currently airs a small handful of shows from the major distributors, but they’re not as plentiful as they once were. They'll get a high-profile show every once in a blue moon like Lycoris Recoil,   Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, or infrequent cycles of Demon Slayer (by the way, the Swordsman Village arc will premiere on Toonami on August 10), but they're already second-run shows by the time they hit the block, not US premieres. Again, that’s partially the fault of the marketplace limiting what