The Domino Effect of the Boston Mooninite Incident

January 31, 2007, is a day that would live in infamy in Adult Swim's lore. On that day, an ad agency hired by Cartoon Network installed LED light panels featuring Mooninites from the Adult Swim series Aqua Teen Hunger Force throughout several major cities, most notably Boston, Massachusetts, to promote a movie based on the series. 

The light panels were placed in random points throughout the city that people felt they were explosives, and this caused a bit of a panic. A lot of chaos and fallout came out of that incident that would ultimately lead to the craziest cycle of events in media history to the point of having a pair of media juggernauts, a nepo baby-lead company that has completely ignored the media company he just bought and a tech company that has altered the film and television industries this century, are fighting each other for control of the biggest media company on the planet, Warner Bros Discovery.

It's a wild ride, so let me try to explain each domino as much as I can:

Domino #1: The incident. I explained that earlier. To say this was an overreaction is putting it mildly. If anything, it was a generational overreach that made Boston and the news outlets that covered the story as out-of-touch reactionaries who didn't understand millennial pop culture. 

Domino #2: Jim Samples resigns from Cartoon Network. Cartoon Network didn't come out of this unscathed. While many within Adult Swim and Williams Street got very little reprimand as a result of the Boston incident (even though it's very likely that the higher-ups within Williams Street met with the team responsible for creating and installing the lightboards and paid them a ridiculously-small fee to make them, but we don't talk about that for some reason), Jim Samples, the general manager of Cartoon Network and the Executive Vice President of The Cartoon Network, Inc., fell on his sword and resigned from the network because in his view, this happened on his watch and felt ultimately responsible for what happened within it. He was ultimately replaced by Stuart Snyder, a dude who took Samples' two-year experiment of live-action productions on Cartoon Network to the extreme and emphasized on more productions with no animated tie-ins whatsoever. That would be another domino run on it's on, but I'm focusing on this particular path for now.

Domino #3: Samples becomes president of HGTV. Jim Samples wasn't jobless for long. He moved from Turner Broadcasting to Scripps Networks Interactive, the cable network division of E.W. Scripps that owned and operated the Food Network, DIY, and HGTV. Samples became president of HGTV in September 2007 ultimately turning around the direction of that network during his tenure. He expanded programming like House Hunters, helped launched new shows like Love It or List It, and brought in a pair of Canadian twin brothers, Drew and Jonathan Scott, into the network fold and gave their Property Brothers series a global home. HGTV ultimately became the #1 network for women and routinely ranked high in the Nielsens week after week. Under Samples' leadership, HGTV created a cozy television atmosphere that would eventually bring in similar programs like Fixer Upper, Fixer to Fabulous, Home Town, and 100 Day Dream Home as well as expand the HGTV brand outside of television with consumer goods and magazines under his watch.

Domino #4: AT&T buys Time Warner, and Discovery buys Scripps Networks Interactive. In 2016, tech company AT&T announces plans to buy Time Warner ultimately making it a new subsidiary renamed WarnerMedia. In 2017, Discovery, Inc. bought Scripps Network Interactive from E.W. Scripps largely based on the popularity of HGTV. 

Domino #6: WarnerMedia launches HBO Max, and Discovery launches discovery+. In 2020, WarnerMedia launched its own direct-to-consumer streaming service, HBO Max.  A year later, Discovery launched its own DTC streaming platform, discovery+, whose programming was largely built up on TLC, HGTV, and Food Network shows. 

Domino #7: WarnerMedia and Discovery merge to form Warner Bros Discovery. In 2022, AT&T spins off WarnerMedia and merges it with Discovery, Inc. via a Reverse Morris Trust and forms Warner Bros Discovery. Almost immediately, Wall Street investors claim the merged company would end up being sold as one unit or sold for parts. 

Domino #8: Warner Bros Discovery rebrands HBO Max as MAX to emphasize the Discovery-branded additions to the streamer. In fall 2022, Discovery-made programming began to appear on HBO Max much to the displeasure of many subscribers at the time who noticed Warner-owned shows disappearing from the service around the same time, including library shows from Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. Initially, WBD announced that HBO Max and discovery+ would be merged into a new single streaming platform, MAX. However, the company decided to keep discovery+ its own separate service but still put a bulk of Discovery-owned programming and originals exclusively on MAX. 

Domino #9: Cartoon Network Studios is consolidated with Warner Bros Animation. This consolidation meant that The Cartoon Network, Inc. would no longer own the Cartoon Network/Adult Swim library. Which means that for accounting purposes, Cartoon Network has to pay for its own formerly in-house programming. 

Domino #10: Warner Bros Discovery decides to split its operations into two units. By fall 2024, WBD decided to split the company in half largely due to David Zaslav stupidly saying that WBD didn't need the NBA anymore the decline of linear cable television, which was, ironically, created because of the growth of streaming services like Peacock, Paramount+, Disney+, and HBO Max which pointed viewers away from their networks. The dopes. The streaming and studios side that also included HBO, TCM, DC, and Max, and the global networks side which included Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and HGTV as well as streamer discovery+. 

Domino #11: MAX is rebranded HBO Max. Largely because of this split, MAX deemphasized the Discovery content in their annual upfronts and renamed the streamer HBO Max. 

Domino #12: Warner Bros Discovery officially announces its complete split and probably puts itself for sale. Not too long after the upfronts, Warner Bros Discovery officially decided to split the company in half. The streaming/studios side would become The Warner Bros Company, and the global networks group would become Discovery Global. Around the time WBD announced they would split the company in half, they started putting out feelers for potential buyers even though they really didn't have to. Among the first potential buyers was Paramount Skydance, the recently-merged MAGA, um, mega-media conglomerate "owned" by tech scion and spoiled nepo baby David Ellison, who acts like he already owns the company by publicly stating how he'd shutter HBO and HBO Max in favor of pushing everything to Paramount+ and shutting down superfluous and similar units of WBD not long after firing thousands of employees. WBD had refused Skydance's offers over and over, and Skydance refuses to take no for an answer enlisting several foreign leaders from Middle Eastern countries to buy pieces of the company in a bid. 

Domino #13: Netflix and Skydance go to war about who will control all or part of Warner Bros Discovery. Meanwhile, other bidders came forward, most notably Comcast, which is the owner of NBC Universal, and Netflix, which is the owner of, um, Netflix (really, that's all they own). The difference between the Skydance bid and the others is that Skydance wants the whole company despite not having the money to buy it all while the others only want the more lucrative streaming and studios unit. In December 2025, Warner Bros Discovery announced they would merge with Netflix after spinning off the global networks group. Infuriated, Skydance acted like a petulant child and a stalker and threatened to sue and continues to take no for an answer time and time again.  At the time of this writing, they're still whining and fighting with WBD and Netflix. It's not over yet, and this fight continues.

In the nearly 20 years since the Boston Mooninite incident, a lot has happened, and companies' fates have changed. Now. we're at a period where the future of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim (and even HGTV) is up in the air with its ownership uncertain in the years ahead. Did the Boston incident really set up what we're seeing today? I don't think I could really say yes or no here because the moment that Jim Samples left Cartoon Network, something radically changed the direction of the industry.