After A 2017 Rumble, Cartoon Network And Nickelodeon Ready For Additional Battles For Primetime-Fringe Dollars In 2018

This thing’s just getting heated up.

Late last year, the kidsnet battles for those primetime/fringe advertising dollars came to a head, especially during the holiday season when Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon did everything they could to battle out for kids eyes with the likes of Spongebob Squarepants, The Loud House, Adventure Time, and other popular franchises being used as the networks’ respective soldiers. Disney ended a confusing 2017 airing schedule by bowing out altogether save for a couple of sneak peeks and saving its enthralling finish for Star Wars Rebels for the Winter 2018 season all the while letting the other guys fester.  But, if this week’s Upfronts are any indications, the chess match between Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network is just beginning.

First up, Nickelodeon. After a year that saw creators for their two top series, The Loud House and Spongebob Squarepants, given uncertain futures, the network employed a killer Nicktoons strategy that saw the likes of Harvey Beaks, The Fairly OddParents, and other series run off countless original premieres in prime-time. Cartoon Network, on the other hand, began taking hold of that Friday night, at 7 pm ET/PT hour with original premieres of both new and returning intellectual properties like Adventure Time, Steven Universe, We Bare Bears, and others however, the network was clearly testing the waters on early stream premieres of all the aforementioned series, a technique that was also being tested by Turner network-sister stations like TBS and Adult Swim. Regardless, Cartoon Network annihilated the competition for the primetime-fringe slots all the while Nickelodeon shows were forced to do blocks of their more popular fare during the day.

Note, a network that touts overall viewership versus record gains in a particular hour is not nearly as attractive to advertisers. Advertisers like to know that if they are spending those ad dollars on kids television, they want to make sure those ads are being served at optimal viewing times, not in random. Nickelodeon knows this, and that’s why as the year came to a close you started to see Nickelodeon being more aggressive with their prime-time scheduling as the year gave out.

Earlier this week, Nickelodeon decided to double down and do, as we predicted a year ago, order an animated spin-off of The Loud House as part of the network’s promise to have 800 episodes of new and returning series, however, as of now we don’t know if Nick plans to make a fight of it in the prime-time/fringe time slots unless if they can bring in some of that 90s nostalgia audience with a primo premiere date/time for the Rocko’s Modern Life and Invader Zim series like they did with last year’s hit Hey Arnold! hour-long movie. If Nick can balance their legacy IP with new series like the announced Pony (and no, the new TMNT already sounds like as much of a disaster as the last series), they could be a formidable destination for those ad dollars. If not, Cartoon Network is equipped.

Earlier today, Cartoon Network has announced that 2018 will see brand-new episodes of Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Apple & Onion, We Bare Bears, and a slew of other new and returning franchises that should help the network keep their Friday night time slots on lock down. As of now, Disney doesn’t appear to be making a play for primetime/fringe animated programming and Nickelodeon seems content to settle for the early afternoon hours, so Cartoon Network should enjoy the fruits of their labor regardless if they want to premiere content on television or on their already burgeoning online apps.

What Cartoon Network does really well is also offer gateways for their older audiences to be informed about new and returning content. It’s totally not out of place to see commercials for Toonami and Adult Swim content during Cartoon Network airings of primetime/fringe series, but Nickelodeon doesn’t have this luxury because their answer, The Splat is mostly reruns, with no signs of new older skewing content coming anytime soon. Alas, Cartoon Network could be running circles around its network competition for the foreseeable future.