This Iconic Cartoon Website Has Been Shut Down

Just one week after announcing the shuttering of the classic cartoon streaming service Boomerang, Warner Bros. DIscovery is once again slashing away at its animation archives. The official Cartoon Network website has been shut down, and it will now redirect any visitors at cartoonnetwork.com to a landing page at the company’s subscription streaming service Max asking viewers to subscribe to watch their favorite animated shows. The site was once a way to check out full episodes and clips of shows like Adventure Time, Teen Titans Go!, and The Amazing World of Gumball and play free games based on those series and more. It was apparently taken offline on Thursday.

“Looking for episodes of your favorite Cartoon Network shows? Check out what’s available to stream on Max (subscription required),” a pop-up reads before bringing viewers to the streamer’s animated catalog. “Sign up for Max, where you can also create a Kids Profile with ratings restrictions and additional privacy protections to keep it fun and kid-friendly! Cable subscribers, continue to enjoy your favorite CN programming on your TV and connected apps as well!” While all episodes are now locked behind the subscription service, the end of the site did not seem to account for the free games being lost, meaning there’s now no way to access them or any other content exclusive to the site.

It’s hard not to see the correlation between the recent shutdown and the disastrous earnings report from WBD on Wednesday which had the media conglomerate suffering around a $10 billion quarterly net loss. That included a $9.1 billion write-down accommodating the loss in value of its cable networks. Shutting down cartoonnetwork.com is both a cost-cutting measure and a way to drive even more subscribers to Max. This isn’t anything new for a media giant, as Paramount, now set to merge with Skydance, also recently axed the MTV news site and archives while also purging content from the CMT archives as part of a larger plan to reduce costs. However, the move does leave questions about whether more cuts in other areas of WBD’s media empire are on the way, as it also hosts sites for Adult Swim, TNT, TBS, HGTV, and more.

Warner Bros. Discovery Continues to Make Cuts to Animation

Under the hack-and-slash mindset of the David Zaslav regime, the company has struggled to reach profitability, though it’s all too often that animation is the one to suffer for its efforts. In the wake of the company’s big merger in 2022, over 30 animated titles were purged from then-HBO Max, with the completed Scoob! Holiday Haunt also shelved permanently. Cartoon Network itself was also massively gutted upon consolidating with Warner Bros. Animation. The most egregious example, however, remains Coyote vs. Acme, the live-action animation hybrid Looney Tunes film that, despite testing well and earning the stamp of approval from other creatives in the industry, will never see the light of day as it was instead scrapped for the tax write-down.

All Cartoon Network programs can now be found exclusively on Max. Stay tuned here at Collider for more updates on what’s next for Warner Bros. Discovery as it looks to recover from a rough quarter.