Why Every Animator Is Abandoning Cable TV

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Hello, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone off the binary scale. My name is Yugijoh, and today I'm going to convince you of something. Yes, that is correct.

[00:00:06]I am going to convince you of something with a handy little PowerPoint that I made here. Look at this PowerPoint. Wow, look at that. Right, so today I'm going to convince you, the illiterate, the media illiterate, of a simple fact, and that fact is that YouTube tunes are the future. Source, trust me, bro.

[00:00:26]Just trust me.

[00:00:28]Uh basically, I believe the Saturday morning cartoons culturally have been replaced by indie animators on YouTube. And uh here is some of my proof for that. So, Saturday morning cartoons, this is the This is the normal ritual. Now, let me just move myself uh into the middle here, so we can see everything.

[00:00:53]Uh so, Saturday morning cartoons, wake up at 7:00 a.m. without an alarm because you're so excited to see the cartoon.

[00:00:59]Bullwinkle and Rocky followed by Looney Tunes, 2 to 3 hours of back-to-back cartoons, and then you'd go to school, and you'd talk on Monday about everything that you saw on the Saturday morning cartoon block. Uh it was a cultural event that everyone took part in uh when I was a kid, and uh it definitely happened mainly in America, but somewhat in the UK where I was brought up.

[00:01:18]And NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox Kids, and Warner Brothers all had a Saturday morning cartoon block, and they were competing every week to get you to only watching their network channel.

[00:01:29]Now, it then disappeared. So, let me move myself back over here.

[00:01:37]So, uh wow, let's just make myself a little bit littler. Oh my god, tiny little Yugijoh, look at that.

[00:01:44]Uh so, then it was gone. In 1996, Telecommunications Act forces the educational TV, aka cartoon blocks, to shrink. Saturday morning uh blocks were replaced by new shows and infomercials. And then in 2004, FCC pressure kills the last major cartoon blocks on broadcast TV. You know, you Warner Brothers kids. And then in the 2010s era, anything that was left on these Warner Brothers and ABC channels, all of these were basically stripped from their cartoons and they were put on cable giants like Cartoon Network, Nick, and Disney. So all the Warner Brothers stuff went to Cartoon Network. Disney started making their own animated shows both on Disney and Disney XD. And Nickelodeon, you know, they got the rights to things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So, what happens today in the 2020s? Well, kids are scrolling on iPads and networks don't control what they watch anymore, which would seem like a bit of a bad thing because they're not culturally involved in things like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ben 10, all of these fun shows that even the cable giants take.

[00:02:57]They they're not around anymore. So, uh you know, it would seem bad, but it depends what these kids are scrolling on. If they're scrolling on TikTok where in the animation isn't really a massive scene, maybe they are rotting their brain with, you know, these horrible three-second brain rot videos.

[00:03:16]Or they could be on YouTube.

[00:03:20]And YouTube fills this void. So, it's free to watch anytime, anywhere.

[00:03:24]Independent creators and uh there's no network gatekeepers. So, you can watch what you want and it doesn't matter because the network doesn't uh be able to like cancel the show.

[00:03:37]Um there's new episodes dropping like clockwork because there's so many creators. Uh there's comment sections which create new communities. They're like the new school playground. You get to see all of your friends liking all your same shows. And then algorithms will show you more of what you love. So, if you like these indie animations and you watch a lot of them, they're going to show you more of them.

[00:03:58]Uh there is 2.7 billion monthly active YouTube users. That's a bigger audience than every Saturday morning block combined for the entire of the 1990s, which is a crazy stat. And obviously not all of those are making uh kid show animations, but hey, there's a lot of them and I'm going to talk about them next. So, case study, Glitch Productions. [music] Glitch's YouTube network has reached over 21 million subscribers globally. The Amazing Digital Circus has surpassed 1 billion online views after launching in [music] 2023.

[00:04:32]It might be even higher than that. That was the last available stat I could find. Glitch is releasing their finale in cinemas, The Amazing Digital Circus the Last Act, which is combining episodes 8 and 9 into a feature-length cinema release, which means, you know, they're going to make some money. In fact, the finale earned 5 million in pre-sales within 4 days, but later reports show that pre-sales exceeded 7.5 million in just the US alone before the release as Glitch is trying to get it into more theaters worldwide. Glitch has proved that independent animation can compete with major studios using YouTube as its primary platform. Their production combines YouTube distribution as their go-to thing. Then they get streaming partnerships like Netflix where something like Digital Circus can go. Then they have their solo merchandising. There is a merchandising video, at least one, for every show on their channel. Then they get cinema distribution for the finales, which can, you know, net them millions on something that they wouldn't have done and they don't spend a penny on marketing because it is all fan-driven marketing.

[00:05:43]And that's kind of like they're the gold standard right now for indie animation, I think, in the YouTube space. But, they're not the only ones. So, let's go over some of the others.

[00:05:56]Hazbin VivziePop, right? Hazbin Hotel. They made Hazbin Hotel. It went from a YouTube passion project with their pilot [music] to a full prime series on Amazon. That is a very big jump. They get a real budget.

[00:06:13]They get to pay everyone very well. And they they just they basically got their own show without having to pitch, which is amazing. Like that doesn't that doesn't happen in the film industry. I've worked in the film industry before. You go into these pitches, you get like turned away, you know, you basically never get the option to make a pilot anymore. These guys made a pilot by themselves >> [music] >> and then were just given the option to make a full show. So, that is incredible. Then there's Alan Becker, Animation vs. Minecraft. It's a it's a great series. It's been consistently going. He's solo. He has no studio behind him, but he does have 30 million subscribers on YouTube. It is a very profitable >> [music] >> Sorry, profitable business for Alan Becker to be running right now. And it's it's it's great content. [music] You might think Animation vs. Minecraft sounds like something you wouldn't want to watch if you're not a Minecraft fan.

[00:07:07]It is a lot more animation than it is the Minecraft. So, I would definitely I'd definitely go check that out.

[00:07:13]A new person on the block, Worthy Kids, has Big Top Burger. It's a series from a solo creator that is just immediately got some fan love. The most recent episode is on 443,000 views already.

[00:07:28]And Worthy Kids is in the smaller subscriber range for these indie animators, having only 1 [music] million subs. So, lots of growing to do. And then we've got one of the OGs who has recently left YouTube to move on to bigger and better things I I I imagine, but it's SMG4. 10 million subs, they had weekly uploads for years, and it was all indie 3D animation stuff that was going on on that channel. And [music] all four of these people are just again a small portion of indie animation showing that it can operate on YouTube and do it profitably without the need for major studios. Obviously, Vivziepop went to a major studio, but I'm sure they had every every resource to be able to make that show without them, and it still would have been profitable on just the merch alone.

[00:08:22]I see a lot of Hazbin Hotel merch [music] everywhere in cons now. So, it is a bit of an upgrade to be on YouTube versus network television previously because back then you had three networks to choose your cartoons from, at least in the UK, or if you were a later '90s kids into the 2000s once they had restricted a lot of the networks. Now, you have infinite creators competing for your view. So, there is a lot more indie animators on YouTube than there are networks on television creating a lot more shows and pumping out content every single day. If you find the thing that you like, you will be able to subscribe to that and find more of what you like. Then, you used to have to watch it live or miss it until, you know, recording came out a little bit later, but most people didn't record network cartoons. Um and by by the time recording came out, I think most of the the block was done. Now, you can watch any episode anytime forever.

[00:09:17]All of Digital Circus is available on Glitch's YouTube channel, and I only recently caught up with it. So, it is it is a cultural phenomenon that is evergreen and stays evergreen, and people can catch up when they want.

[00:09:31]Before there was no creative outlet Uh, not creative outlet, sorry. There was no way to connect with the creators. Like there was no outreach, that was the word I was looking for. There was no outreach to connect with the creators of these shows. Now, you have a comment section directly with the show's creator. You have their like personal Discord servers that they set up, Patreons to help like finance the shows that you like, and you can even like directly DM them on X and Instagram sometimes, uh, as a lot of these people are just normal animators who are kind of living their dream through having a popular show.

[00:10:08]This is my biggest frustration one. Back then, canceled shows with no closure.

[00:10:13]The biggest video on my channel is Sonic Underground, uh, and it's about how it had a hidden ending in a comic book.

[00:10:20]Uh, and that was like a big deal for people. They didn't realize about that, they didn't know about that, hence why it got the most amount of views that I've ever got. And I'm really grateful for that, but it shows a big issue. And that is some shows get 40 episodes in and just disappear with no ending.

[00:10:35]Thundercats 2011 is another thing [music] of just like, "Yeah, that needed another season." Now, with indie animation on YouTube, the creators control their own endings, even if they're on a a tight budget. You will know about whatever comic book they will be using to, uh, end their things out. Like, uh, Final Space. Final Space couldn't get an ending, but because the content creator was so popular before he made the show, we all know about Final Space's ending coming in his comic that he has made.

[00:11:07]So, there is a lot more, uh, control with how they want to end their shows, and most of them will probably just take a loss in doing an ending episode or season, right? So, the creators are in control of what they create. There is no network interference.

[00:11:23]Now, another thing. The USA and the UK pretty much had these Saturday morning cartoon blocks, and they were they were pretty similar. They were quite quite similar, um, to like we got a bunch of American shows. I'm not sure if America but got a bunch of our shows, but you know, depending on what network you were watching on, we got a lot of American shows. But localizations differed a lot.

[00:11:43]You know, in Brazil Dragon Ball is such a massive thing because it got a localization and other anime didn't and they're not as massive in Brazil, right? So these are some of the like biggest uh hurdles back in the day was like you know, this isn't a worldwide phenomenon. Not everything is subtitled in your language. Well, YouTube has the one AI I could probably stand behind, which is AI subtitles. They can they can subtitle pretty much anything [music] in your language, which means you can watch any of these shows from wherever you are and there are global audiences on the platform from day one. You can communicate and you [music] can be in a community with people from all across the world about the animation thing that you like instead of just having that one friend at school who also watches that one channel who [music] also likes that one show from that one channel, right?

[00:12:42]So these things are like massive upgrades and that's why I think not only is this the replacement, it's the future and it's just going to get bigger and it's just going to get better. The one downside I would say is I don't think monetization is that great for for indie animation shows or or at least it didn't used to be, especially with short animations. People were like, well, it's just cost-wise it's not worth it. It's like a short animation, you'll never make your money back on ad revenue. But with the merchandising and things like that and Glitch Productions' new sort of pipeline, I think it's turning around and it's becoming a a much more profitable business. So did I convince you? Are you convinced?

[00:13:22]Are you convinced? You should be. You should be convinced. You should be convinced and what else you should do is you should like, you should comment, and you should subscribe to Yugioh because you know, I I I I think I'm correct about these things. And and if you don't think I'm correct about these things, please tell me in the comments. You might be right. You're probably not though. I'm pretty sure I'm onto something here. So, thank you all for watching. I've been Yugioh and peace.