The website for Cartoon Network, which had existed online since 1998, has been scrubbed from the internet. What once was a video-heavy portal for shows including The Powerpuff Girls, Adventure Time, Teen Titans Go! and Steven Universe now redirects users to the streaming service Max, also owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
As of Thursday, a pop-up message greeting users to the Max web page reads, in part, “Looking for episodes of your favorite Cartoon Network shows? Check out what’s available to stream on Max (subscription required).” The welcome message also invites existing cable subscribers to use “Connected apps” in addition to viewing shows on their TVs.
“We are focusing on the Cartoon Network shows and social media where we find consumers are the most engaged and there is a meaningful potential for growth,” a spokesperson for Cartoon Network told CNET in an email. “While we have closed some digital products, fans can continue to interact with Cartoon Network via the Cartoon Network app as well as select TV providers apps on platforms including mobile and connected devices like Roku, Apple TV and Amazon and via social platforms.”
CartoonNetwork.com is only the latest web-portal casualty in the streaming wars. Websites for Comedy Central, MTV News and CMT were taken offline by parent company Paramount Global in June. Paramount also ended the run of Noggin, a channel aimed at preschool-aged children, back in February.
Warner Bros. has additional plans to take down another kid-friendly web portal and streaming service: the Boomerang network will shutter at the end of September.
As competition between streaming services including Max, Paramount Plus, Netflix and Disney Plus, streaming companies are trying to steer viewers to their paid services in lieu of offering archives of the same content for free online.
Cartoon Network’s website launched in July 1998, about six years after the cable network launched in October 1992. An even earlier version of CartoonNetwork.com took the form of an AOL channel back in 1996.
While the Internet Archive often is the place to go to find disappeared content including websites that no longer exist, those pages typically don’t provide access to old video content if the videos have been made inaccessible. Currently, trying to access videos from CartoonNetwork.com on the Archive’s Wayback Machine doesn’t appear to work.
