Should Toonami move to 7-9PM or 8-10PM?

[Sketch]

If Toonami is going to be stuck with being two hours. Should it move earlier?

Some kids actually do have bed times in this day and age.

I always figured Toonami saved it's strongest stuff from 9PM onward due to having stronger competion from Nick 7PM-9PM. But perhaps they could try putting their major players earlier on Saturday night despite that.

Either 7PM-9PM with PG+ movies after it (or Goosebumps I guess, as that's what CN would probably do in such a situation). Or perhaps they could move it to 8PM-10PM and Adult Swim could dare to take the 10 hour on Saturday as well (well honestly I don't see that one working out but it does have less competition for late night watchers than the 11 hour does.

Anyway... Do any of you think moving those 2 hours earlier on Saturday would help Toonami out? Perhaps they could movie their major premieres to 7-9PM and follow that with PG+ animated action films and thus make Toonami 4 hours again. But even if they didn't use 9-11PM for more Toonami or Toonami related programing, I still wonder if moving Naruto, One Piece and DBZ earlier would make Toonami better or worse off.

[Ykwia]

Possibly yes because 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM can allow for more violent actions and a possible higher ratings.

[Lazerboy5000]

I'd probably say 8-10 (which is what it is here Central Time). 8-10 works on perfectly for me, but if I had to say up until 11pm to watch One Piece and DBZ, I probably wouldn't.

[Novapocalypse]

I could work with 7-9.Naruto does great with younger audiences and One Piece should be doing good.And,since most people usually leave to go somewhere Saturday night later into it,especially teens(Toonami's apparent age-target),then 7-9 seems more of a wise choice than 9-11.But 8-11 could work just as well.

[Kury Wagner]

I prefer it being as it is now. I think that's it fits well. I'm not sure I'd be as into watching if it were an hour earlier, either. :\

[Captain Highwind]

I never watched it before 8:00. I would venture to say that there's a reason Toonami isn't on before that time anymore.

It was fun when Duel Masters Season One or even earlier when SVES came on, but Teen Titans reruns and the serious card game shows ruined it for me.

But it really needs to go back to weekdays. I would actually watch CN during the week.

It's not like 1-2 hours a day of Toonami is really going to throw off their other programming.

[XOMiss_Samantha]

I prefer it being as it is now. I think that's it fits well. I'm not sure I'd be as into watching if it were an hour earlier, either. :\

I feel the same way.

Even now I haven't watched anything on Toonami that aired earlier than 9pm since the days of Duel Masters. Plus, 7-9 would possibly eliminate more violence/risqué what-not in shows that usually air later on after kids go to bed, and that just isn't good =[. Shows airing at 10 would at least have a better chance of containing more 'older' material.

[Ishtar]

8-10pm would work better than 7-9pm, but I agree it's fine the way it is now.

[Master Toon]

Moving it to 7pm at 2 hours would mark the death of Toonami. Know how? Well I'll tell you guys later, it's kind of obvious.

P.S. - Isn't the reason it's 2 hours is because of Goosebumps? They can't move the time if there's something there and removing Goosebumps would defeat the purpose of only having 2 hours.

[DBZNarutoWarrior]

It's not too bad where it is now, but 8-10 sounds like another good option (I'd rather it be 4 hours...... ).

[D Dubbs]

I have a feeling that if Toonami moved any earlier, Adult Swim would just take up that time. I guess that could be a good thing or a bad thing...

[XOMiss_Samantha]

I have a feeling that if Toonami moved any earlier, Adult Swim would just take up that time. I guess that could be a good thing or a bad thing...

If that happened then the spot would probably just be more Family Guy or another Boondocks episode. =[ It would be great if they could install another anime Saturday nights if Toonami decided to end earlier.

[Rolling Cloud]

I'll vote for the 8-10 scenario! I would keep forgetting it was on if it was from 7-9pm.

[J'onn J'onzz]

If that happened then the spot would probably just be more Family Guy or another Boondocks episode. =[ It would be great if they could install another anime Saturday nights if Toonami decided to end earlier.

I'm surprised AS has never put Family Guy on Saturdays, honestly. It seems like it's the only big comedy they have that HASN'T aired there.

[Jacob T. Paschal]

Either one would allow me to get more shut eye and allow for my body to not go through crap (seeing as how I go to bed at nine on school nights and wake at six in the morning). So long as the shows won' have to be more edited I'm okay.

[Space Cadet]

I personally like the 9-11 pm time for Toonami right now. It's clear that the 7-9 slot Toonami had wasn't working and Goosebumps is doing a much better job retaining viewers. In fact, lately, Saturdays is the only night for CN that they get over 300,000 9-14 kids watching. So, I think something is going right for it.

I would like Toonami to get 8-9 pm back, but Goosebumps can stay from 7-8. Toonami wasn't doing much with that timeslot anyway. I still wish Toonami could come back to weekdays from 4-7 pm. Even 9-11 pm Monday-Thursday, could work, as long as Toonami still retains Saturday nights.

[Captain Highwind]

I would like Toonami to get 8-9 pm back, but Goosebumps can stay from 7-8. Toonami wasn't doing much with that timeslot anyway. I still wish Toonami could come back to weekdays from 4-7 pm. Even 9-11 pm Monday-Thursday, could work, as long as Toonami still retains Saturday nights.

I think later in the night on weeknights would be a nice change. I remember people running around claiming that CN was shoving anime down their throats when Toonami was on Mon-Fri from 4-7.

[Ykwia]

I personally like the 9-11 pm time for Toonami right now. It's clear that the 7-9 slot Toonami had wasn't working and Goosebumps is doing a much better job retaining viewers. In fact, lately, Saturdays is the only night for CN that they get over 300,000 9-14 kids watching. So, I think something is going right for it.

I would like Toonami to get 8-9 pm back, but Goosebumps can stay from 7-8. Toonami wasn't doing much with that timeslot anyway. I still wish Toonami could come back to weekdays from 4-7 pm. Even 9-11 pm Monday-Thursday, could work, as long as Toonami still retains Saturday nights.

Have you heard of a thing called "Overstayed Welcome?"

[Master Toon]

It's a bad idea. If it moves earlier, CN will put more kiddie shows on and when the numbers for those shows skyrocket, they choose to scrap Toonami and put in it's place more kiddie shows. I may be wrong but I know the network thinks and that's just what they'd do.

[Sketch]

That's not neccessarily true as it hasn't been proven yet.

7-8PM Toonami especially has pretty much always been fluff or filler. If they were to put Naruto at 7PM for an hour then it might actually do well. 6-11 kids do like Naruto afterall (though not as much as 9-14+).

I figure Toonami is at 9PM-11PM for a few reasons. 1) Naruto locked down the 9PM slot since it showed up in Fall of 2005 and they've never really ventured to move it from that regular spot and pretty much only aired reruns before 9PM. So if the Naruto viewers expect a 9PM showing then CN would generally be hesitant to move it.

Along with that Nick and Disney's pre-9PM slots are harder to compete with for 6-14 and even 12-17+. Despite that CN regularly used 8-9PM for some of Toonami's strongest players basically making 8-10PM the meat of the block rating's wise. For this reason I want them to get 8-9PM back most of all and I'd be willing to scrap 10-11PM for that but there isn't much else CN can do with an hour pre-AS at this point.

Toonami also leads directly into Adult Swim because of the natural audience progression. It works better when action shows air at 11PM on AS but even with comedies up first the transition from a 9-14 targeted action show to a 18+ targeted comedy show tends to work better than a 18+ targeted comedy airing after a 6-11 targeted comedy. Though probably not as well as a 9-14 targeted comedy but CN doesn't have much of that.

And while I say 9-14 targeted comedy I really mean any comedy cartoon that 18+ MIGHT find entertaining. Such as Courage, Ed, Edd n Eddy, Billy and Mandy, pretty much any older CN original show or classic toon and even shows like Foster's and our new best friend Chowder. Chowder airing right before Adult Swim is genius. It's akin to airing Spongebob before Nick at Nite.

CN has been airing Naruto pre-AS on weekdays for quite a while now and probably the main reason for that is it retains the kid viewers CN wants but also warms up the 18+. Naruto is enjoyed by many 18+ individuals as is DBZ and I would imagine One Piece is as well. Thus pre-AS works quite well for all of them. However, CN in general doesn't want to draw that many older viewers so they limit such 18+ drawing content as much as they can rather than to grow their brand through middle ground content. Thus why only Naruto gets to air on weekdays and even DBZ the previous king of CN ratings (pushed off it's throne in most demographics by Ben 10: Race Against Time) is limited to 1 episode a week.

On the other hand Jetstream is growing by leaps and bounds because every stream counts. Those 12-17+ viewers count on Jetstream. It's going to continue to grow and it may even become the only Toonami by name. In the mean time, Naruto and One Piece will continue to air on CN (most likely in the same slots they are now) for as long as they remain useful.

What they have now is easy to ignore. They don't want to put more effort into the current Toonami so they just let it run on auto-pilot with new episodes to keep the consistant viewers coming back for more.

The reason why I suggest moving Toonami earlier is so it might catch more tween viewers. I don't know about you, but when I was 12 I didn't watch TV on Saturday night past maybe 10. So just moving Toonami 8PM-10PM might be worth while.

The other (far better) option of course is to shift Toonami towards 12-17 targeting and perhaps take some time away from the typically struggling Saturday AS block to make Toonami 9PM-12AM or perhaps 9PM-1AM or even 2AM. Now is a great time to try that but I'd be very surprised if CN did.

However I don't believe moving Toonami earlier would be the death of it. It might work out quite nicely actually and help Naruto and One Piece get better 6-11 ratings (which is what they absolutely have to have to keep airing on CN with CN's current mindset).