On February 18, 1992, Turner Broadcasting System announced its plans to launch the Cartoon Network as an outlet for Turner's considerable library of animation.[6]On October 1, 1992, Cartoon Network played "The Star Spangled Banner" (which was a tradition whenever a new Turner-owned network launched) and a video of a person placing a dynamite in an field and then blowing the dynamite up, the channel's launch then occurred on that day and was hosted by the MGM cartoon character Droopy in a special event called Droopy's Guide to the Cartoon Network, during which the first cartoon on the network, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, was shown.[7][8][9][10] Initial programming on the channel consisted exclusively of reruns of classic Warner Bros. cartoons (the pre-1950 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies), the 1933–1957 Popeye cartoons, MGM cartoons, and Hanna-Barberacartoons.[6] At first, cable providers in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Detroit carried the channel.[9] By the time the network launched, Cartoon Network had an 8,500-hour cartoon library.[11] From its launch until 1995, the network's announcers said the network's name with the word "The" added before "Cartoon Network", thus calling the network "The Cartoon Network". By the time that the network debuted, Cartoon Network also operated a programming block (containing its cartoons) that aired on TNT, entitled "Cartoon Network on TNT".
Cartoon Network was not the first cable channel to have relied on cartoons to attract an audience; however, it was the first 24-hour single-genre channel with animation as its main theme. Turner Broadcasting System had defied conventional wisdom before by launching CNN, a channel providing 24-hour news coverage. The concept was previously thought unlikely to attract a sufficient audience to be particularly profitable, however the CNN experiment had been successful and Turner hoped that Cartoon Network would also find success.[12]
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