Everything you need to know (as of now) with Boomerang's new Streaming Service

Turner just announced something major, something that WB fans have been waiting to hear for a long time, the classic cartoons will officially start streaming.  For $5 a month (or $40 a year), fans can soon officially stream their favorite classic cartoons on Boomerang.  What started as a TV channel in 2000 in order to give more room to new originals on Cartoon Network may become better than ever.  Anytime, anywhere, Looney Tunes, Popeye, Tom and Jerry, and more can be enjoyed with your family and friends or simply just by yourself.  So what will this mean????  Variety gave their report, and there's a video promoting it already, but here's my take on the new era of Looney Tunes


First of all, based on the video, the quality of some of the cartoons are going to be better than what's on TV right now.  It should be noted that a whole lot of cartoons have already been restored for Blu-ray and DVD.  If you haven't bought the Looney Tunes Golden or Platinum Collections, you are already missing out.

There will also be more stuff than what's on Cartoon Network and the TV network Boomerang right now.  While both may show Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry (if Teen Titans Go stops 400 reruns), they will not show Yogi Bear or Huckleberry Hound anymore.  This is the place to see them.

It won't be just classic cartoons.  New cartoons will also show up such as New Looney Tunes, new Scooby-Doo episodes, and new series such as a new Wizard of Oz series (why we need another Wizard of Oz cartoon I have no idea).  Think of it as if it were the original Cartoon Network from the 1990's only with streaming.

While this is very exciting news for many, there are some things to keep in mind: do not expect the entire cartoon library on here.  There are still several cartoons deemed politically incorrect by today's standards.  The Censored 11 is still in effect, the Tom and Jerry cartoons still have issues with Mammy Two Shoes, and Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips still has Bugs saying every word in the dictionary deemed offensive to Japanese and Asian people.  Do not expect the black and white shorts, if any on the service, to be in black and white.  WB colorized their library twice (1968 and the early 90's).  Turner did a colorization of their own library too such as Popeye.  Finally, it costs thousands of dollars to restore the cartoons, so from the get go, some of the cartoons may not be restored, but if the service proves successful, maybe this will finance WB to restore more cartoons for streaming.  The good news is that nearly half of the Looney Tunes are restored, almost all the Tom and Jerry cartoons are restored, major Hanna-Barbera cartoons are restored, and the Max Fleischer Popeye cartoons are restored (however, 97% are in black and white, so don't expect those to show up).  The bad news however is that the original master negatives for the pre 1951 MGM cartoons were lost in a major fire in 1967 (though all the cartoons still exist in some form), and the Hanna-Barbera library had been handed down many years and were treated poorly under Taft and Worldvision causing some of the material such as original titles and interstitials to be lost as well as some of the cartoons to fade and decay over time.  Thankfully, WB knows what they are doing for the most part.

That said, while this is a major victory for us, the battle is still not over.  There are still tons of old classic cartoons just sitting there in the studio's libraries unrestored, and unless it's WB or Disney, they are an endangered species.  We hope other studios such as Universal (who just inherited a boatload of classics through their Dreamworks acquisition) and Paramount will do stuff next.  These are just as much classic as The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Star Wars,  and Gone with the Wind.  We hope for a bright future as we move to the next step in the right direction.