Boycott THE CARTOON NETWORK

I am now officially boycotting THE CARTOON NETWORK. I tried to watch an episode of FAMILY GUY recently and every two minutes they’d obliterate the screen with an animated blob or cartoon flames to promo something called the Aqua Teen Movie (pictured above). It would last for fifteen interminable seconds. Forget how infuriating it is to the viewers. For the writers and creative staff behind FAMILY GUY it was incredibly insulting.

To those Cartoon Network geniuses who okayed this deplorable practice, how would you like it if during an important phone call Joan Rivers came on the line every two minutes and started screaming in your ear? Or you’d be driving down the street and every two minutes a bucket of paint was splashed onto your windshield?

And as if the animated intrusions weren’t distracting enough, they were showing this Aqua Teen Movie in a tiny box in the bottom of the screen. It looked like a bad pixel on your computer screen, just annoying enough to make you want to take a bat to your TV.

Where does this clutter end? Between crawls, logo meatballs, running scores, promos, peacocks, TV-MA boxes, the Aflac duck, and time & temperatures, watching the actual show is like playing Where’s Waldo? So to help you out in that department, networks also flash “You are watching” announcements.

Step one is boycotting THE CARTOON NETWORK. If you want to see FUTURAMA or POKEMON they’re available on DVD. Let’s send them and other offenders a message.

Now if only there was a way to send them that message every two minutes.

Oh...and while I'm ranting and sending messages and getting real worked up over the truly important issues of our day, let's organize a million man march to stop this insidious network practice of splitting the screen during closing credits so the people who kill themselves to make a good show have their names reduced to the size of microfilm. I'm sure I could get all of the people whose names have been shrunk to participate but I can't read them.

I will be attending AMERICAN IDOL tonight along with whatever Fox star they're shamelessly trying to pimp. Probably one of those skeesix from DRIVE. My report will follow.