The history of Adult Swim scheduled hours

wonderfly

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I was trying to remember at one point Adult Swim ended up devouring too much of Cartoon Network's evening/night hours (because I do think the schedule is a bit bloated, these days).

I found this old article, from November 2008. Is this correct:


"Adult Swim debuted in Sept. 2001 with just three hours of programming airing two nights a week.* In January 2003, fueled by popularity and impressive ratings gains, Adult Swim’s schedule increased to five nights per week, Sunday – Thursday, 11 p.m. – 2 a.m. (ET/PT). By March 2005, the late-night block more than doubled its air time, jumping from 15 hours to 42 hours a week, airing Monday – Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, 11 p.m. – 6 a.m. (ET/PT). In July of 2007, Adult Swim expanded to seven nights per week, airing Monday – Saturday, 11 p.m. – 6 a.m. (ET/ PT) and Sundays at 10 p.m. – 6 a.m. (ET/PT)."


* - as I recall, it was originally Sunday night and Thursday night. The Thursday night episodes were just repeats of the Sunday night episodes.

The article then goes on to say:

"Adult Swim today announced it will expand its popular late-night programming by having it begin every day at 10 p.m. The new schedule will begin airing in January 2009."

From there, on Wikipedia, I see the following:

"On December 27, 2010, Adult Swim's sign-on time was moved one hour earlier, from its longtime start time of 10:00 p.m. ET to 9:00 p.m. ET, extending the network's daily schedule to nine hours.[23] Furthermore, on March 31, 2014, Adult Swim's sign-on time was moved to 8:00 p.m. ET, further extending the network's daily schedule to ten hours and effectively matching the airtime of most nights that Nick at Nite has.[24]Sometimes, Cartoon Network takes the 8:00 p.m. ET hour back, making Adult Swim start at 9:00 p.m. ET again. This has happened two times since 2014, from October 26 to November 29, 2015 and September 26, 2016 to December 5, 2016."

So is that correct? Sometimes Wikipedia is wrong, but just wanted to double check...EDIT: It's not quite correct. See Daikun's schedule below.

And for those of you that think Adult Swim is overstretched and eats up too many of Cartoon Network's hours, when do you think Adult Swim was at it's perfect balance? (in the number of hours versus the number of hours for Cartoon Network).

Myself, I'd at least take it back to 2005, when they at least left Friday nights alone for Cartoon Network (and Adult Swim started at 11 pm).

Thoughts?!?
 
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Daikun

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I made a post about their hours a long time ago at Bump Worthy. Excuse me while I go look for it...

EDIT: Found it.

September 2, 2001 - AS premiere date. Sundays @10PM-1AM (Thursday encore: Same time)
February 23, 2002 - AS Comedy/Action split. Saturdays @11PM-2AM, Sundays @10PM-1AM, Thursdays dropped.
January 13, 2003 - AS expands to weekdays. Sunday-Thursday @11PM-2AM, Saturdays dropped.
October 5, 2003 - Birth of the repeat block. Sunday-Thursday @11PM-5AM.
April 17, 2004 - AS regains Saturday Action block.
March 28, 2005 - AS expands to 6AM.
October 2, 2005 - AS regains the 10PM hour (Sundays only).
March 27, 2006 - AS obtains 10:30PM on weekdays.
July 6, 2007 - AS launches Friday block @11PM-5AM, 10:30 dropped on weekdays.
December 28, 2008 - AS expands to 10PM (all nights).
December 26, 2010 - AS expands to 9PM.
March 31, 2014 - AS expands to 8PM.
 

wonderfly

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Thanks, that spells out the changes very well.

I'm pretty sure they did NOT drop the Thursday night rebroadcasts in 2002. I could be wrong, but I have memories of watching Inuyasha on Thursday nights if I missed the Saturday broadcast...

I could be wrong though.
 

Daikun

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I'm pretty sure they did NOT drop the Thursday night rebroadcasts in 2002. I could be wrong, but I have memories of watching Inuyasha on Thursday nights if I missed the Saturday broadcast...

They did drop the Thursday broadcasts in 2002. I believe you might be thinking of 2004, when AS started placing reruns of their weekend shows on Thursday nights.
 

ChloeCarmichaelfan

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Nope. I will defend 2002 as much as I can
I've already proved that there was no facebook or twitter or iPhones in 2002. Now I'm gonna defend cn 2002.

https://web.archive.org/web/2002121...et?action=viewAll&showID=324233&show=Inuyasha

Inyusha's schedule. notice how it comes on Saturdays in Dec. 2002 until January 13th, 2003

https://web.archive.org/web/2002120...action=viewAll&showID=319443&show=Home+Movies

Home movies' schedule from December 2002 to January 2003. Notice how it comes on Sundays from dec. 8th '02 to jan. 5th '03. Then it comes on Monday on the (you guessed it) 13th of january 2003. This is coming from the horse's (cartoon network) mouth.
 
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SpaceCowboy

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I remember when Adult Swim dropped Saturdays the first time around. Double premieres of Inu-Yasha replaced the next week by grainy episodes of The Flintstones when Cartoon Network filled the timeslot.
 

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