Founded by Ted Turner and based out of Atlanta, Georgia, its main properties include Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Discovery Family, and programming blocks Cartoonito, Adult Swim and Toonami.
[4][5] Ted Turner selected Betty Cohen (then-Senior Vice President of TNT) to devise a network to house these programs.
[6] On February 18, 1992, Turner Broadcasting announced its plans to launch Cartoon Network as an outlet for an animation library.
This show debuted in 1995, offering original animated shorts, most of which became their own programs and significantly influenced the tone of the channel.
In 1996, Cartoon Network aired two preschool programs: Big Bag, a live-action/puppet television program with animated short series produced by Children's Television Workshop, and Small World, which featured animated series aimed at preschoolers imported from foreign countries.
The company also owns the assets of Adult Swim, a late-night programming block of Cartoon Network commonly considered to be a separate channel in itself.
On October 22, 2016, AT&T disclosed an offer to acquire Time Warner for $108.7 billion, including assumed debt held by the latter company.
[13] On November 20, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against AT&T and Time Warner in an attempt to block the merger, citing antitrust concerns surrounding the transaction.
[14][15][16] U.S. clearance of the proposed merger—which had already received approval from European, Mexican, Chilean and Brazilian regulatory authorities—was affirmed by court ruling on June 12, 2018, after District of Columbia U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon ruled in favor of AT&T, and dismissed antitrust claims asserted in the DOJ's lawsuit.
The merger closed two days later on June 14, 2018, with Time Warner becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T, which renamed the unit WarnerMedia.
[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] On May 17, 2021, AT&T and Discovery, Inc. reached a definitive Reverse Morris Trust agreement, in which AT&T would spin out WarnerMedia into an independent company (unwinding the prior 2018 acquisition of the former Time Warner) that would concurrently acquire Discovery's assets, for $43 billion in cash, securities and stock plus WarnerMedia's retention of certain debt.
On September 17, 1993, some Russian cities began receiving Cartoon Network Europe through broadcasts from the Astra satellite.
Since July 1, 1996, the channel has been available from the Panamsat 4 satellite in the territories of Southern Russia and Ukraine, in the Asian republics of the former USSR.
[36] In 1998, the channel began broadcasting on the territories of Belarus and Ukraine, the Baltic states and the North-West of Russia from the Astra 1G satellite.
This followed after the shared transponder analogue feed on Astra 1C became scrambled with VideoCrypt and the short-lived British version of TNT was launched.