How a 4 p.m. cartoon block turned America on to anime
Toonami went on the air on Cartoon Network on March 17, 1997, as a weekday afternoon block running from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern. It was built by Sean Akins and Jason DeMarco under Cartoon Network programming chief Mike Lazzo, and it was assembled on almost nothing.
"There was literally no money to do anything," Akins told Complex in 2017 for the block's 20th anniversary oral history.
The first host was Moltar, the lava-headed character borrowed from Space Ghost Coast to Coast and voiced by C. Martin Croker. He introduced ThunderCats, Voltron and The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest alongside the shows that mattered more in hindsight: Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.
For a lot of American kids, that 4 p.m. slot was the first place they saw Japanese animation with its serialized plots left intact. On July 11, 1999, Moltar was replaced by TOM, the Toonami Operations Module, a small robot voiced first by Sonny Strait and then, from September 2000 onward, by Steve Blum. The block moved to Saturdays, grew its own science-fiction storylines, and ran for 11 years.
Why Cartoon Network pulled the plug in 2008
The final Cartoon Network broadcast aired on Saturday, September 20, 2008. The network said the block was no longer pulling the ratings it needed, and named Adult Swim its main home for anime that same night.
The decision came from Stuart Snyder, who ran Cartoon Network from 2007 to 2014. In a radio interview surfaced by fans and reported by CBR in 2026, Snyder said "the Toonami block on Cartoon Network just was not drawing a large enough audience," and described a network trying to rebuild itself around new shows for children.
By 2008 the schedule leaned heavily on Naruto reruns, which made the Toonami branding hard to justify against airtime the network wanted for originals. Snyder has said it was a hard call precisely because the fanbase was so loud.
TOM's last words on Cartoon Network ended with "stay gold," a nod to Cowboy Bebop's Spike Spiegel, a role Blum also voiced. Viewers treated the sign-off as a funeral. It turned out not to be one.
The April Fools joke that brought Toonami back
On April 1, 2012, Adult Swim started its usual April Fools stunt by playing The Room. Twenty seconds in, the feed cut to Toonami, with TOM noting the date before introducing that week's episode of Bleach.
The rest of the night ran Dragon Ball Z, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star, The Big O, Yu Yu Hakusho, Tenchi Muyo!, Trigun, Blue Submarine No. 6, Astro Boy and Gigantor.
The idea came from Lazzo. DeMarco told Anime News Network in 2022 that Lazzo asked, "what if we just brought Toonami back for a night," during a brainstorm about April Fools, and that he and Gill Austin went off to work out how to do it with no time and no budget.
Adult Swim then asked viewers on Twitter whether they wanted it back, under the hashtag #BringBackToonami. They did. On May 16, 2012, Adult Swim announced the block was returning, and on May 26, 2012, Toonami came back as a weekly Saturday late-night block, opening with Bleach at midnight and the United States premiere of Deadman Wonderland at 12:30 a.m.
What time does Toonami air in 2026?
Toonami airs on Adult Swim on Saturday nights, from 12:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. Eastern. In practice that is the early hours of Sunday morning, which is part of why the question keeps getting asked: almost nobody runs into it by accident.
The block got longer at the start of 2026. On January 3, 2026, Toonami extended its end time to 4:00 a.m. and reshuffled the lineup, dropping Naruto and opening with Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, then Blue Exorcist, Mashle: Magic and Muscles, One Piece, Dan Da Dan, Dragon Ball DAIMA, Zom 100 and Rick and Morty: The Anime.
It has kept moving since. My Adventures with Superman season three premiered on the block on June 13, 2026, after a full-season marathon the week before, and Scavengers Reign joined the schedule in September 2026.
One thing that trips people up: Toonami is not part of Cartoon Network's own schedule anymore. Adult Swim takes over the same cable channel overnight, so the dial position has not changed, but the block belongs to Adult Swim. Without cable, Adult Swim programming streams on HBO Max.
Who owns Toonami now, and what the Paramount deal changes
Toonami belongs to Warner Bros. Discovery, through Adult Swim and Cartoon Network. That ownership is about to change hands. Paramount Skydance agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery at $31.00 per share in cash, valuing the company at roughly $110.9 billion, and Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approved the transaction on April 23, 2026. The companies expect it to close in the third quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory clearance. Under the terms, Paramount takes the Turner entertainment channels, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim among them.
The linear business those channels sit in has shrunk badly. Combined annual advertising revenue for Cartoon Network and Adult Swim fell from $668.3 million in 2014 to $133.7 million in 2024, a drop of about 83 percent, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence figures reported by Bloomberg Businessweek.
Cable built around young men has been dying for a decade, which is what finished G4 and its two attempts at a gamer channel, and it is the same arithmetic that turned MTV into a network that mostly does not play music.
Where to find the old Toonami broadcasts today
The 1997 to 2008 block was never released commercially. The shows it carried have been licensed and relicensed many times over, but the parts people actually miss, the bumpers, the TOM segments and the Total Immersion Events, survive mostly as off-air recordings.
A lot of those recordings sit on VHS tapes in American basements, taped by kids who left the VCR running on a weekday afternoon. Magnetic tape loses quality every year it sits there. The cheap route is to do it yourself with a working VCR and a USB capture dongle, which is the approach laid out in our guide to digitizing VHS tapes in 2026. The mail-in route costs more and takes weeks: Legacybox lists tape digitizing from about $9 a tape in 2026, with kits priced by how many items you send in one box.
Fan uploads of the April 1, 2012 broadcast are archived on the Internet Archive, which is the closest thing to a clean copy of the night that restarted everything.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Toonami coming back to Cartoon Network?
There is no announced plan to move Toonami back to Cartoon Network. The block left Cartoon Network's schedule on September 20, 2008, and has aired on Adult Swim since May 26, 2012. A short revival called Toonami Rewind ran Friday afternoons from May 31, 2024 until December 27, 2024, when Adult Swim ended it to make room for Family Guy.
Is Cartoon Network shutting down in 2026?
Cartoon Network has not shut down as of September 2026, but it is a far smaller business than it was. Advertising revenue for Cartoon Network and Adult Swim combined fell from $668.3 million in 2014 to $133.7 million in 2024. Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approved a sale to Paramount Skydance on April 23, 2026, which would put Cartoon Network and Adult Swim under a new owner.
Does TOM still host Toonami?
Yes. TOM, the Toonami Operations Module, still hosts the block on Adult Swim in 2026, voiced by Steve Blum, who has played the character since September 2000. TOM first replaced the original Toonami host Moltar on July 11, 1999, and the robot has been redesigned several times since.