6teen on Cartoon Network ultimately got cancelled because of declining viewership, which was caused by the fact that the episodes were aired out of order.
The story in 6teen focuses on the lives and relationships of six teenage friends and the show proved to be very popular with younger audiences.
However, since Cartoon Network had to change the order of the episodes and leave out some episodes due to the differences in censorship laws in Canada and the United States, viewership for the show decreased and it got cancelled in 2010.
What was 6teen about?
6teen was originally a Canadian animated comedy television, which was produced by Nelvana. It was mostly geared towards older children, preteens, and teenage audiences.
The show quickly became a cult favourite among its target demographic as it followed a group of six teenagers, namely, Jude, Jen, Nikki, Jonesy, Caitlin, and Wyatt, who are the main characters of the show, as they try to navigate life, from maintaining relationships with their friends and having their first jobs to climbing the social ladder in their community.
This large group of main characters are the main reason why the show was so relatable to so many different people, since everyone had a character that they could relate to.
Why did 6teen get cancelled?
After 6teen’s relatively successful launch in Canada in 2004, the show was brought over to the United States to air on Nickelodeon on 18 December 2005.
Although the overall reception of the show was not bad when it first aired on Nickelodeon, the show was later removed on 13 May 2006. 6teen was then aired again on 23 October 2008.
This time the show aired on Cartoon Network until it was removed again on 21 June 2010.
Cartoon Network likely decided that they would give 6teen another chance in the United States, as their other Teletoon and Fresh TV show, Total Drama, had been doing quite well up to this point.
Cartoon Network was also heavily involved in bringing Canadian animated shows to the United States and it had become a flagship company for this type of partnership for most of the 2000s.
However, the United States had much stricter censorship laws than Canada did at the time, and this resulted in Cartoon Network only airing some of the 6teen episodes and airing the episodes completely out of order.
This had an exceptionally negative impact on the viewership of the show, and ultimately, it was cancelled because of the low performance of the show.
This cancellation did not stop the show from becoming a sort-of underground cult favourite amongst United States audiences.
In fact, in 2018, a special 6teen revival episode was produced, despite the original show being cancelled because of its low ratings.
How did the United States viewership of 6teen compare to the Canadian viewership?
When 6teen aired in Canada, all of its episodes garnered about 2.5 million views each. However when 6teen started airing in the United Stated on its second run on Cartoon Network, it was quite a different story.
At first, the show only got about 1.8 million viewers per episode, but this gradually increased and at one stage in 2009, the show even became one of the most-viewed shows on the network with 3.7 million viewers per episode.
However, as time went on, the viewership for the show started dropping again and by the final episode, which aired on 21 June 2010, only 1.6 million viewers tuned into Cartoon Network to watch the show.
Other Canadian shows that were brought to the United States by Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network really established itself as the main gateway network for popular Canadian animated shows that were originally aired on the Teletoon Network to enter the United States from the late nineties to the late 2000s.
Along with 6teen, some of the other popular Canadian shows that were broadcast on Cartoon Network during this time include Total Drama and Stoked.
All three of these shows were created by Jennifer Pertsch and Tom McGillis and were produced by Fresh TV, but the Total Drama franchise, with all of its spin-off shows, are the only ones that still air on Cartoon Network to this day.
What happened in the 6teen reboot?
On 12 September 2018, a full eight years after the show was pulled from Cartoon Network, the original cast of 6teen appeared in a special reunion episode titled “Vote, Dude!”
This eight-minute mini-episode was created to raise awareness and entice young voters to show up to vote in the 2018 midterm elections in the United States, and it featured the main cast members all grown up at 18 years old.