This past August, Warner Bros. Discovery punted nearly 800 Looney Tunes shorts—with nearly 200 locked away due to “cultural sensitivities“—over to free streaming service Tubi. What seemed like an insult to one of the most well-known cartoon properties has, funnily enough, been a blessing in disguise.
According to a recent Vulture report, Tubi’s acquisition head Samuel Harowitz called the Tunes “a huge win for us.” In terms of total viewing time, it’s in the Top 10 best-performing series and very popular across generations and demographics. Much of this is in part due to how popular older animation like Looney Tunes is: Tom & Jerry, The Flinstones, and the 1996 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series are also on Tubi, and Harowitz called those classic cartoons “one of the biggest fandoms we serve on the platform.”
If Tubi has its way, the Looney Tunes aren’t going anywhere. The company is in “active negotiations” with WBD to ensure it can keep the cartoons there “for quite a while, likely years.” It’s also open to licensing new Looney content or becoming the streaming home for Coyote vs. Acme, but there’s no conversations about either yet. As is, the episodes on Tubi are in non-chronological order with ads playing only in between shorts, which is a bummer, but at least they look quite good in HD.
You can thank animation historian Jerry Beck for that, whose restorations were also used for the physical releases. These restored versions “look day-one brand new, as the Looney Tunes should,” he told Vulture. In addition to “taking delight” when people notice the restorations, he’s just glad Tubi’s doing right by the Tunes. “I’m kind of glad [WBD] took them off HBO Max and allowed other networks to use them so we can all see them.”
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