How Phineas And Ferb Saved Disney’s TV-Y7 Cartoons And Started The Disney TVA’s Renaissance
Disney TVA currently is on it’s Ranaissance era with hits like Amphibia, Big City Greens, The Owl House & The Ghost And Molly McGee and previous projects had many critical acclaim with Kick Buttowski Surbuban Daredevil, Star Vs The Forces Of Evil S1-S3A, DuckTales 2017, Big Hero 6 The Series, The 7D, Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure, Gravity Falls,The 7D, Wander Over Yonder, Randy Cunningham 9th Grade Ninja, MotorCity & Fish Hooks and upcoming hits like Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur,Kiff, Primos,Hailey’s On It! & The Witchverse.
And pitches by Monica Ray, Cheyenne Curtis,Steve Marmel,Ryan W Quincy, Amy Huggings & more than 30 artists and creators…
But probably people don’t know about it and is that around 2005-2006, Disney TVA was in shift to become a preschool only animation studio and that Phineas And Ferb’s sucess paved way for more creator-driven animation specially
Back on 2006 and 2007 many reports at The Animation Guild website by Steve Hullet mentioned that Disney Channel haven’t greenlighted a new animated prime time series for the network by the Disney TVA studio and that the only things that the studio was focusing more was preschool animation which shows like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and My Friends Tigger and Pooh.
On the 2006 to 2007 articles this declarations from DTVA staff members mentioned the following statements…
“A staffer told me: "I don’t see TVA and Disney Channel prepping any big new series right away. The Channel has had big success with its live-action stuff, and everything else has to like, hit those markers”
“The Channel hasn’t greenlit any new mainstream cartoon series lately. Looks like they’re going for the little kid demographic with Mickey’s Clubhouse and going after the teens and tweens with blockbuster live action movies and series. You know, things like High School Musical and Hanna Montana”
People at Disney Channel at the time thought after the failures of post Kim Possible S4 shows (Replacements, Ying Yang Yo, Get Ed) and the failures to get a potential good pilot via Shorty McShort Shorts didn’t work and abandoning TV-Y7 animation was a possible thing at Disney TVA.
The people at DTVA of 2007 thought that preschool animation was the future for the studio.
That explains the huge gap of Disney not introducing any new Y7 shows between 2007 and 2010 and ABC giving up having any new series with the exception of a new Power Rangers the last few years.
You can guess what happen when Phineas And Ferb became a big hit after 2008…. as in 2009 Fish Hooks became like the first original animated show on Disney Channel to be greenlighted on three years.
Phineas and Ferb is to shows like Gravity Falls what The Sopranos is to shows like Breaking Bad or what Oliver And Company is to films like The Little Mermaid..
Back on 2012, Dan and Swampy adressed this to the public on a interview
“Disney always had a hand in animation on the feature side, but had fallen by the wayside in TV,” says “Phineas and Ferb” co-creator Povenmire. “In TV, they played off the success of movies like ‘Aladdin’ and (characters like) Buzz Lightyear. (Animation) was not creator-driven, but franchise-driven.”
“If not for ‘Phineas and Ferb,’ I think you wouldn’t see a show like ‘Gravity Falls’ on Disney now,” Marsh says. “Disney has been playing safe for a long time, but now are taking creative risks. I think you will continue to see shows very different from what you’ve come to expect from Disney.”
In retrospect, its scary just how close Disney TVA was to biting the bullet. If we’re didn’t get Phineas & Ferb, we probably wouldn’t have gotten Gravity Falls. And if we didn’t have Gravity Falls, we probably wouldn’t have gotten The Owl House and Amphibia.
