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The merchandising for the Cars franchise has produced over $10 billion in sales. Cars 3 made money on its own, but it really served as an advertising avenue for the more profitable aspects of the business, such as the theme park, toys, branded clothing, etc. http://www.cartoonbrew.com/box...

I blame it on stricter regulation of E/I and program-length commercials in the Children's Television Act as amended.

That was part of it, but not all of it. You can make a cartoon within the E/I requirements and still make it funny enough that adults can enjoy watching it. Despite the fears raised by the article what begun it all in 2010, Faust managed to sneak enough Benny Hill and Warner Brothers references into her cartoon to make even an E/I-compliant show (first season was E/I, then Faust left, and subsequent seasons weren't) and not only did the target audience eat it up, so did their parents, to the extent that an investment in DHX Media (DHX.TO, trades in Canada) based solely on the virality of MLP on of all places, fucking 4chan/co would have returned 1000% in the space of a couple of years.

tl;dr: you can make a program-length toy commercial (and two movie-length toy commercials), and you can still make it a good enough cartoon to stand on its own. But that's only one of two necessary (not merely sufficient) conditions. Nobody's going to watch it if they don't know about it. So now that you've taken the corporate gamble of letting the creators actually make a good cartoon for your product -- how do you make sure everyone knows it exists? How do you get the viewer to watch "just one episode..."?

The second necessary condition is that you be willing to take a light hand on IP issues. Originally, Hasbro had no idea what was going on, which was what enabled fans to get access to the episodes, download them in HD, and remix them to crank out fan content. The light hand on the IP issues (originally because the trademark lawyers had no idea that any of this was happening, and because corporate figured out why it became viral before the IP lawyers went apeshit) was a big factor in helping things go viral.

It might be that Pixar considers rendering old news, considering what they've come up with for animators:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/tech/watch-a-rare-demo-of-pixars-animation-system-presto-98099.html

If you're not familiar with computer animation, that might not seem like much. To the animators where I work, though, it induced a weird combination of frenzy (as they lusted after it) and depression (once they re-opened the scenes they were working on in Maya). The rest of the industry has to spend hours rendering (in Renderman, or Vray, or whatever) to get a result that Pixar is now creating in-house in real time.

He says the days of national TV networks controlling the global online rights to shows has to end.

Historically. this gives the big budget Hollywood production dominance in all markets. It is why New Zealand becomes a standing stage set and nothing more. It is why governments impose domestic content requirements on theaters, broadcasters, and so on.

---- and why Disney is intent on calming the waters by green-lighting a multi-cultural Pacific Rim anime Big Hero 6

Defamation laws vary by country quite a bit, so I can only comment from the perspective of someone from California. But in a place where people openly post cartoons of our president dressed as Hitler, standards of defamation seem to be pretty solidly on the open-dialog side.

Videos in question are here.

Adam Josephs quickly made himself a symbol of the tiny everyday police abuses that build deep resentment in the community. This was not something someone did to him: he did it to himself. It may not be as potent a symbol as the shooting of an unarmed, complying suspect by Oakland officer Johannes Mehserle (and the subsequent attempted coverup). But it nonetheless resonates with people who have had that bad run in with an officer who abused his power and managed to turn an innocuous situation into a terrible one. If you watch the videos above, the officer is parodied arresting a woman for dancing in the street, and other things which all seem on similar lines as arresting a woman for blowing bubbles.

And even suing the makers of the parody would make sense, albeit a messed up sense that should be thrown out of court immediately. But suing the commenters? And then YouTube?

On a side note, I've had my fair share of interactions with the police. And every time they were courteous and professional, even when I was at the other end of their gun. But police abuses do happen, and have happened to people I care very much about. People like Adam Josephs need to be singled out as unacceptable outliers. Last week, I was chatting with an officer about how they were telling stories about bad situations they were in, and were looking for solutions to de-escalate the situations with minimal fuss. One told the story of how he was surrounded as he attempted to leave a bar, and someone blocked his way out with thinly veiled threats to kill him. The officer, being outnumbered, offered to buy his assailant a diet coke. This threw the assailant so much, they sat down, had a drink, chatted a bit, and the officer walked out of there alive.

In the case of a bubble-blowing protester, even a simple "Hey, that's kind of annoying. Would you blow that somewhere else?" would have ended the situation right there. It takes a special kind of talent to start with a bubble-blowing peacenick and elevate it into an arrest. That's what these videos are satirizing, and they do so in a well targeted, irreverent, silly fashion.

Off topic but I thought I would mention that in "Seeds of Change " Henry Hobhouse mentions the use of Spinach was a thinly veiled nod to Cocaine and also generations of kids had to eat the stuff because it was a high source of iron - where as it is nothing special for a leafy green.

You need to do your research better. A quick check of Amazon shows that the book you mention talks about 5 plants, none of which is spinach; the 5 plants are quinine, sugar, tea, cotton, and the potato.

As for Spinach, it is widely believed that Spinach was a metaphor for hemp / marijuana, not cocaine. The term "spinach" has been slang for marijuana since the early 20th century. A simple Google search for the terms "Popeye marijuana" brings up this article, as well as this follow-up article which includes a scan of an October 1939 Popeye comic book cover.

Well - Disney animation, at least.

John Lasseter and Ed Catmull truly understand how to make good, original films -- and with Jobs riding shotgun upstairs as the biggest shareholder, they can actually get things done. This decision is proof that they are firmly in control. I think Lasseter, Catmull, and the terrific artists over in Burnbank are going to create some great films - and I'm sure some of them will be 2D as well (Brad Bird - here's your chance)

There's some great quotes from Disney artists about the managements change over at Cartoon Brew ( http://www.cartoonbrew.com/ ) Here's one from Floyd Norman (story artist who started at Disney in the 50's and has worked at many other places as well)

Not too many guys can say they've worked for both Walt Disney and John Lasseter, so I can offer a unique perspective.

Different cultures at Disney and Pixar? Naw, it's the same culture. Eisner's managers simply choked all the creative life out of Disney. The Disney culture is finally returning to Disney. Ed Catmull, Steve Jobs and John Lasseter will be returning it shortly. This is good news for all of us who love animation, and the Disney legacy in particular.

The thing that really sucks is that Flash work has started to be outsourced, which is pretty devastating for those of us in other places who use (and make a living from) this medium.

Here's some links about Indian animation outsourcing. Many of them focus on how there's a lack of animators in the country, which aims to be a leader in outsourced animation production:
Padmalaya seeks 400 animators to execute new projects
Color Chips to Hike Headcount to 1,000
The Sky is the Limit!
Trained Talent Eludes Animation Industry

All links are pulled from the excellent animation blog Cartoon Brew