Boomerang streaming service to shut down
On Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that the stand-alone Boomerang streaming service is shutting down on September 30. The service, launched back in 2017, offered on demand, ad-free streaming of the classic Warner Bros. catalog, including Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, “Tom and Jerry,” “Popeye,” and a few early Cartoon Network shows (“Courage the Cowardly Dog,” “The Life and Times of Juniper Lee”). The service even had a few originals, such as a “Wacky Races” reboot.
Warner Bros. Discovery states that current Boomerang subscribers will see their subscriptions transferred to Max, where they’ll pay the same rate for at least the next six months. (Boomerang costs $6 a month... and new sign-ups are closed.) Supposedly, some or most, but not all, of Boomerang’s content will be available on Max. My guess: good luck with any of the more obscure entries; “Atom Ant?” “Magilla Gorilla?” The early 80s “Flintstone Comedy Show” anthology series where Captain Caveman is Bedrock’s superhero (and never had a DVD release)?
None of this affects the Boomerang cable channel, which still exists, despite things looking dire for secondary cable channels.
My thoughts
For some time, I’ve wondered what would happen to Boomerang. While a great service when it launched, Warner Bros. started to pay less and less attention to the service as time went on, especially after HBO Max launched. While season playlists were rotated as appropriate, Boomerang stopped seeing new TV shows or movies added to it years ago. The service also has seen few changes, outside of a price hike a few years ago.
The existence of Max (formerly HBO Max) also should’ve made Boomerang less necessary, by incorporating everything under the Warner Bros. shield in one spot. (Though as I note below, this is no longer the case.)
Finally, a lot’s changed in streaming, and TV itself, since 2017. Boomerang’s biggest shows have ended up on other places, often with newer prints made; Tubi now has “Scooby-Doo,” “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons,” “Yogi Bear,” and “Tom and Jerry.” The recently launched over-the-air digital subchannel network MeTV Toons is the home of these same cartoons, plus others from Warner Bros.’s back catalog. Tubi and MeTV are both ad-supported and free. And, of course, there’s the explosion in the number of streaming services since 2017. All of these reasons might make the idea of paying for a vintage cartoon service like Boomerang a tough sell for the general public.
That said, since the Warner Bros./Discovery merger, Warner Bros.’s treatment of Max and the classic WB animation library hasn’t been good. The current owners even let part of the Looney Tunes catalog, the one cartoon a WB streaming service should have, lapse from Max. (Which also prompted me to start buying DVDs and Blu-rays again.) While Warner Bros. Discovery promise to have some/most of Boomerang’s material on Max, it’s hard to view any of their promises with anything but skepticism at this point. If they were willing to drop Looney Tunes of all cartoons, what’s to stop anything else from being ditched on a whim? (These are the same people behind disappearing “Coyote vs. Acme,” after all.)
Other factors also cross my mind, such as the modern state of Cartoon Network (and Adult Swim eating into CN's timeslot space). At this point, the main animation categories Warner Bros.’s current owners care about are: DC Comics; Adult Swim/adult animation; and Studio Ghibli. Everything else seems to fall under “good luck.” And even those three categories aren’t completely safe; “Batman: Caped Crusader” is now airing on Amazon Prime Video, not Max, for… reasons.
Boomerang alternatives for classic animation fans
For casual fans, Tubi and MeTV Toons are the homes of the major Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes classics. While they have ads, they’re also free. If you just want to casually watch Scooby-Doo, the Flintstones, or Yogi Bear, and don’t mind ads, Tubi and MeTV are decent options.
For hardcore fans, or those that don’t want ads, I think your best option is buying the DVDs/Blu-rays/digital videos. While there’s Max, I can’t recommend it at this point solely for classic animation, given my aforementioned criticisms. It’s also expensive; Max with ads is $10/month, while ad-free Max is $17/month. (That said, Boomerang users should probably keep Max until the inevitable price hike, as they'll get to pay just $6/month for the ad-free tier.) Meanwhile, at this writing, the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection DVD set, featuring the most popular classic Looney Tunes shorts, only costs $20 on Amazon. Buying this DVD set lets you permanently own these shorts, versus paying a monthly fee and being at the whim of a company more interested in shoving “90 Day Fiance” spin-offs onto Max.