Insight: Tuca & Bertie Creator Is Mad About Her Show Being Canceled, But The Numbers Don’t Lie

The Writers Guild of America has a very bleak future ahead of it. Clearly, the organization is threatened by the uptick in technologies that could very well replace a number of its members in the fields of journalism (see Buzzfeed), writing TV shows, and more, so naturally, the organization is readying for a strike that could come later this year because Hollywood has always been ten years behind in terms of understanding and harnessing tech.

Lisa Hanawalt, WGA West member and creator of the recently canceled Tuca & Bertie, recently posted on the “Broken Promises” bulletin about her displeasure with the series being canceled a second time, which, add that to a $1.50 MIGHT get her a cup of coffee. Now, it should be noted that Lisa’s former co-producer on that aforementioned series is current WGA Board of Director and BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg who actually campaigned last year on the worry of the increase in technologies that are threatening his very business and once claimed that a network didn’t order his series because he wanted WGA writers and the network didn’t want to pay for ’em. Likewise, Lisa’s long-time boyfriend, and another former TV producer who has lamented in mergers canceling his series, Adam Conover, is by far the WGA’s biggest cheerleader and is now on the board running on campaign promises for “streaming residuals”, organizing, and comedy/variety coverage.

Here’s the issue that’s happening right now in streaming that is causing these cancellations, the contracts initially negotiated between streamers and unions are getting far too expensive now to maintain long term. The reason, and I said this when it happened, why BoJack Horseman and Lisa’ Tuca & Bertie were canceled in the first place is because the number of replays those shows were getting weren’t enough to justify the increasing costs of those series continuing. It’s also noteworthy that Netflix canceled those series and the streamer has not had any mergers with anybody in the entertainment space since then and is far more profitable producing animated series that are made in Canada, Japan, and the like, because those countries have “right to work” laws in place which means there’s little to no chance of even recognized unions really moving the needles that much, and even if they did, the dollar trades higher in those countries, ergo making it more affordable for streamers to pay those royalties even if needed. So there goes Lisa’s argument on why Tuca & Bertie was canceled on Netflix.

As for her new argument on why the show was canceled on Adult Swim Hanawalt claims “The women-led series had been a cult hit and a critical darling—the Warner execs knew it needed advertising support and time to grow viewers in the male-dominated adult animation space”. We actually did an analysis of this when Tuca & Bertie show was canceled, the ratings simply weren’t there. It should be noted that HBO MAX’s biggest animated comedy for the month of January 2023, was Velma, a woman-created adult animated comedy that is breaking viewership records, this despite having a piss poor score on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. The moral? Metric-driven scores and reviews have little to no basis on whether or not a TV series is successful…not even when we do it. I’ve been told to my face that our influence here at Bubbleblabber is far more evident in the underground producers and creators we bring to the forefront and that when we say an adult animated series is good or bad, its usually a signal to the other press outlets to cover/not cover that series. Again, did our 6/10 score review for Velma help the show versus our rather much higher score for Tuca & Bertie from that series getting canceled? Maybe, maybe not. More likely what did Tuca & Bertie in is that the show’s viewership dropped 40% in the overnight ratings from when the show’s second season premiered compared to that of when the show’s third season wrapped. It should also be noted that while the Rotten Tomatoes scored stayed roughly the same, the number of reviewers also dropped also by 50%, which means numerous outlets came to the conclusion that the cost of reviewing the series was not worth the amount of traffic in which that franchise ascertained…in other words…people lost interest in Tuca & Bertie. In comparison, Velma’s viewership was actually 130% higher than that of The Last of Us’ series premiere, and is anything but a critical darling, but the show did was it was supposed to do as an adult animated comedy series…get people mad. Velma got people mad because the show is run by a libertarian woman who maybe only kind of cares about cancel culture, and opted to change the lead character’s race which went against 50 years of Scooby-Doo history. THAT, got people talking. The only thing that got people talking about Tuca & Bertie near the end of ITS run, is when actor Tiffany Haddish got hit with a DUI in Atlanta, Georgia…not exactly billboard worthy marketing material here, Lisa.

Lisa goes on to say that the WB Discovery merger was the impetus of her series eventually getting canceled, and that the “marketing team” was let go. I put those words in quotes because I can tell you firsthand, Adult Swim has NEVER had good marketing, like ever. And the same team for their PR has largely been in place for the last ten+ years and really gives the same level of detail and service that every adult animated series on Adult Swim gets. Oh don’t worry, I’m not going to bat for Adult Swim corporate here…you’ll know that later this week as I go ham on another topic, but for this, I can’t really fault the network for Tuca & Bertie’s woes.

The bigger reason would probably be, again, the decision to renew a WGA series for a fourth season, the magic number an animated series gets to where everyone associated with the show gets raises and WB Discovery not seeing the cost/benefit in doing so given the growing lack of interest in the franchise as noted previously.

The contracts at WGA are archaic and need revising in a modern world. The bots are coming to take jobs and its up to the writers if they want jobs or not in the future of animated show business.