Thread:Notshane/@comment-1782183-20140216083120/@comment-1782183-20140309175652

Some people are under the impression that Jim Samples was the original founder of CN, but that's not true. There were several articles from 2007 (during the Boston bomb scare) that said Jim Samples he had been with CN/Turner for 14 years, and people took this to mean he was the president/manager/founder of CN.

However, if you read the Toonzone forums and look at news articles from around 2001, you'll see that Betty Cohen was the founder and manager of CN, NOT Jim Samples. She was fired because she disagreed with Jamie Kellner (head of AOL-Time Warner at the time), and Jim Samples replaced her because he ran CN's website.

As for him being responsible for CN's good content, he kept some of CN's older shows around (like Ed Edd n Eddy), but also canned several of the original Cartoon Cartoons (though, to be fair, many fans thought they were going downhill and getting unfunny; plus, there were still re-runs). He also green-lit shows that many fans thought of as "bad" (like Squirrel Boy), but also green-lit "modern classics" like Foster's Home, Ben 10 (original), and (maybe) Class of 3000.

His biggest blunder, I think, was putting live-action movies on the network to compete with Nick and Disney Channel. Also, according to a news article from 2006, he and Bob Higgins (Vice President of CN at the time) were spending money on live-action pilots for the network, none of which ever aired (thankfully). Though, you could argue this wasn't as bad as what Snyder did, because Re-Animated and some of the movies at least had SOMETHING to do with cartoons.

Even though Jim seems like a nice guy in interviews, maybe it's best he resigned when he did. If he continued, then he might've ended up like Michael Eisner and the fans would've hated him.