Swimming Against The Tide

Watching one of Cartoon Network's late-night Adult Swim shows can be a jarring experience. This is not standard television fare. Sealab 2021 -- Hanna-Barbera's earnest 1972 cartoon Sealab 2020 reimagined with an incompetent, socially dysfunctional cast -- is a 15-minute show in which the characters can spend 5 minutes debating whether it's okay to refer to an African-American crew member as "Black Debbie," but a white crew member as just "Debbie." "These are shows that make the audience uncomfortable," says Mike Lazzo, the network's senior vice president and the founding-father-cum-father-figure at Adult Swim. "Our most basic philosophy, which we ripped off of [legendary network programming chief] Fred Silverman is, 'Look at what everyone else does, do the opposite.' "

And opposites do attract. Lazzo's motley band of shows is the secret leader of late night. From 11 p.m. to 2 a.m., six nights a week, Adult Swim is consistently the number-one show on basic cable for 18- to 34-year-olds. In October, its total audience grew during the Leno-Letterman time period by roughly 27% when compared with 2003, and in the third quarter of 2004, more young men watched its programs than the Late Show With David Letterman.

Lazzo has developed his anarchic shows by fostering a creative environment unlike that of any television operation, even the one he works for. Although Cartoon Network was once a small, haphazard operation, as the network has grown, it has acquired the trappings of tradition. The Atlanta-based company has a new development team in Los Angeles, as well as focus groups and ever more eyes and voices involved in the creative process.

That makes Lazzo's Adult Swim franchise, which has eschewed such trappings, notable. How Lazzo has done it is a template for developing any creative hothouse within a lumbering corporation (his ultimate boss is Time Warner, the stodgy media colossus that's just about the last place you'd expect to find programming that's as likely to trigger chest pains as laughter). The question, though, is whether success and its pressures will destroy the formula that engendered it in the first place. In Lazzo's case, it turns out that it's not so much his overseers that he has to worry about, but himself.

Here's Your Rope

For Lazzo, the key to Adult Swim's success is simple: Be like Ted Turner. Lazzo, a high school dropout who started in Turner's shipping and receiving department 20 years ago, reveres Turner, Cartoon Network's founder. Turner ran an entrepreneurial shop where he not only encouraged staffers to take risks but practically dared them to do so. "Ted Turner's system was, 'Here's the rope, go hang yourself,' " says Lazzo.

The 46-year-old, whose longish blond hair, slight build, and easygoing manner give him an air of an aging Jeff Spicoli, the spaced-out, toked-up surfer dude made famous by Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, has had a few adventures on both sides of that rope. When Cartoon Network was being mocked as the Hanna-Barbera channel, a place where Ted Turner could broadcast, ad nauseam, all the Flintstones reruns in his vault, Lazzo helped create the network's first original series, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, in a converted broom closet. But this is also the guy who, back when he was in charge of children's programming, ran the same episode of Screwy Squirrel over and over one April Fools' Day until cable operators raised hell with the network brass about a screwy programmer.

As late-night programming chief, though, Lazzo has proven a capable student. "You have to bet on a group of people," he says. "Then do to them what the company did to us. Tell them, 'Here's your rope.' " Lazzo will give that rope to practically anyone with a promising idea. Many of Adult Swim's key shows, such as Sealab 2021 and the new private-eyes-with-talking-car comedy Stroker & Hoop, were created by writers who had never made a cartoon before. "He's given us total creative freedom," says Casper Kelly, cocreator of Stroker & Hoop, who spent five years optioning scripts in L.A. before joining Cartoon Network. Lazzo vets all the scripts, and no other network executives have veto power.

With such a focused approach, Adult Swim programs tend to share certain attributes. They can be confrontational, even downright mean-spirited, a place where superheroes can be as sexist, conniving, and dim-witted as mere mortals. They're densely packed with double entendres, insider jokes, and pop-culture references -- some so obscure they'd make Dennis Miller run to Google. Typically it takes even the most patient viewer half a season's worth of episodes to feel in on the joke. So it's a good thing Lazzo has had patience. "On a network, they'll yank your series after one episode," says Kelly. "Here, they let us carry it out."