Mike Lazzo, the executive vice president and creative director of Adult Swim, has retired from the network after more than 40 years in entertainment, an Adult Swim spokesperson has confirmed to The Dot and Line. To date, a successor has not been named publicly, and an Adult Swim spokesperson said “there is no timeline set yet for when his replacement will be announced.” Both senior vice president Keith Crofford and senior vice president and director of programming Jason DeMarco remain with Adult Swim.
Lazzo has been instrumental to the development of Cartoon Network since its inception. In 1993, he became the first programmer in the network’s history after years programming the animation block for Turner Broadcasting System, whose founder, Ted Turner, also launched Cartoon Network. By 1994, he had been named vice president of programming for the network.
Lazzo was the creator of the first animated late-night talk show, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, which later became the lynchpin of Adult Swim, which he conceived and developed, when it launched in 2001. He was instrumental in developing The Powerpuff Girls and other shorts from What a Cartoon! anthology show, produced by Hanna-Barbera (which Turner bought in 1991), into series. Lazzo was also central to the launch of the Toonami block, which helped popularize anime in the U.S.
In 2016, Lazzo was criticized for responding, on Reddit, to questions about Adult Swim’s lack of women creators by arguing that “women don’t tend to like conflict, comedy often comes from conflict, so that’s probably why we (or others) have so few female projects.” He later clarified that “nonetheless this was a dumb answer to a good question as Lucille Ball and Gilda Rather to Amy Poelher and Amy Schumer prove my statement a load of generalized nonsense.” He did not, however, explain why Adult Swim continued to skew so heavily male in terms of which creators it hires.
While Adult Swim has not officially announced a retirement date for Lazzo, sources have confirmed to the Dot and Line that he left the company on January 1.
This story is developing.
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