Here's a neat eight-minute video highlighting the ways in which the Cartoon Network's bloc of late-night programming, Adult Swim, quietly became one of the more influential and beloved segments of programming on cable for those of a certain age.*
I was a first year in college and thus pretty perfectly primed to enjoy the first wave of late-night Adult Swim programming—the 15-minute shorts Sealab 2021, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Brak Show, and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law—when it debuted in late 2000, so this video is a bit of a nostalgia-fest. But it also makes a fine point about the ways in which the network helped mainstream anti-comedy and revive projects that had been shelved by more timid networks.
There's probably an interesting book to be written on the history of Adult Swim and its influence on TV comedy. One small "for instance": Without Adult Swim, Adam Reed and Matt Thompson wouldn't have made Sealab 2021, which led to Adult Swim and Reed/Thompson's (criminally underrated) Frisky Dingo, which is more or less a direct intellectual forebear of the critically acclaimed FX show Archer—executive produced by Reed and Thompson, created by Reed. In other words, without Adult Swim's penchant for experimentation, the world may have never been blessed with Sterling Archer.
Not really sure that's a world worth living in, to be entirely honest. Thanks Adult Swim: you've made the world a better place.
*Late Gen X/early Millennials, I guess?