Watching ane of Cartoon Network'due south late-nighttime Adult Swim shows can be a jarring feel. This is non standard television fare. Sealab 2021 — Hanna-Barbera's hostage 1972 cartoon Sealab 2020 reimagined with an incompetent, socially dysfunctional cast — is a fifteen-minute prove in which the characters tin can spend 5 minutes debating whether information technology's okay to refer to an African-American coiffure member as "Blackness Debbie," but a white crew member as just "Debbie." "These are shows that make the audition uncomfortable," says Mike Lazzo, the network's senior vice president and the founding-father-cum-begetter-effigy at Adult Swim. "Our most bones philosophy, which we ripped off of [legendary network programming principal] Fred Silverman is, 'Await at what everyone else does, do the reverse.' "

And opposites do attract. Lazzo's motley band of shows is the clandestine leader of late nighttime. From 11 p.m. to two a.g., six nights a week, Adult Swim is consistently the number-one show on basic cable for eighteen- to 34-yr-olds. In Oct, its full audience grew during the Leno-Letterman fourth dimension period by roughly 27% when compared with 2003, and in the third quarter of 2004, more young men watched its programs than the Tardily Show With David Letterman.

Lazzo has developed his anarchic shows by fostering a creative surround unlike that of whatsoever television set performance, even the ane he works for. Although Cartoon Network was one time a small, haphazard performance, as the network has grown, it has acquired the trappings of tradition. The Atlanta-based company has a new evolution squad in Los Angeles, likewise every bit focus groups and always more eyes and voices involved in the creative process.

That makes Lazzo'south Adult Swim franchise, which has eschewed such trappings, notable. How Lazzo has done it is a template for developing any creative hothouse inside a lumbering corporation (his ultimate dominate is Time Warner, the stodgy media colossus that's only about the last place you'd expect to find programming that'due south as likely to trigger breast pains as laughter). The question, though, is whether success and its pressures volition destroy the formula that engendered it in the commencement place. In Lazzo'due south instance, it turns out that it's non and so much his overseers that he has to worry about, but himself.

Here's Your Rope

For Lazzo, the key to Adult Swim'southward success is simple: Exist like Ted Turner. Lazzo, a high school dropout who started in Turner's shipping and receiving department 20 years agone, reveres Turner, Drawing Network's founder. Turner ran an entrepreneurial shop where he non only encouraged staffers to accept risks but practically dared them to do and then. "Ted Turner'southward organisation was, 'Here'southward the rope, go hang yourself,' " says Lazzo.

The 46-twelvemonth-old, whose longish blond pilus, slight build, and low-key mode requite him an air of an crumbling Jeff Spicoli, the spaced-out, toked-upwardly 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 Drawing Network was beingness mocked as the Hanna-Barbera aqueduct, a place where Ted Turner could circulate, ad nauseam, all the Flintstones reruns in his vault, Lazzo helped create the network'south first original series, Space Ghost: Declension to Coast, in a converted broom closet. But this is also the guy who, back when he was in charge of children'southward programming, ran the same episode of Screwy Squirrel over and over ane April Fools' Day until cablevision operators raised hell with the network brass nearly a screwy programmer.

As late-night programming chief, though, Lazzo has proven a capable student. "You lot have to bet on a group of people," he says. "Then exercise to them what the visitor did to usa. Tell them, 'Here'southward your rope.' " Lazzo will requite that rope to practically anyone with a promising thought. Many of Adult Swim'south cardinal shows, such as Sealab 2021 and the new individual-eyes-with-talking-motorcar comedy Stroker & Hoop, were created by writers who had never made a cartoon earlier. "He'due south given the states full creative freedom," says Casper Kelly, cocreator of Stroker & Hoop, who spent v years optioning scripts in L.A. before joining Drawing 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 sure attributes. They can be confrontational, even downright mean-spirited, a identify where superheroes tin exist as sexist, conniving, and dim-witted as mere mortals. They're densely packed with double entendres, insider jokes, and pop-civilisation references — some so obscure they'd make Dennis Miller run to Google. Typically it takes even the most patient viewer one-half a season'south worth of episodes to feel in on the joke. So information technology'southward a good thing Lazzo has had patience. "On a network, they'll yank your series after i episode," says Kelly. "Here, they let united states of america carry information technology out."

Keep the Creatives Away From the Suits

Designing an temper in which creatives tin do their all-time work is all about infinite and buffers. In Jim Samples, the network's 41-year-old executive VP and full general manager, Lazzo has a buffer between the suits at Fourth dimension Warner and his team. Lazzo needs Samples because of how things operated when AOL acquired Time Warner in 2000. The online service ushered in a system of budget cuts, micromanagement, and meetings. Coin for marketing was cutting; new series were reduced. "There was a period, from 2000 to 2002, when you didn't know who to turn to to go an answer," says Lazzo. "At that place were more checkpoints to get through."

Samples saw how all the prying eyes in the AOL days paralyzed his creative team. And so he acts as a bulwark between corporate scrutiny and the producers, animators, and writers in Atlanta. "My job is to screen, to keep that away from the artistic folks here." He tin can requite Lazzo and so much leeway because Developed Swim keeps bringing in viewers and new advertisers, many of whom later buy spots on the kid'due south side as well.

Lazzo, withal, is taking that buffering one stride further: He's keeping Samples away from his own creative folks, the two dozen or so people who pump out all of that twisted programming. A few years ago, Lazzo fix shop for the Developed Swim team in an erstwhile carpet warehouse that CNN used to store field equipment. It'south but across the street from Drawing Network's downtown Atlanta offices, simply with one wrinkle: Yous take to cross a major highway to go in that location.

The warehouse (called Williams Street) was zip much to look at before Adult Swim got there, and now, some 3 years later, information technology has a style that tin can all-time be described as early postapocalyptic: ratty couches, exposed ceilings, dim lighting, a beat-up foosball table. And and then at that place'southward that highway, which makes trips between Developed Swim and Cartoon Network HQ just inconvenient enough. "Mike'southward accept is, 'Leave us lone, we'll make you coin,' " says Matt Thompson, cocreator of Sealab 2021. "Hiding your people is the just manner you can have autonomy. It's one of the main reasons I think he chose to go to that crappy building."

What'south important, too, is that Williams Street isn't just a clubhouse; it'southward a clubhouse in Atlanta. Truthful, if the heat and humidity don't get you, the seafood volition — or and so Lazzo volition rant while driving yous around boondocks in his Range Rover. Merely that'due south a pocket-size price to pay to steer articulate of what Lazzo calls "the machine": Hollywood and all its assorted players. "We're outside of New York and Los Angeles," Lazzo says. "The type of people who come hither, they keep us interesting." Lazzo is no fan of the machine. Before he hired his production chief, Keith Crofford, to produce Space Ghost, Lazzo had gone to a Hollywood product company to do the pilot. "It was awful, so nosotros figured, 'Fifty-fifty nosotros could do that piece of crap.' "

The Williams Street outpost also lets everyone associated with Adult Swim mingle, an essential chemical element, Lazzo says, to Adult Swim's success. To that end, Lazzo has also brought his ain art director and on-air-promotions section over to Williams Street. "You want people bumping into people all twenty-four hour period long," he says. "You lot want your writers, promo guys, and editors all maxim, 'Hey, did you think of this?' " Even Lazzo shares his part with Crofford, so he's not sheltered in a big office and away from the action.

Stay Off the Accountants' Radar

Lazzo and his team know that ane reason they can get abroad with what they're doing is that Adult Swim isn't a glaring line item on the upkeep. Its shows tend to be "cheap ass" productions, as Sealab's Matt Thompson puts it. Shows such every bit Sealab can price equally piddling as $50,000 an episode — plenty to brand virtually 1 minute of The Simpsons — and tin be churned out in four to half dozen weeks, equally opposed to some four to six months.

The cheaper the shows, the more than risks Adult Swim can have, the more time it can give shows to take hold of an audience, even if information technology takes an entire flavour, typically 13 episodes. "A network blithe testify tin cost $1 million an episode," says Lazzo. "Who wants to make a $13 1000000 decision that blows upwardly in their face? They'll make condom bets instead. Our arrangement is the reverse of that. You make a risky decision and if it doesn't pan out, you're not out that much. That's the key." For all the fun and games, Lazzo's focus on costs is serious. "They gave u.s.a. a upkeep and said, 'This is how much you accept,' " says Jackson Publick Three, creator of The Venture Bros., which premiered in August. "When we went over, we ate information technology."

Man Versus Auto

Lazzo now faces a disquisitional challenge with Adult Swim: how to continue to enlarge his franchise within Time Warner without losing its soul. Executives at Cartoon Network and Time Warner proceed expanding Adult Swim, from two nights a week when it began in 2001 to vi nights now. But with Cartoon Network fully distributed in 87 1000000 U.S. households, future growth depends on new shows. The Williams Street operation is small calibration and Developed Swim has big-league aspirations. "We need to branch out if we're going to be a 24-hr network, which is the goal," says Nick Weidenfeld, Adult Swim's manager of programme development.

And then the rules that created Developed Swim'due south creative hothouse have to be bent — if not broken outright. "In some ways, nosotros need to react against our ain philosophies," Lazzo says. His search for new content has forced him to cover the big-league strategies of Drawing Network proper — at least a footling scrap — past looking beyond his own walls. The Venture Bros. is produced in New York. Tom Goes to the Mayor, which debuted last November, is made in L.A. In the process, Lazzo has given up some of that mingling of ideas and people that he feels is essential to success. He reads the scripts and sends his notes, but his creators aren't down the hall. Information technology makes him a picayune nervous. "Yes, information technology is not equally relaxing as when you tin can walk down the hall and see editing," he says. "Anytime you go exterior your system, y'all accept trepidation."

Perhaps it's no surprise then that Adult Swim's newest series play it a piddling safer. Both Stroker & Hoop and The Venture Bros. are edgy, but they seem unwilling to make their audiences too uncomfortable when making them just a little uncomfortable might exercise. "These are more than standard comedies, more than easily attainable," admits Weidenfeld. Lazzo, in his defense, says he's however doing crazy stuff, namely in the course of Tom Goes to the Mayor. "It's like anti- animation, nigh similar looking at a movie book. It's really going to test the audience."

Perhaps the biggest impediment to maintaining that rebel spirit is that there'southward simply one Mike Lazzo. Adult Swim's success — and all those additional hours of original programming — are stretching its one-man mentor-muse-critic thin. Already some creators are showing symptoms of Lazzo withdrawal. "Sometimes I feel like a stepchild," says The Venture Bros.' Publick. "You're busting your donkey on this thing 16 hours a day. Sometimes you want a hug, someone to say, 'Neat script.' I don't hear anything." Lazzo seems to take gotten the bulletin. "He'southward been getting improve lately," says Publick.

If this were an Adult Swim prove, now is when everything would blow upwardly in Lazzo's face. And so far, it's been just the opposite, as ratings and buzz keep to rise. Whether Lazzo can go on it going, nonetheless, remains to exist seen. He'll be the first to tell you that in tv, autonomy can be equally fleeting equally a Jason Alexander sitcom. "We're left lonely only because it works," he says. "Or they would be over here in iii seconds." By hedging his ain maverick culture with some of that stodgy big-network culture he has long loathed, Lazzo's betting that he tin can keep the suits at bay a niggling longer. Adult Swim shows may be cooler than Hollywood TV — but a Hollywood ending withal beats all.

Alan Cohen is a writer living in New York. This is his get-go article for Fast Company.