How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (TV special) animation divisions of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, where Jones was under contract at the time. CBS, coming off the surprise success of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" a year before, allotted Jones and MGM a $315,000 budget, more than four times what Bill Melendez was offered to produce "A Charlie Brown Christmas". The original broadcast was sponsored by the Foundation for Full Service Banks whose sponsor plugs within the original airing were later edited out for subsequent broadcasts. The entirety of the book's text, with some slight embellishment, was adapted into the special; to pad the special to a full 30-minute time slot,
What a Cartoon! What a Cartoon! Show" was relaunched as "The Cartoon Cartoon Show". In this new format, it aired reruns and new episodes of the full-series Cartoon Cartoons, as well as new Cartoon Cartoon shorts and old "WAC!" shorts. From 2000 to 2001, the pilot shorts appearing on the network's viewer's poll that lost to "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy" and "" (except for "Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?") were added to the anthology. The show continued to air until October 9, 2003, when it was temporarily dropped from the network's schedule. On September 12, 2005, "The Cartoon Cartoon Show"