Cartoon Network's 2010 live-action series *Tower Prep* was axed after just one 13-episode season, and its creator, Paul Dini, has offered a controversial explanation for why. The show, about students with special abilities secretly enrolled at a mysterious boarding school, was pitched as a darker, Harry Potter-style adventure, but Dini later claimed on Kevin Smith's "Fatman on Batman" podcast that the network's discomfort stemmed partly from the series attracting an unexpectedly large female audience rather than simply failing to find viewers.

Dini had earlier given a more conventional account on his LiveJournal blog, saying Cartoon Network had decided, five months before *Tower Prep* even premiered, to pivot away from live-action drama towards animated comedies, which were delivering its biggest hits. He also acknowledged the show's high production costs and its failure to immediately produce blockbuster ratings as contributing factors. The series, starring Drew Van Acker as a student with the ability to sense events moments before they happen, ended its sole season on an unresolved cliffhanger that was never followed up.