Well.... since I am writing an ongoing TL that prominently features the show itself, I guess I'll take a shot at it.
If
Ren & Stimpy was never pitched to Nickelodeon in the first place, it's possible that one of the four other TV pilots that were originally pitched to Nickelodeon would be picked up instead, two of which were from Cosgrove Hall Films (the makers of Nick import staples
Danger Mouse and
Count Duckula). These included:
The Crowville Chronicles - A pilot about animals working at a newspaper. Test audiences found this to be boring and generic.
Trash - Basically a stop-motion series about an alien superhero living on a planet of trash, with hints of serialization. Test audiences were mostly indifferent with this one.
Big Beast Quintet - Based off the animated Nick ID, it featured the characters working at a news station in a
Zootopia-type city called Channel Zero. This largely went over the heads of test audiences with its mean boss and "fake news" story subplot.
The Weasel Patrol - This pilot was actually an adaptation of a comic book series about incompetant crime-fighting weasels that only seemed to win due to sheer luck if anything else. Test audiences absolutely hated this one, mainly because the comic was apparently for more mature audiences - which caused the pilot to take elements from different issues - resulting in a convoluted mess.
If you ask me, and if we assume the lack of
Ren & Stimpy made them look better, only the two Cosgrove Hall pilots stand any chance of getting greenlit out of all of them. Nickelodeon also originally intended for there to be
four - not three - Nicktoons, so lets assume that the cartoons that debut in 1991 are
Doug, Rugrats, The Crowville Chronicles, and
Trash.
But anyways, had
Ren & Stimpy not been made - I would argue that it would basically be a Nick-screw for its animated properties. Sure, Nickelodeon has
Rugrats, but
Rugrats didn't really become a massive success until Nick started airing massive marathons of the show in 1995. And while
Crowville and
Trash aren't nearly as high maintenance as
Ren & Stimpy - they also aren't nearly as subversive, clever, witty, creative, or even funny compared to
Ren & Stimpy (at least its first two seasons). I might even go as far as to say that without
Ren & Stimpy - Nickelodeon's foray into original, creator-driven animation is about as successful as Cartoon Network's foray into live-action programming. This unfortunately isn't unheard of, given live-action was Nick's bread and butter before the Nicktoons launched IOTL. And this failure could have wider implications for the industry, as in it's possible that Hanna-Barbera's
What a Cartoon never gets off the ground if Nick's animated programming fails (though it's not impossible that they could launch their own programming later on). And even if it did, it would be different given John Kricfalusi - after his firing - was an early voice in the project. John Kricfalusi is a man of many,
many, many, MANY negative qualities - but "uninteresting" is NOT one of them. The truth is that
Ren & Stimpy walked so that
Rocko's Modern Life could run so that
SpongeBob Squarepants could
sprint.
But it isn't all bad. The Disney Renaissance is still happening, and that includes their television shows.
The Simpsons is still going to be a massive pop culture phenomenon that ushers in adult animation to the masses. Steven Spielberg is still going to team up with Warner Bros and Tom Ruegger to launch series the likes of
Tiny Toon Adventures and
Animaniacs. Anime is most likely still coming to the West, though it would be slower if we assume that no
What a Cartoon somehow means that Cartoon Network doesn't pick up DiC's dub of
Sailor Moon. The 1990s will still be a time of new-found creativity in the world of animation. But the big difference could be that the demise of Saturday morning cartoons are noticeably delayed compared to OTL. It's possible NBC keeps its Saturday morning block, while Time Warner never merges with Turner Broadcasting. And of course different mergers mean a different financial atmosphere and thus wider changes outside of pop culture - but those are hard to predict without going into further detail.
TLDR: No
Ren & Stimpy doesn't stop the Animation Renaissance, it just keeps more of it on broadcast television instead of cable.
