Andy Merrill

Space Ghost Coast to Coast

Merrill joined Cartoon Network within several months of its inception in 1992, coming over from sister company CNN. He started working in programming, and in 1993 he and then head of programming Mike Lazzo helped put together the first animated late-night talk show, Space Ghost Coast to Coast. He voices Space Ghost in the first of two unaired pilots for the show.

In April 1994, Space Ghost Coast to Coast premiered on Cartoon Network. The concept was that 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon superhero Space Ghost had retired from being a superhero and was hosting his own talk show, in which he interviewed live action celebrity guests, with his old archenemies Zorak and Moltar as band leader and director. To date, the show has had over 90 episodes aired on television, and was one of the motivating forces behind the creation of the Adult Swim programming bracket started in 2001. Merrill helped produce and write for the show for years, and voiced "Council of Doom" members Brak and Lokar, who appear on the show periodically, mostly Brak.

Merrill, along with Coast to Coast friend and co-star George Lowe, wrote on social media that their friend and co-star C. Martin Croker died on September 17, 2016. It was then revealed that Adult Swim would play the first produced episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast aired 12:30 eastern, 11:30 central that night in honor of Croker's contribution not only to Space Ghost, but many Adult Swim shows in both animation and voice overs. The three of them, along with Dave Willis, Dana Snyder, and Carey Means had been friends since their earliest Cartoon Network days.

As of April 2024, Merrill was a driver for Amazon.com, tweeting on the 30th Anniversary of the premiere of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, "If you would’ve told me 30 years ago that today, I would be at the bottomest rockiest rung of the rock bottom ladder, I wouldn’t have believed you." He later tweeted that he was working part time at Adult Swim.