4Kids TV
4Kids TV was an American television programming block and Internet-based video on demand children's network operated by News Corporation and 4Kids Entertainment. It originated as a weekly block on Saturday mornings on the Fox network, which was created out of a four-year agreement reached on January 22, 2002, between 4Kids Entertainment and Fox to lease the four-hour Saturday morning time slot occupied by the network's existing children's program block, Fox Kids. It was targeted at children aged 7–11. The 4Kids TV block was part of the Fox network schedule, although it was syndicated to other broadcast television stations in certain markets where a Fox affiliate declined to air it.
History
The block aired a preview special on September 1, 2002, and was formally launched on September 14, 2002, under the name FoxBox, a joint venture between News Corporation and 4Kids Entertainment, replacing Fox Kids, which the network announced it would discontinue as a result of the 2001 purchase of Fox Family Worldwide by The Walt Disney Company. The block was rebranded as 4Kids TV on January 22, 2005. 4Kids Entertainment was fully responsible for the content of the block and collected all of the advertising revenue accrued from it. However, Fox's standards and practices department still handled content approval and responsibility of editing the series to meet FCC broadcast standards.The programming block aired on Saturday mornings in most areas of the United States, though some stations carried it on Sundays. On October 2, 2007, 4Kids Entertainment announced it would program a competing Saturday morning lineup for The CW, the new block, The CW4Kids, premiered on May 24, 2008, replacing the Kids' WB programming block, which had been carried over to The CW from one of its predecessors, The WB, when it launched on September 23, 2006. The block was renamed as Toonzai on August 14, 2010, and continued to air until it ended August 18, 2012, being replaced by Vortexx a week later and the block continued to air until it ended on September 27, 2014.
On November 10, 2008, 4Kids Entertainment announced that 4Kids TV would conclude at the end of the year due to intervening conflicts between Fox and 4Kids, as the latter company had not paid the network for the time lease for some time, while the network was unable to maintain the guaranteed 90% clearance for the block due to affiliate refusals and an inability to secure secondary affiliates to carry the programming in markets where the Fox station denied clearance for the block. 4Kids TV ended on December 27, 2008, ending Fox's nearly two-decade commitment to children's animation programming. Fox announced that the four-hour time period would no longer be used for children's programming, owing that it was no longer viable due to the insurmountable competition from children's cable channels. On January 3, 2009, the network gave two hours of the programming time that the 4Kids TV block occupied back to its affiliates, while the other two hours would be retained by the network for a paid programming block titled Weekend Marketplace, which replaced 4Kids TV on January 3, 2009. The 4KidsTV logo now only exists as the closing logo for 4Kids Entertainment for shows produced by the company distributed outside of the United States.
Fox would reverse course and indirectly resume airing children's programming for the first time since 4Kids TV ended through an agreement announced on December 17, 2013, when it signed a deal with Steve Rotfeld Productions to launch Xploration Station, a two-hour block of live-action educational programs focused on the STEM fields, which debuted on September 13, 2014. As the block accounts for two of the three weekly hours of educational programming required by the Federal Communications Commission's Children's Television Act, the Fox affiliates that opted against airing 4Kids TV, Fox Kids, or Weekend Marketplace elected to run Xploration Station as it is an E/I-compliant lineup syndicated primarily to the network's affiliates, relieving them of taking on the full burden of purchasing educational programming aimed at children from the syndication market.
As of 2024, some former 4Kids TV shows are made available to stream via the free ad-supported Tubi streaming service, which launched on April 1, 2014 and was later acquired by Fox Corporation on April 20, 2020. Sonic X is alao available on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Pluto TV, and Crackle respectively, though the latter service only carries seasons 1 and 2. Netflix also carried the first two seasons of Sonic X between December 2019 and December 2024, and again since December 2025. In addition, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is made available to stream on both the free ad-supported Pluto TV and subscription-based Paramount+ streaming services owned by Paramount Skydance following that property's 2009 acquisition by Nickelodeon, while various entries in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise and the English-language version of Chaotic are on NBCUniversal's Peacock streaming service.
Programming
Former programming
FoxBox
Original programming
Acquired programming
Short-form programming
‡ - Program transitioned to 4Kids TV4Kids TV
Original programming
Acquired programming
† - Program transitioned from FoxBox4KidsTV.com
Online network
4Kids launched an online video player on its website on September 8, 2007, and gradually added full-length episodes as well as additional video clips and online-exclusive content.Relationship with Fox and broadcast ambiguities
The block had a somewhat infrequent relationship to the Fox network. The programming was produced for Fox and offered to the network's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates first, so the Fox station in any given area had the right of first refusal. In the event that a Fox affiliate or in some cases, an O&O of the network—opted not to carry 4Kids TV, the block then became available for the local broadcast rights to be acquired by another television station. In fact, it was due in part to these carriage ambiguities that 4Kids dissolved the block in 2008, as they had been promised clearance on at least 90% of Fox's stations.Most of Fox's owned-and-operated stations opted to carry 4Kids TV. However dating back to the existence of the Fox Kids block, the twelve stations that Fox acquired from New World Communications in 1996 generally did not air 4Kids TV. In some of the New World markets, 4Kids was not carried on any station. In a majority of these markets, an independent station carried the block; in others, it was carried by either a WB or UPN affiliate, and later a MyNetworkTV or CW affiliate. The only exception was in St. Louis, Missouri, where Fox O&O KTVI carried the block.
Some of 4Kids TV's programming met the criteria to be considered educational and informational under the requirements defined by the Children's Television Act, and counted toward the three-hour-per-week mandatory educational children's programming quotas outlined by the Federal Communications Commission.
Markets where 4Kids TV did not run
Markets where 4Kids TV ran on a MyNetworkTV affiliate
Markets where 4Kids TV ran on a CW affiliate
Note: These CW affiliates ran 4Kids TV on Sundays, due to their obligation to carry their primary network's children's lineup on Saturday as scheduled.| City of license/market | Fox station | CW station carrying block |
| Atlanta, Georgia | WAGA-TV | WUPA |
| Cleveland, Ohio | WJW-TV | WBNX-TV |
| Fresno, California | KMPH-TV | KFRE-TV |
| Omaha, Nebraska | KPTM | KXVO |
| Phoenix, Arizona | KSAZ-TV | KASW |