ABC Kids (TV programming block)


ABC Kids was an American Saturday morning children's programming block that aired on ABC from September 13, 1997 to August 27, 2011. It featured a mixture of animated and live-action series from Walt Disney Television Animation and Disney Channel, aimed at children between the ages of 6 and 14. This was the second block that showed cable children's channel content on over-the-air television in the United States, the first being Nickelodeon on CBS.
The block regularly aired on Saturday mornings, though certain programs within the lineup aired on Sundays in some parts nationwide due to station preferences for non-educational programming or scheduling issues with regional or network sports broadcasts.
After five years of mainly reruns of programs introduced onto the block prior to the 2007–08 season, ABC decided it would discontinue providing children's programming during the Saturday morning timeslot, and entered into an agreement with Litton Entertainment to program that period; the block closed on August 27, 2011, and Litton's Weekend Adventure, which is structured as a syndication package distributed with virtual exclusivity to ABC's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates, replaced ABC Kids on September 3, 2011.

History

Disney's One Saturday Morning

purchased ABC corporate parent Capital Cities/ABC Inc. in 1995. The merger was completed the following year, and in the fall of 1996, ABC's Saturday Morning lineup aired the Doug episodes|fifth season] of Doug the third season of Gargoyles, Mighty Ducks, and Jungle Cubs. The following spring, it premiered the original animated series Nightmare Ned and began airing reruns of Ducktales. It was one of two networks at the time that prominently carried Disney programming on Saturday mornings, as CBS also carried Disney cartoons.
In February 1997, Peter Hastings left Warner Bros. Animation and joined Disney, where he was tasked with overhauling ABC's Saturday morning lineup. Disney CEO Michael Eisner sought to create a Saturday morning block that was different from those carried by its competitors Fox Kids and Kids' WB. Hastings pitched an idea around the concept that Saturday is different from every other day of the week, and the representation of weekdays as buildings. Hastings also proposed the use of virtual set technology; although he knew a bit about it at the time and the technology used was just starting to be developed, Disney and ABC liked the idea. He hired Prudence Fenton as consultant manager and co-executive producer. Together, they sampled virtual set technology at the 1997 NAB Show and chose technology developed by Accom and ELSET. Rutherford Bench Productions, which had previously worked with Disney on other projects, hired Pacific Ocean Post to produce the virtual set. The building was initially a drawing of Grand Central Terminal with a roller coaster added but evolved into a towering mechanical structure. Even the interior has similarities such as a central high raised room, with two wings on the left and right sides and another on the south side.
On September 13, 1997, Disney's One Saturday Morning premiered as a two-hour sub-block within the ABC Saturday Morning lineup. It was originally scheduled to premiere the Saturday prior on September 6, but coverage by all U.S. networks of the funeral of Princess Diana postponed the premiere by one week to September 13. Disney's One Saturday Morning featured two parts: three hours of regularly scheduled cartoons and a two-hour flagship show that included feature segments, comedy skits, and the virtual world which Hastings had proposed, along with new episodes of three animated series: Doug, Recess and Pepper Ann.
Doug, Recess and Pepper Ann were each nominally given 40-minute timeslots. The extended 10 minutes during each show's slot were for One Saturday Morning's interstitial segments and educational features. The live-action wraparound segments were originally hosted by Charlie for the block's first season in 1997, and later by MeMe starting in September 1998 until 2000; the segments also featured an elephant named Jelly Roll, who served as a sidekick to the human host, while the eccentric Manny the Uncanny, host of his own standalone segment where he visited and observed different jobs, made occasional appearances outside that segment. Other interstitials in the block included "Great Minds Think 4 Themselves", profiling historical figures and narrated by Robin Williams reprising his role as the Genie from Aladdin, and "Mrs. Munger's Class", in which a set of school yearbook photos were animated with comedy dialogue, although the segment was pulled from the air due to a lawsuit by some of the people depicted in the original yearbook photos.
Schoolhouse Rock!, a longtime essential of ABC's Saturday morning block since 1973, also aired as an interstitial segment during The [Bugs Bunny Show|The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show], likewise a carryover from the pre-Disney era, it would continue until ABC's contract with then-AOL Time Warner expired in 2000.
Disney's One Saturday Morning was initially a massive success, beating Fox Kids during its first season to be the most-watched Saturday morning block on broadcast television. It remained competitive in its second season, beating all of Fox Kids' shows except Power Rangers. The third season remained competitive with its broadcast peers on Fox and Kids WB, with The Weekenders being highly rated for the block; the new series defeated the anime show Pokémon to become broadcast television's most-watched Saturday morning cartoon, though all of the broadcast networks had fallen behind Nickelodeon.
The block received a new brand identity in fall 2000; this was followed by the shorts and hosted segments being removed on December 16 in a reformatting of the ABC block. By this time, the interstitials within the block were relegated to bumpers and program promotions. The change proved to be disastrous; by February 2001, ratings had fallen to less than half of its competitors' on Fox, The WB and Nickelodeon. In fall 2001, live-action series were added to the One Saturday Morning lineup with the addition of the "Zoog Hour," an hour-long sub-block featuring the Disney Channel original series Lizzie McGuire and Even Stevens.
A spin-off of Disney's One Saturday Morning, Disney's One Too, premiered on UPN on September 6, 1999; produced through a time-lease agreement between Disney and UPN, the block aired each weekday and on Sunday mornings, and featured many of the programs shown on One Saturday Morning.

ABC Kids

On July 23, 2001, the Walt Disney Company purchased Fox Family Worldwide, primarily for its Fox Family Channel, which was included in the sale as well as Saban Entertainment, a company in which Fox purchased a 50% interest in 1994. On September 14, 2002, ABC rebranded its Saturday morning block, as a subtle nod to the Fox Kids brand acquired by Disney through its purchase of Fox Family Worldwide, to ABC Kids.
The renamed block originally contained a mix of first-run programs exclusive to the block, as well as reruns of several original series from both Disney Channel and Toon Disney. NBA Inside Stuff also began airing on the block as a result of ABC's acquisition of the broadcast television rights to the NBA from NBC, starting with the NBA season|2002–03 season]'s Christmas Day game; the show continued to air on ABC Kids until 2004. The series premiere of Disney Channel's Lilo & Stitch: The Series was also aired on ABC Kids on September 20, 2003, with a delayed premiere on Disney Channel on October 12, 2003. The new block removed the imagery of the One Saturday Morning era in favor of a sports stadium theme, which, in 2006, was changed to a rock concert design that remained throughout the last five years of ABC Kids.
Through Disney's acquisition of Saban Entertainment, the Power Rangers series moved from Fox Kids to the ABC Kids block. All first-run episodes from the franchise premiered on ABC Kids starting with the second half of the show's Wild Force season, with the entirety of the Wild Force and Ninja Storm seasons subsequently airing in reruns on ABC Family. However, when Toon Disney and ABC Family jointly launched the action-oriented Jetix block in 2004, Jetix aired all first-run episode debuts of subsequent seasons from Dino Thunder to Jungle Fury, while ABC Kids aired these seasons in reruns. Due to the low ratings of the Jungle Fury season, as well as the merger between Jetix and Toon Disney to form Disney XD in 2009, the RPM season aired exclusively on ABC Kids. After production on RPM had concluded, instead of producing a new season, Disney produced a re-version of the first 32 episodes of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which included a new logo, an updated title sequence, comic book-referenced graphics, and extra alternative visual effects. The re-version aired from January 2 to August 28, 2010, after which Haim Saban reacquired the franchise and Nickelodeon acquired broadcast rights to the series.
In the 2004–05 season, ABC Kids removed its two remaining original series, Fillmore! and Recess. With the transfer of Walt Disney Television Animation to Disney Channels Worldwide, ABC fulfilled the FCC's three-hour quota by carrying select episodes of Disney Channel live-action comedies and animated series featuring moral lessons or educational anecdotes. The episodes were selected by both the "Standards and Practices" division of the network and any educational consultants who were attached to the shows. The Replacements and Hannah Montana were the last two Disney Channel series to be added to the block in fall 2006. Beginning with the 2007–08 season, ABC Kids programming became fully automated, putting the same handful of episodes of each show on a permanent rotation for the block's remaining four years.

Closure

In March 2010, ABC made the decision to discontinue providing a three-hour block of E/I-compliant, repurposed Disney Channel programming sent to its own stations and ABC affiliates. The network chose to lease out the three-hour timeslot and seek other programmers for an agreement to produce a syndicated block, not for the network, but for each ABC station as the network was turning the E/I responsibility back to local ABC stations.
A month later, ABC's affiliate board announced that it had reached a deal with Litton Entertainment, a production company which produced syndicated programming, to produce six, all-new, original half-hour E/I series exclusively for ABC stations for the 2011–12 season.
The block aired for the last time on August 27, 2011, without any announcement of its closure, and was quietly replaced by Litton's Weekend Adventure the following week on September 3.

Programming

Disney's One Saturday Morning

Original programming

Animated

Programming from [Disney Channel]

Animated
Live-action

Acquired programming

Animated
Live-action
† - Program transitioned to ABC Kids

ABC Kids

Original programming

Animated

Programming from [Disney Channel]/[Jetix]

Animated
Live-action

Acquired programming

Live-action
† - Program transitioned from Disney's One Saturday Morning

‡ - Program transitioned from final schedule of Fox Kids

Purposed programming

The following programs were planned to air on Disney's One Saturday Morning/ABC Kids, but did not air on the block.

ABC Kids

Programming from [Disney Channel]/[Jetix]
Animated
Live-action
† - Program transitioned from Disney's One Saturday Morning

‡ - Program transitioned from final schedule of Fox Kids